Re: [-empyre-] in-situ

[zina kaye <zina@laudanum.net>]

hi everybody -

i'm intrigued by the introductions thus far - and want to ask this question 
:- if the public art of today a fiction situated in a reality, then in what 
way are art institutions such as acmi the ones responsible for drawing the 
frame /border / aesthetic line that alerts the public that this is art ? 
how do they hang on to these fragmentary actions  -  is is worth 
documenting them ?

we're living in a colourful world. it's got personalised marketing and 
viewer's choice tv. it's got games which you play because "this is not a 
game" .

in this world, the yes men use a world trade negotiation as a stage, the 
kingpins use starbucks and chris caines uses the city of melbourne. all of 
these happenings bounce off the concrete and upholstered chairs - seen as 
unique events by very few... and then the performance is over and word of 
mouth takes over. the difference between the 70s and now is that you can 
hold on to those experiences and reinvent them for the gallery. <<it's not 
a kodak moment, it's a sony !>>

but wait, the networked experience doesn't have any "livepeople" 
characters. nobody plays dress-ups in chris caines' world. adam's 3D 
avatars need to be animated by synaptic intent, and the tension that keeps 
these electrons together doesn't translate to video. where are we going 
with our public ? do we want to know how many ? what they did? should ACMI 
set up surveillance and employ an attendant to sit inside the work?

what would chris' work be like if, like monica's , there was a gallery 
attendant sitting outside every space that is a character in the work. a 
grey shirted woman waits patiently next to the photobooth with 2004 flyers 
and a video camera. someone sits down inside with a handset and the 
attendant takes footage of their knees under the threadbare curtain....

zina.
sitting next to a sunny window in sydney,
watching melbourne airport go by
whoosh.




At 09:24 AM 11/06/2004 +1000, you wrote:
> Hi its Alexie, sorry the intro is a day late... here's something to kick 
> off this weeks forum
>
> Location, Location, Location. These three words could represent a 
> manifesto for the 21st century. Abducted from the spruikers of lifestyle 
> TV and real estate agents, and co-opted into the vernacular of 
> contemporary visual practice, the paradoxical lure, absurdity, and 
> emphatic demands of the phrase don't diminish. In fact, this earnest 
> catch-cry exposes questions about the binary relationship of information 
> de-centralisation to the reality of global urbanisation.  Does place 
> matter? Some might say location in contemporary art is currency, because 
> the right location can ensure access to audiences - that's cultural 
> capital. And history documents a set of responses to this condition. Land 
> art in the 1960's was a snub to the centre, a refute to capital. 
> Installation art and site specific practice in the 1980's and 90's was 
> often implemented as an action to subvert and expose while still engaging 
> the paradigmatics of certain spaces: think museums, galleries, and, in the 
> case of much public art, urban spaces. Over the past decade the 
> colonisation of online space is yet another departure from the vagaries of 
> the flaneur who simply strolls, tantalised by taste, experiencing the 
> multiplicity of the arts as a visual buffet.  In-situ suggests a greater 
> interactivity, whether that equates to pressing buttons or a cognitive 
> awareness for the viewer of their experience of destabilised space. New 
> media and process-based collaborations articulate another view again. So, 
> for artists, perhaps the question is what - if any - are the aesthetic, 
> political and contextual concerns that situated practice is evoking?
>
>
>
>
> **********************************************************************
> This communication contains information which is confidential and the 
> copyright of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
> If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail please notify the 
> sender immediately and delete it from your system.
> Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender and 
> may not be the views of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, unless 
> specifically stated.
> **********************************************************************
> This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by
> MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses.
>
> **********************************************************************
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre