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.
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DISCUSSION

Re:


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DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: why so little discussion?


At 3:31 AM -0800 11/22/04, Michael Szpakowski wrote:

> How are Ryan's 'growth, production and distribution'
>specifically Marxist concepts? -you can find these
>concepts in *any* account of economics.
>How does anyone eat, without production? - or, as soon
>as society reaches any level of complexity, without
>distribution? How can a society that grows in numbers
>( & hence mouths needing to be fed) therefore ignore
>the concept of "growth"?
>Far from being anachronistic, production, distribution
>and exchange (to use the more common Marxian triad)
>are actually *universal* questions in any society
>other that Robinson Crusoe's.

Hi Michael (and Ryan),
I'm just saying that most of these pillar-donating instances occurred
in self-sustaining local agrarian economies, so all of that
theoretical economic infrastructure (and the cultural relationships
it implies) are overkill. To focus on the economic aspects of this
situation is to apply one's pat contemporary grid backwards. It's to
focus on something that these people weren't focusing on. Since the
time of Moses, 11 tribes supported a 12th tribe of priests with their
tithes and offerings. Call it specialization of spiritual services
if you like. But these pillar ascetics weren't even priests. These
were freewill offerings above and beyond the tithe.

My family grow some of our own food here and we are surrounded by
farmers. It's nothing for our back neighbor to bring by five bushels
of corn and give it to us on a whim. These townspeope were giving
the pillar ascetics the leavings/gleanings of their crop. It doesn't
take much "capital" to live on top of a pole. The townspeople just
had to be intentional enough to bring the food daily, which they were.

Just like the MTAA year in a room project (getting back to it). It
was more an issue of "mindshare" than of "growth, production,
distribution."

peace,
curt

DISCUSSION

Re: Is 800 x 600 the new 640 x 480?


Hi Jason,

1024X768 is the new 800X600 and pink is the new black. Netscape 4.x is DEAD! Specifying which specific browser / OS combination your project needs so that it functions properly (or even optimally) is soooooo 1999.

Seriously, check here:
http://www.reinvigorate.net/system/ (sidebar, "most popular resolutions")

It's based on a fairly large sampling (1.7 billion hits), compiled from all the people who use the reinvigorate tracking service.

based on those figures, yes, 800X600 is the new "safe/least-common-denominator" resolution, and even it is on its way out.

_

jason asked:
It used to be that 640 x 480 was the generally accepted all purpose screen size.
This seems a little dated - does anyone know if this has this changed?

Jason Van Anden
www.smileproject.com

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: why so little discussion?


ryan:
Yeah, lots of things capture the imagination of an entire community.
genocidal acts take lots of willing participants, for example. So did
the civil rights movements. What doesn't?

curt:
contemporary performance art.

ryan:
i didn't realize that economics was
anachronistic.

curt:
not economics, just marxist economics.

ryan:
whatever - performance art isn't "devotional living." whatever that
means. it's art - a contrived activity designed to be seen as art. i
don't understand the comparison. a "performance artist" could make bad
art and live a devotional life.

curt:
devotional living is moment-by-moment living devoted to someone or something. the ascetic on the pole suggests to me that one's art (even one's performance art) could be more holistically bound up in / derived from one's personal inner life. It could be more idiosyncratically passionate and less tactically contrived:
http://www.narrowlarry.com/page1.html
http://www.interestingideas.com/roadside/artenvi.htm
http://cgee.hamline.edu/see/goldsworthy/see_an_andy.html

is this approach "artist-as-hero"? is it "modern" (the scarlet "m")? i think such dismissals are too convenient. maybe it's pre-pre-pre-modern. Maybe it's more punk and less poser. Maybe it's just generally more interesting. maybe it's just me.

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: why so little discussion?


The entire agrarian community collectively brought the food and left it there at the base of the pillar every morning. It was good karma for them to do so. "Growth, production, distribution" are all anachronistic Marxist ways of thinking about it. They pulled the carrots and taters from the ground, walked to the base of the pillar, and placed the carrots and taters in the basket for hoisting. They ate the maggots that fell from the flesh of the ascetics.

I think the comparison is telling. There was a "performance" that consumed the life of the
"artist," and not just for a year. But it wasn't a stunt or a clever conceptual angle; it was an act of worship. Furthermomre, it totally captured the imagination of the entire community, so much so that they financially supported its perpetuation of their own free will.

To me, a lot of performance art pales as contrivance compared to actual devotional living. Which may be why Beuys described his teaching career as his best piece.

I'm reminded of a Lydia Lunch quote which goes something like, "What would be better than to die for your art? To die for my art. Yeah, that'd be great."

_

ryan wrote:
Sure, if you call that "affording it." But it demands someone else to
grow, produce and distribute food to the ascetic - they didn't live 30+
years on birdshit. Someone else is affording it for him.
Perhaps an analysis of the subsidization of ascetics is a useful
comparison for artists.