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: Curating net art curators, a show


I think it should be like this Digital Salon show:
http://www.nydigitalsalon.org/salon\_10/index.php
except in reverse. Choose your given panel of artists (all curator-approved, of course), and then have them select their favorite curators and explain why.

Call the show cuRATEion (because you've got to mess up the spelling like that. it's cool.).

My vote goes to David Wilson, god among insects:
http://www.mjt.org

Runners Up include:

Jean Dubuffet
http://www.abcd-artbrut.org/

Beauvais Lyons
http://web.utk.edu/~blyons/

Gladys Dwindlebimmers Ralston
http://www.dearauntnettie.com/gallery/

\_
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> Curating net art curators.
>
> I

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: curating the curators


>the net, although arguably the last free landscape for artists
>practise, costs to walk in.

I got interested in researching, just hypothetically, whether one
could publish to the web for free. I almost went so far as
researching free hardware possibilities, but I didn't. Anyway, the
resultant list of free (or very cheap) tools and services is here:
http://www.lab404.com/toolbox/

Here are some texts that resonate with me and inform my personal
artistic practice. They seem applicable to this discussion. Make of
them what you will:

1.
Paul of Tarsus preached the gospel and kept a freelance job (he made
tents, actually). He used the money he earned from making tents to
pay for his missionary journeys. He also received support from
churches, but he didn't rely on it. His reasoning went like this:

"The Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should
receive their living from the gospel. But I have not used any of
these rights... I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of
this boast... If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not
voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. What
then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may
offer it free of charge, and so not make use of my rights in
preaching it."

2.
David Ben Jesse, king of Israel, wanted to build a sacrificial altar
in a particular place to commemorate a particular miracle that God
had done there. The man who owned the land offered it freely to
David for this purpose, but David insisted on buying the land with
his own money. His reasoning went like this:

"No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord
my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing."

3.
"Wilderness is an anchor to windward. Knowing it is there, we can
also know that we are still a rich nation, tending to our resources
as we should -- not a people in despair searching every last nook and
cranny of our land for a board of lumber, a barrel of oil, a blade of
grass, or a tank of water."
- US Senator Clinton P. Anderson in defense of US Forestry Service's
designated Wilderness areas

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: curating the curators


> The 'no great money' is usually between $500 -$20,000 in the kinds of
>various institutional grants, commissions etc. Not enough to live on (as
>you might get maybe one a year if you are very lucky) but that can
>make all difference in the world to being able to continue. In the circle of
>artists I'm working with most of us are clubbing together to do net/on &
>offline exhibitions or projects that might bring in $50 - $400 max but this
>keeps the ISP's fed and watered (not to mention the kids:-)

By way of personal disclosure, I've got 2 kids and another one on the
way. Right now we may have $200 in the bank. It comes and goes.
But if I start considering my art as something from which I may
reasonably expect an income (or even a modest stipend), I deprive
myself of a precious opportunity to celebrate life unobliged, and I
become the poorer for it. (Local mileage may vary.)

>I really don't know these artists that you are talking about who are fame-
>mongering. Particularly in the UK, people are too busy balancing art &
>the tescos budget to bother about which curators christmas card list
>their on.

If nobody came, would they still build it? That's my (admittedly
subjective) criterion for artistic integrity. Howard Finster would
still build it. Tracy Emin would not.

>True, but (and with the exception of turbulence who I think are the most
>open and diverse of curators) I think we need to look at a) why the have
>chosen the projects they have chosen and b) how successful these
>projects have been (as I said before) as artworks that will attract,
>endure and if 'deserve' the funds. My feeling is that currently the remit
>of many of these these grants etc are watered down versions of the
>conditions set by offline institution/curators as to what is 'hip' and 'net'.

The logistical question is, how do you convince the trustees who are
funding these organizations to agree with your feeling? Wouldn't it
be more feasible (maybe it wouldn't) to establish your own
institution and get your own grant money from the trustees to
distribute as you see fit? (Wouldn't it be more feasible yet to
abandon the acquisition and distribution of money altogether, and
just make cool stuff?!?)

> > If it's about going down in the academic record, that's a tougher nut
> > to crack. But there are other ways to be remembered that are no less
> > valid. The White Stripes are the new Stooges. How do I know the
> > Stooges? Because there is more than one agreed upon artistic
> > cultural archive.
>cultural VOOOOOOOIDDD - no idea what you are talking about here,
>sorry:-)

My fault. I'll try agian... There is more than one legitimate way
to be remembered by posterity. Just because the Velvet Underground
aren't usually taught in college (except as a footnote to Warhol),
that doesn't mean The Velvet Underground didn't leave their mark on
posterity. They just did it via pop culture. There is already a
mechanism in place for net artists to do the same sans institutions.

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: curating the curators


At 9:03 PM +0100 5/14/03, Jess Loseby wrote:
>hi curt,
>I'm not entirely convinced of the connection between my 'musing' and
>the the graphic world bylines you raise. Although I have to say, re-
>reading my thoughts out of context it sounded like I was knocking
>e8z (Bloggers words, not mine) and asking how net artists could get
>'picked up' by the institutions. Hopefully, it didn't read like that
>entirety as I was hoping to look at new media curation in its
>dictation of the form, rather than bemoaning the loss of potential
>fame for net artists.

Hi Jess,
right. I was sort of talking to myself.

>Having said that, I think most net artists would be pleased with
>institutional financial support (via the kind of commissions walker
>was giving out before) but don't give a rats arse in terms of being
>'discovered'. I don't agree that there there is a lot of jostling
>for fame within the 'net-centric artists' as you say. Jostling for
>money when the calls that have a stipend attached, yes, but not for
>fame.

Although I can't see into anybody's soul, I disagree. It's
definitely not about the money, because there's no great money in it
unless your name is Hirst. Granted, it's micro-scene famewhoring;
it's academic, upper-crust famewhoring; but a lot of still smells
like famewhoring to me. But then one can do good work and desire
fame too. It's just tricky.

>I know there is always some who long for riches rather than just a
>money to keep doing what they want to do, but if that's whats
>important to them they will definitely have more luck in popular
>design and good luck to them. Design a good advert and you can win
>more awards than Peter Jackson. I know you have often said that if
>artists had day jobs then sponserhip (whether institutions or
>corporate) wouldn't come into it, but I for one already have a day
>job and it will never buy me the bigger hard drive I need;-)

"This is money! I can USE money!" - The Jerk

>I think your are right in the web is the " great equalizer that
>allows self- publishing and micro-markets without the need for
>institutional approval?" and that's certainly what brought me on
>here, but its hard when curators are filtering out thematics like
>love, faith, emotion, intimacy. Not only because it makes working on
>the net more like a military campaign than a medium, but because it
>excludes so much of the basic human conditions that encourage
>longevity and life in both artworks and viewers desire to see
>more....

Agreed about the wack post-modern requisites, but you still miss my
point. Willy Wonka observed, "We are the music makers, and we are
the dreamers of the dreams." One might remix it, "We are the
curators, and we are the promoters of the cool stuff." If it's about
the money, networked artist collectives can apply for and
re-distribute grant money from governments the same as brick & mortar
galleries. Turbulence, Low-Res, and even our beloved Rhizome are
already there.

If it's about going down in the academic record, that's a tougher nut
to crack. But there are other ways to be remembered that are no less
valid. The White Stripes are the new Stooges. How do I know the
Stooges? Because there is more than one agreed upon artistic
cultural archive.

"Pop Life. Everybody needs a thrill. Pop Life. We all got a place
to fill." - the artist formerly known as the artist forerly known as
prince

DISCUSSION

Re: curating the curators


Jess Muses:

"What I wonder is how, despite this list, despite all the other lists we all belong to and despite our own work independently as artists - is how we get heard.

But what about the curators? In their bid to keep the NEW in new media, textual combinations seem constrained; unsettling playfulness, shocking subversion and...what then&# ?? Have Bloggers patronisation of say, E8Z's 'old fashioned themes' or Dietz's self styled curatorial 'filter' finally literally sieved out what makes net and new media so rounded.

I have never though the net 'needs' the institutions, but without their input my fear is the kind of sthetic gameplay of Amerika & PS2 will be the only sources of substantial sponsership and longevity that will remain."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In the graphic design world, everybody has a byline, because all marketers must have a byline. Jeffrey Zeldman (web standards wonk and someone whose blog gets more traffic in a day then rhizome gets in a month), Jeffrey's byline is "the independent content producer refuses to die."

This was his byline well before the dot com crash. He and other "independent content producers" talk at these web design conferences about independent content production, and they are inevitably asked, "What's the angle? How do you get rich and famous producing your own content and giving it away?" The answer is, "You don't. You just run your online magazine, or your experimental design site, or your blog, because you love to do it." Jeffrey divides the web into two camps -- "for profit" sites, and "for love" sites.

Ian McKay of Fugazi and Minor Threat fame started Dischord Records to release the music of DC punk bands (the history of Dischord is here: http://www.dischord.com/about/ ). The Dischord CDs sell in stores for $9 as opposed to the usual $16. They say on the label "this CD is $8.99 postpaid from..." and then the Dischord contact information is listed. Fugazi and Minor Threat have already secured their place in the pop music canon, punk sub-genre.

Peter Max and Ralph Steadman don't prize their CV list of solo shows (although I'm sure they've had plenty of shows). They have a string of famous posters and designs that have influenced the direction of popular illustration and design, and that's enough.

Isn't the web supposed to be the great equalizer that allows self-publishing and micro-markets without the need for institutional approval? And yet here are all these self-proclaimed net-centric artists jonesing to get "discovered" by what seems to me the art world equivalent of some A&R angel from Warner Bros. Records.

"I got into this game for the action! Get in, get out, man alone. Your entire apartment could be on fire and I couldn't so much as turn on a tap without filling out a 27B / zed!"
- Harry Tuttle: Heating Engineer