[-empyre-] Net art and Quebec heritage: je me souviens?

["Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>]

Valerie, a genesis story of video art and a genesis story of
art in distributed computing are not quite on the same plane.
Video is distributed to and written to, so to speak, small audiences
in highly specialised art and educational contexts, dependant upon
alternative media distribution unlikely to acheive mass circulation
or impact as 'net art' can and should. The theory work in video, 
and the coterie orientation of the one or two 'video theorists' 
reflects this small mindedness. And perhaps 'net art' (which
plausibly has yet to emerge in the form that it might) has been 
hindered by the petit institutional thinking of the video art 
community?

As a Montrealer, you ought to be aware of the origins of net
art in Quebec. It is a part of Quebec's heritage. A home maker 
called Nicole Santilli of Pierrefonds helped
script some of the earliest work, a couple of years
before StudioXX emerged, in early work that influenced StudioXX.
Ask Kathy Kennedy.

I don't know who Rachel Greene is but she refers to Heath Bunting 
who was brought in by Rachel Baker of Goldsmiths in 1994. His Kings 
Cross Phone project (I was there, as a good researcher/editor
should be) was not Intenret based art (Heath didn't go online until mid 
1995 with his excellent online navigation of London), but it did (and does) 
provide one of the clearest examples and articulations of the 
chaotic yet communitarian aspects of distributed internetwork.

The sheer fun of the internet has not been represented as clearly
as Heaths Kings Cross phone project. However that was performative 
street theatre not net based art.

I couldn't care less about an origin to the minor 'alternative 
art' genre of video art beside the genealogy of Internet interventions 
and art. Though of course, as Adrien and others have shown video does 
have a place embedded in distributed computing
and for reception its now globally diverse cultures.

I mean, get real in Quebec. Remember your history.



Lachlan




>I don't doubt the verity of this story - but there are so many 
versions. (See Rachel Greene's essay in Artforum = 
http://rhizome.org/info/artforum.pdf ) Do we need a genesis? Trying 
to locate the origin of "net.art" is a lot like the story of the 
origin of video art = Nam June Paik in the taxi going home after 
having bought his new Sony portapack filming the Pope as he rode by. 
A nice legend - but is it necessary?

Valerie

>Helen Sloan and I invented the term 'net art' in a chat in a pub
>in November 1994.
>
>Helen-What would art be like online Lachlan?
>
>Lachlan-It would be art, Helen, but <i>not art</i> as we know it.
>
>Lisa Haskel was sitting close by listening in (as usual)
>and misheard the conversation. Sean Cubitt was attempting to lip
>read from the bar.
>
>Lachlan


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