Re: [-empyre-] Modern Antiques

Aliette <aliette@criticalsecret.org> · Sun, 05 Mar 2006 18:07:46 +0100

Just to say that I have not judge of any art work in my argumentation.
Christophe asked me why "à peu près d'accord" so I have answered.

I have not told of the singular quality of art works, that is important
otherwise, but I have told of antiquity and modernity both in the real
materialist historical vision and in a personal conceptual idea of it.

I apologize if Dirk or Christina could understand that I was searching any
discriminant qualities to appreciate or not appreciate the thematic debate
from their idea or their own Art works.

I apologize too if any one could be hurt coming from the  difference between
a lot of several critical ideas and choice - even career. I was not judging
anyone.

More: it would be contradictory with my personal criticism of avant-gardes.

I am not reductionist in matter of modernity but all the contrary : I think
that their is no more value attached to modernity nowadays.. Or a new
paradigm or pact of change after 2 millenaries, but I do not hold a new
truth:) 

Sincerely hope that any  of my notes could be useful but knowing that
overpass them with more explanations would not be positive in the actual
moment of the debate.

All my best

A.

On 5/03/06 16:08, "Christophe Bruno" <christophe.bruno@unbehagen.com>
probably wrote:

> and by the way: double irony (or double hack) cancels !!! so it's normal
> nobody sees the irony ;-)
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "G.H.Hovagimyan" <ghh@thing.net>
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>; "Christophe Bruno"
> <christophe.bruno@unbehagen.com>
> Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2006 3:41 PM
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Modern Antiques
> 
> 
> gh replies:
> As I said, the most important trend in "Modernism" is performance.
> Especially mediated performance.  Christophe's piece the human browser
> is that type of performance. I don't think that irony plays a major
> role in the piece. Although the notion of a person functioning or being
> directed by web information is amusing, I think that the emotion of
> surprise and disjunction is more important.  I also liked Christophe's
> piece about the European elections. It's interesting that he was able
> to point out the dissaffection of the voters. That's a much larger
> issue. How we as artist explore this new information world and how we
> see the world and/or transform it is rather exciting.  It's also
> hopeful, sincere, curious and a bit comic. Both Charles Chaplin and
> Jacques Tati  look at human/machine interface. Yes it's funny but it's
> also humanizing.  I also love what Christina Mcphee does. She uses
> digital tools and scientific data to get to a deeply human emotion. She
> does performances on the earthquake fault lines. She's doing an
> investigative work on a California village that's been cutoff by a
> landslide. If we follow what the philosophers say; all digital media is
> alienating. Both Christina and Christophe use those tools to humanize.
> 
> On Mar 5, 2006, at 8:48 AM, Christophe Bruno wrote:
> 
>> I¹d like to react to both G.H. and Millie¹s posts. I agree with G.H.  when
>> he says we should focus on art instead of philosophy. Still, I  have a
>> comment to that:
>> 
>> As a French Bourgeois Postmodern artist :-(  I consider philosophical
>> concepts as furniture in my house, I can repaint them or trade them as  I
>> whish. Indeed, as there has been a transition from market capitalism  to
>> network capitalism, from manufactured objects to delocalized  conceptual
>> commodities, we now have to consider the inverse trend:  going back to
>> older media, plain objects, furniture... but, hopefully,  without dropping
>> what we learned from net.art.
>> 
>> This was the original intuition by Blank & Jeron or by Valery Grancher
>> when he made his first webpainting in 1998 (he refers to Picabia,  Jasper
>> Johns etc.), or Miltos Manetas with his internet paintings...
>> 
>> I¹m very much influenced by this ironical idea of the ³retour des  choses²
>> as we would say in french. What is the most stupid thing you  can do when
>> you are a net.artist: the answer is: painting a website on  a canvas. What
>> was the most stupid thing I could do, with my  epiphanies: replacing the
>> computer with a human being.
>> 
>> I think this provides interesting conceptual loops at the age of
>> globalization:
>> 0) Human beings speak
>> 1) Google hacks all the speeches of mankind
>> 2) I hack Google in return
>> 3) From this double hack, a human being speaks (the human browser) and  we
>> are back to 0), but we made a very big loop ;-)
>> 
>> 
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "G.H.Hovagimyan" <ghh@thing.net>
>> To: <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 3:02 PM
>> Subject: [-empyre-] Modern Antiques
>> 
>> 
>> So we¹re supposed to riff off whether Modernism is our Classicism.  I
>> need to figure out which Modernism we are talking about and from whose
>> view point?
>> 
>> As an American I generally think of the modern world as starting with
>> the French and American revolutions. Both are Bourgeois revolutions.
>> OK, that means the end of Medieval social structures ( you know, kings,
>> serfs)  and the establishment of the Bourgeoisie ideals of science and
>> business and private property.
>> Personally I don¹t think the Modern world has ended.  If anything, the
>> ideals of Science and Business keep spreading.
>> Anyway , I¹m an artist so I think about art, art history and what I¹m
>> doing as an artist. I believe that Christiane pointed out that there
>> are different definitions of Modernity.
>> 
>> Modern Art it seems to me has three main threads that distinguish it
>> from earlier forms;
>> 1. Deconstruction or a ³Scientistic² approach to art making that
>> involves applying scientific principals to art. This includes a
>> dissection of the elements of art and the investigation of it¹s
>> components.
>> 2. The game of art or art as a language game. People often talk about
>> this as ³art for arts sake² or art that is about other art.  An amusing
>> project is to read some of the 10,000 plus manifestos produced by
>> artists in the 20th century.  This list is part of that tradition.
>> 3. Perhaps the most interesting thread and the most telling is
>> performance art. This is a creative process that is not tied to theater
>> and depends on media tools (cameras, recorders, computers) to verify or
>> document its¹ existence.
>> 
>> Obviously, this may be overly simple but I¹d rather discuss art than
>> philosophy. I also believe in elevating art rather than debasing it or
>> subsuming it to some other discipline such as philosophy or science or
>> politics.
>> As for art and politics, I really believe that being an artist is a
>> political act in and of itself. It is an engagement is a high level
>> discourse with the political/social arena. It is similar to the
>> dialog/discourse between sculpture and archtecture.
>> 
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