curt cloninger
Since the beginning
Works in Canton, North Carolina United States of America

ARTBASE (7)
BIO
Curt Cloninger is an artist, writer, and Associate Professor of New Media at the University of North Carolina Asheville. His art undermines language as a system of meaning in order to reveal it as an embodied force in the world. His art work has been featured in the New York Times and at festivals and galleries from Korea to Brazil. Exhibition venues include Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Granoff Center for The Creative Arts (Brown University), Digital Art Museum [DAM] (Berlin), Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago), Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and the internet. He is the recipient of several grants and awards, including commissions for the creation of new artwork from the National Endowment for the Arts (via Turbulence.org) and Austin Peay State University's Terminal Award.

Cloninger has written on a wide range of topics, including new media and internet art, installation and performance art, experimental graphic design, popular music, network culture, and continental philosophy. His articles have appeared in Intelligent Agent, Mute, Paste, Tekka, Rhizome Digest, A List Apart, and on ABC World News. He is also the author of eight books, most recently One Per Year (Link Editions). He maintains lab404.com, playdamage.org , and deepyoung.org in hopes of facilitating a more lively remote dialogue with the Sundry Contagions of Wonder.
Discussions (1122) Opportunities (4) Events (17) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Inauguration Overload


related (and an interesting study in meme remixology):
http://obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/

DISCUSSION

Response to "New Media Artists vs Artists With Computers"


Dear Tom,

You abandon the site of this open, unmoderated, many-to-many discussion of an idea you've proposed. You reatreat to your blog to post some cryptic, scatalogical minutiae to yourself. You then flash back here and declare yourself "the winner" of an ongoing dialogue that has no winner or resolution. Since no one has the inclination or interest to follow you out of this public forum back to your solipsistic enclave to dialogue with you in a closed forum moderated by you, it's fair to say you win the "argument." Brilliant!

You would invent, police, and evaluate the critical reception of your own ideas from the safety of your own blog.

We'll turn Manhattan into a raft of joy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D33XSldDG2E

Yr Monkey,
Curt

DISCUSSION

Internet Delivers People (2008) - Ramsay Stirling


I thought it was during on of those threads awhile back, but I searched for it and couldn't find it. My mistake. I know you made the analogy with found objects, which I think I get.

DISCUSSION

Internet Delivers People (2008) - Ramsay Stirling


I know a colleague with degrees in architecture and philosophy who teaches and practices art. He says the title of artist allows him more investigative freedom across all disciplines. In this sense I think the title of artist has a liberating effect. The artists I have always been most interested in are those who use art as a unique material fulcrum to examine and modulate culture in ways that philosophy and science cannot (cf: Deleuze's "What Is Philosophy?").

So it just seems ass-backwards to pilfer net culture (a broad arena that matters) simply to make a novel statement in white cube gallery culture (a legitimate but much more parochial, self-referential arena that matters less broadly). It's even more strange to pilfer 1970s gallery culture in order to make a novel statement in uber-parochial net art culture. The larger challenge is to take the whole lot (networks, galleries, art, capitalist systems, theory, philosophy, art history, cooking, museology) and use it all to make something that matters at large. Rather than saying, "It's novel net art. It's novel gallery art. It's novel new media art. It's novel new media theory. It's a novel new media genre;" what about saying, "It matters in the world at large?" Might we then begin to respect and recognize new tactics, practices, and forms previously ignored? Not that all work would have to be "political" (per se), since lots of "politics" don't matter. Not that all work would have to be deadpan earnest. It would just have to matter at large.

Of course there are obvious questions. How large is "at large?" To whom must it matter? How much must it matter? In what ways must it matter? By whose criteria must it matter? These are ethical questions, but they are also intrinsically artistic questions. Perhaps such questions would lead artists away from the easy conceptual one-liner (however superficially earnest) and on toward pan-disciplinary wild nights a la Leigh Bowery (however superficially "pop").

Vijay wrote:
Calling yourself an artist may be strategic, but it's a compartmentalizable speech act. Picasa: I'm a photographer. deviantART: I'm an artist. Rhizome: I'm a net artist. Last.FM: I'm a DJ. Blogger: I'm a writer. Delicious: I'm a quidnunc connoisseur. MySpace: I'm a musician. YouTube: I'm a filmmaker. Huffington Post: I am a journalist. The Well: I am a real human being. Are these tacticalized (?) strategies?

DISCUSSION

Internet Delivers People (2008) - Ramsay Stirling


Hi Vijay,

de Certeau's consumers/tacticians weren't ever calling themselves artists. And the residual trace of their poachings/readings/walkings were always less important than the actual performance of these acts (for instance, a grocery list and a sink full of dirty dishes doesn't really get at the tactics involved in shopping, preparing, cooking, and hosting). So I would say the 4chan surfers are closer to de Certeau's tactical consumers. They leave a slight trace 10 screens deep, but don't ever bother to archive it. And they don't call themselves artists.

The NastyNets ROM for sale becomes something entirely different. The group was called into existence purposefully by people calling themselves artists (at least two of whom I'm guessing have read de Certeau), it was intentionally archived, and its trace was packaged and sold as an art document. Seems like an overall strategy of production comprised of smaller tactics of consumption. "Commodify your consumption." But once these tactics (the individual posts) are archived and packaged (curated) as such, they seem to lose their agency as tactics. They become something in between.

Cory Arcangel surfs/derives, and then bookmarks the sites he visits (he leaves a trace) publicly at delicious. This act of surfing (the subjective absorptions and connections happening in Cory's mind) constitute a tactic, something akin to what de Certeau would call "reading as poaching." But Cory's bookmarks themselves don't represent a tactic any more than the shopping list above does. His bookmarks are then followed and reblogged by others. His personal tactics become a public commodity. He becomes a kind of uber-filter -- an art start because of his production of an interesting tactical/consumptive trace. "I am a DJ, I am what I [s]play. I've got [believers/the levers]."

These projects are related:
http://www.deepyoung.org/current/blank/bake.html (2005)
http://www.lab404.com/data/ (2002)
http://www.xanadu.net (1960-present)
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush (1945)