[-empyre-] Telic and Neen

["roya.jakoby" <roya@girlfish.net>]

Hi, The following is an extract of a text by Miltos Manetas on what he
describes as being Telic and Neen. I meet Miltos in March 2002 when he was
preparing to launch whitneybiennial.com ( http://www.whitneybiennial.com/ )
onto humanity and onto an expecting/unexpecting NYC art world.

I thought that some of you might find this text interesting, though many of
you might have already heard of Neen and Telic and of Miltos. I can't always
relate to Miltos' views, not mentioning his somewhat notorious PR methods,
but there are surely some good and valid and fresh points about Neen.

+/roya.

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Telic and Neen (by Miltos Manetas)

Telic, is a word produced by a branding company (Lexicon, the creators of
terms such as "powerbook" and "pentium"). It stands for anything related
with computer technology, from Wired Magazine type of ideas and lifestyle to
art generated with computers and theory about machines, software and robots.
Telic is super creative, sometimes in a paranoid way: It's more creative
than what it worths to be, because it is using creativity as a power engine
to examine the landscape. Telic is serious . It will explain every little
detail. It will submit lots of footnotes and references. It will be "open
form" and it will accept updates from anyone. Telic is never snob and it is
indifferent to style or it will overdo with it similar to a New Jersey boy
who comes in Manhattan on Friday nights. San Francisco, is in this sense,
the Telic capital of the World.

Telic authors and artists, usually teach in Universities. They survive
thanks to the grants that other Telic people are managing and they avoid the
artworld, which in return, also ignores them. But Telic shapes the World. As
J.G Ballard wrote "Science and technology, multiply around us. To an
increasing extend they dictate the languages in which we speak and think.
Either we use those languages, or we remain mute". Telic is making sense
from these languages, but then, do we really want to make sense ? Why shall
we be so domesticated and so productive ? Why our "design" becomes sometimes
so irrelevant that even the most boring companies are comfortable to sponsor
it and use it as their banner? Here it where Neen comes in, another name
invented by Lexicon.

Neen is the crazy little brother. What it does, may sound sometimes stupid,
but only because its easy and amazing. A Neenster, is not a wannabe, he/she
doesn't suffer of any sense of duty, but he/she will use culture the same,
as an occasion to exercise his/her brain.The dream of a Neenster, is to
become an icon and usually starts his career by becoming the icon of his own
imagination. Then, he projects it to the outside as if it were a fact.
Identity, is not a priority for a Neenster, but one will fetishize oneself
anyway and use that as a style: it's a fast way to produce content. But a
Neenster, in contrast with contemporary artists, will change identities
often, according to the situations: Neen, is ultimately a state of mind.
People such as Lucio Fontana, who were doing painting by simply slashing a
canvas, were Neen before Neen. A few videogames, the most untelic ones, such
as Animal Leader for Nintendo Cube, is for a Neenster a good thing to do
when he is tired from his usual job, which is namely doing nothing: not even
consuming. Because the Internet is the best place to exercise your "non
activity", Neensters use to spend a lot of time online. They are Friends of
the information and not Users as the Telic people and because they need
something that simulates social battle they participate actively in the
intellectual property and copyright war. They watch the data population,
music, images,ideas and texts, while it struggles to get free from the
slavery of the intellectual property and copyright. Their are spending
months downloading anything that they can find, from songs to porn movies
and books just for the pleasure of copy. Then, they will put copies of what
they copied online, for others to copy.

Neensters, are also obsessed with names. They will run a search in the
Internet to see if the domain with a new name they envisioned is available,
if it is, they will register it. Immediately after, they'll do something
fresh and they'll put it online: it will not be your father's website with
the usual links, info and stuff, it will be something minimal and
straightforward. Neensters, will let the page to be what it must be : a new
art object.

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For further reference:
http://www.neen.org/    ;
http://www.manetas.com/