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.
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.
We can BE THE MESSAGE
Hi Vijay,
I agree with what you are saying. My problem with semiotics is when it claims that it is the single sense in which language matters. I'm not claiming (nor is Bakhtin) that his conception of the "utterance" is the single sense in which language matters either. Language matters in all these senses and probably several others. I'm just saying that language unuttered (and Bakhtin considers writing and reading a form of utterance) is some other, largely theoretical animal. When historically contingent utterance events are left out of the consideration of language, then you wind up with these mathematical Chomskyan structures claiming a reductive understanding of language that is incomplete and skewed.
Best,
Curt
I agree with what you are saying. My problem with semiotics is when it claims that it is the single sense in which language matters. I'm not claiming (nor is Bakhtin) that his conception of the "utterance" is the single sense in which language matters either. Language matters in all these senses and probably several others. I'm just saying that language unuttered (and Bakhtin considers writing and reading a form of utterance) is some other, largely theoretical animal. When historically contingent utterance events are left out of the consideration of language, then you wind up with these mathematical Chomskyan structures claiming a reductive understanding of language that is incomplete and skewed.
Best,
Curt
We can BE THE MESSAGE
Hi Vijay,
I'm coming to understand language as an embodied force in the world rather than a once-removed abstraction of the world. Language doesn't need to be more immediate and less mediated; it has always been quite immediate and affective. Semiotics overlooks this embodied, historically contingent aspect of language. The problem with semiotics is that language as an abstract system is not really language in any sense that matters (although logicians and computer programmers get all excited about it).
Language is always doing what it does, we just don't always understand what it is doing. Language-based installations by Weiner and Nauman begin to indicate more clearly what language is actually doing. Is language reconstituting our individuality or eroding it? Yes, yes, and several other things besides.
Some Bakhtin:
"Language enters life through concrete utterances (which manifest language) and life enters language through concrete utterances as well... The natural meaning of the word applied to a particular actual reality under particular real conditions of speech communication creates a spark of expression... Only the contact between the language meaning and the concrete reality that takes place in the utterance can create the spark of expression. It exists neither in the system of language nor in the objective reality surrounding us."
I'm coming to understand language as an embodied force in the world rather than a once-removed abstraction of the world. Language doesn't need to be more immediate and less mediated; it has always been quite immediate and affective. Semiotics overlooks this embodied, historically contingent aspect of language. The problem with semiotics is that language as an abstract system is not really language in any sense that matters (although logicians and computer programmers get all excited about it).
Language is always doing what it does, we just don't always understand what it is doing. Language-based installations by Weiner and Nauman begin to indicate more clearly what language is actually doing. Is language reconstituting our individuality or eroding it? Yes, yes, and several other things besides.
Some Bakhtin:
"Language enters life through concrete utterances (which manifest language) and life enters language through concrete utterances as well... The natural meaning of the word applied to a particular actual reality under particular real conditions of speech communication creates a spark of expression... Only the contact between the language meaning and the concrete reality that takes place in the utterance can create the spark of expression. It exists neither in the system of language nor in the objective reality surrounding us."
High Networkism and Network Postmodernism
Hi Max,
Bruno Latour's "We Have Never Been Modern" (1993) seems relevant to the claims you are making. Latour claims that modernism is a myth that was never actually implementable. We thought we were doing something impossible (keeping nature and culture separate, keeping science and belief separate), and this allowed us to proliferate all sorts of hybrids without knowing it. "Postmodernism" as anti-modernism is the wrong reaction to modernism, since postmodernism accepts modernism's false claims about itself and ignores what modernism was actually doing.
Latour doesn't oppose the nature-culture hybridizations that modernism proliferated. He just opposes the cognitive disconnect between what modernism claimed and what it was actually doing. So what comes after modernism is simply an awareness that we have never been modern, a more self-conscious understanding of the hybrids we were creating, and a more purposeful determination of how me might want to proceed from here on out. His future is not deterministic. It leaves us with real agency to make a world.
Latour might argue the following: To name and define a new era that comes after "postmodernism" is simply to proceed according to the myths of modernism.
In the parlance of Deleuze's 'becoming animal" (or the Vapors' "Turning Japanese"), I think I am becoming/turning increasingly medieval. Or maybe, in the parlance of Latour, I have always been medieval.
Anyway, the Latour book is worth a read for a "science studies" perspective on modernism.
Hope you are doing well.
Curt
Bruno Latour's "We Have Never Been Modern" (1993) seems relevant to the claims you are making. Latour claims that modernism is a myth that was never actually implementable. We thought we were doing something impossible (keeping nature and culture separate, keeping science and belief separate), and this allowed us to proliferate all sorts of hybrids without knowing it. "Postmodernism" as anti-modernism is the wrong reaction to modernism, since postmodernism accepts modernism's false claims about itself and ignores what modernism was actually doing.
Latour doesn't oppose the nature-culture hybridizations that modernism proliferated. He just opposes the cognitive disconnect between what modernism claimed and what it was actually doing. So what comes after modernism is simply an awareness that we have never been modern, a more self-conscious understanding of the hybrids we were creating, and a more purposeful determination of how me might want to proceed from here on out. His future is not deterministic. It leaves us with real agency to make a world.
Latour might argue the following: To name and define a new era that comes after "postmodernism" is simply to proceed according to the myths of modernism.
In the parlance of Deleuze's 'becoming animal" (or the Vapors' "Turning Japanese"), I think I am becoming/turning increasingly medieval. Or maybe, in the parlance of Latour, I have always been medieval.
Anyway, the Latour book is worth a read for a "science studies" perspective on modernism.
Hope you are doing well.
Curt
Winners Page for Genius 2000 Conference 2008
Hi Max,
I think posting a lot to the list serv formerly known as rhizome_RAW is like Andy Warhol making a lot of prints. The old economy values scarcity, so it seemed stupid for him to make a bunch of prints. But now his prints sell for as much as a Picasso, and there are tons more Warhol ephemera than Picasso paintings. Warhol's foundation has a Chelsea warehouse full of stuff it has yet to dump on the market. And all those proceeds go to fund granting organizations that then fund artists to make work.
There are artists who think that by posting frequently, openly, and un-anonymously to this discussion forum, they decrease their credentials and thus decrease the likelihood of receiving money from one of the arts organizations that the Andy Warhol Foundation funds. In reality, the more they post to this forum, the more valuable their work will eventually be. Unfortunately, no one will realize this until after they die.
++++++++++++++
RAW is on its way to the basement. The powers that be have already rescinded its paycheck and stolen its red Swingline stapler. Next they will move it to the basement and turn off its lights. Then RAW will blow up the entire rhizome building and retire to the Bahamas.
++++++++++++++
I post to RAW because I like to hear myself think out loud in public. The fact that at least two people at any given time are following my inane ramblings makes me feel less alone.
I post to RAW because I never got around to making a blog, so this will do for now.
I post to RAW in the spirit of Richard Huelsenbeck. Don't ask me what this means.
++++++++++++++
No dialogue is a kind of dialogue. Sporadic dialogue is a kind of dialogue. Sequestered, self-talking, Beckett-esque dialogue is a kind of dialogue. Increased noise to signal ratio is a kind of dialogue.
Until they kill RAW, something is always happening here. Whoever makes the final decision to kill RAW will be tormented by the demons formerly assigned to Sarah Winchester, Jeremy Blake, and L. Ron Hubbard.
Peace,
Curt
I think posting a lot to the list serv formerly known as rhizome_RAW is like Andy Warhol making a lot of prints. The old economy values scarcity, so it seemed stupid for him to make a bunch of prints. But now his prints sell for as much as a Picasso, and there are tons more Warhol ephemera than Picasso paintings. Warhol's foundation has a Chelsea warehouse full of stuff it has yet to dump on the market. And all those proceeds go to fund granting organizations that then fund artists to make work.
There are artists who think that by posting frequently, openly, and un-anonymously to this discussion forum, they decrease their credentials and thus decrease the likelihood of receiving money from one of the arts organizations that the Andy Warhol Foundation funds. In reality, the more they post to this forum, the more valuable their work will eventually be. Unfortunately, no one will realize this until after they die.
++++++++++++++
RAW is on its way to the basement. The powers that be have already rescinded its paycheck and stolen its red Swingline stapler. Next they will move it to the basement and turn off its lights. Then RAW will blow up the entire rhizome building and retire to the Bahamas.
++++++++++++++
I post to RAW because I like to hear myself think out loud in public. The fact that at least two people at any given time are following my inane ramblings makes me feel less alone.
I post to RAW because I never got around to making a blog, so this will do for now.
I post to RAW in the spirit of Richard Huelsenbeck. Don't ask me what this means.
++++++++++++++
No dialogue is a kind of dialogue. Sporadic dialogue is a kind of dialogue. Sequestered, self-talking, Beckett-esque dialogue is a kind of dialogue. Increased noise to signal ratio is a kind of dialogue.
Until they kill RAW, something is always happening here. Whoever makes the final decision to kill RAW will be tormented by the demons formerly assigned to Sarah Winchester, Jeremy Blake, and L. Ron Hubbard.
Peace,
Curt