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.
Re: Thom Yorke / Howard Zinn
My sister-in-law and I were talking last night, and the topic of conceptual art somehow came up. She asked, "what is conceptual art?" I said it was art in which the art object was largely incidental or a prop for the concept, and that the para-texts and the contexts were the main vehicles through which the art spoke. She asked, "but isn't that just like philosophy or psychology? Why call it art?" I answered that you can get away with more stuff socially and politically if you call it art. My brother added, "plus, they probably can't draw."
The assertion that the circus is marginally useful Marxian opiate entertainment and that overt, socially conscious art is the only way to *really* change the world -- that sounds just like something a political scientist would say. Sadly, many artists on this list would quickly step up and agree. Artists used to know intuitively what Thom Yorke stumblingly describes -- that if art is really plugged into life, it won't have to try to be in intentional moral dialogue with life issues, it just will be (and in a way much more natural/valuable/persuasive/subtle/transformatory/ARTISTIC than something like nikeplatz). These days it takes a pop musician to point this out, and it comes across as some sort of relevatory challenge to "serious" artists.
Which is why I much prefer reading Lester Bangs to Lev Manovich, and why I prefer writing for Paste magazine to writing for Mute magazine.
Maybe one day I will drop out of new media altogether and succumb to the lure of pure, unadulterated rock music journalism.
until then,
curt
---
> Yorke: Yeah, I don't think we are political at all, I think I'm hyper
> aware
> of the soapbox thing. It is difficult to make political art work. If
> all it
> does is exist in the realms of political discussion, it's using that
> language, and generally, it's an ugly language. It is very dead,
> definitely
> not a thing of beauty. The only reason, I think, that we go anywhere
> near it
> is because, like any reason that we buy music, these things get
> absorbed.
> These are the things surrounding your life. If you sit down and try to
> do it
> purposefully, and try to change this with this, and do this with that,
> it
> never works.
>
>
The assertion that the circus is marginally useful Marxian opiate entertainment and that overt, socially conscious art is the only way to *really* change the world -- that sounds just like something a political scientist would say. Sadly, many artists on this list would quickly step up and agree. Artists used to know intuitively what Thom Yorke stumblingly describes -- that if art is really plugged into life, it won't have to try to be in intentional moral dialogue with life issues, it just will be (and in a way much more natural/valuable/persuasive/subtle/transformatory/ARTISTIC than something like nikeplatz). These days it takes a pop musician to point this out, and it comes across as some sort of relevatory challenge to "serious" artists.
Which is why I much prefer reading Lester Bangs to Lev Manovich, and why I prefer writing for Paste magazine to writing for Mute magazine.
Maybe one day I will drop out of new media altogether and succumb to the lure of pure, unadulterated rock music journalism.
until then,
curt
---
> Yorke: Yeah, I don't think we are political at all, I think I'm hyper
> aware
> of the soapbox thing. It is difficult to make political art work. If
> all it
> does is exist in the realms of political discussion, it's using that
> language, and generally, it's an ugly language. It is very dead,
> definitely
> not a thing of beauty. The only reason, I think, that we go anywhere
> near it
> is because, like any reason that we buy music, these things get
> absorbed.
> These are the things surrounding your life. If you sit down and try to
> do it
> purposefully, and try to change this with this, and do this with that,
> it
> never works.
>
>
yo tengo chicle en mi cerebro
radar systems piercing the souls
http://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/boombox/birth1.html
http://www.cyberden.com/cgi-bin/showsleeves.cgi?SLEEVE=ALL
you never get caught with the wax so rotten
http://www.nyheter.nu/kultur/
http://www.io.com/~dork/records/pages/FashionACountry.html
all my days i got the grizzly words
http://www.beck.com/diskobox/song.php?id 119
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/fish.tcf/songs/jeepster.htm
hijacked flavors that i'm flipping like birds
http://www.uniformfreak.com
http://www.airsicknessbags.com/cgi-bin/miva?Walk.mv
_
http://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/boombox/birth1.html
http://www.cyberden.com/cgi-bin/showsleeves.cgi?SLEEVE=ALL
you never get caught with the wax so rotten
http://www.nyheter.nu/kultur/
http://www.io.com/~dork/records/pages/FashionACountry.html
all my days i got the grizzly words
http://www.beck.com/diskobox/song.php?id 119
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/fish.tcf/songs/jeepster.htm
hijacked flavors that i'm flipping like birds
http://www.uniformfreak.com
http://www.airsicknessbags.com/cgi-bin/miva?Walk.mv
_
elliott smith was my nick drake
I got static in my head
the reflected sound of everything
tried to go to where it led
but it didn't lead to anything
http://fringe.100luz.com.ar/bitmapARTIFICE/
the noise is coming out
and if it's not out now
i know it's just about
to drown tomorrow out
http://images.google.com/images?q
the reflected sound of everything
tried to go to where it led
but it didn't lead to anything
http://fringe.100luz.com.ar/bitmapARTIFICE/
the noise is coming out
and if it's not out now
i know it's just about
to drown tomorrow out
http://images.google.com/images?q
three treatments
http://lab404.com/misc/subterraneanhomesickalien/
christopher o'riley
radiohead
the section
soon to be removed. enjoy.
-
christopher o'riley
radiohead
the section
soon to be removed. enjoy.
-
Re: Re: Shilpa Gupta at www.tate.org.uk/netart
one of my students made this piece in a couple of weeks:
http://mmas.unca.edu/~amallen/guardianangel.html
Its copy is more amusing, its concept is more focused, it more thoroughly chews what it bites off, because it presumes to bite off less. In short, the piece critiques fast food religion. At a deeper level, it laments the corrosive aspects of consumer culture on human spiritual aspirations. I could write a couple of papers on it (blah blah blah), but I just rented a Young Ones DVD, and later I mean to take a nap.
Its artist statement is in white html at the bottom of the first page. Select all or view source to see it. Even without the artist statement, the critical intention of the piece is self-evident without beating you over the head with self-conscious irony. And if you're tricked into thinking the piece is real (as some people are with blackpeopleloveus.com), then it serves a critcal purpose along those lines as well.
I think she got an A- or a B+ for it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
The tate piece blenderizes half-baked critiques of fast food religion, all religion, ritual, partisanship, globalisation, and war. All it lacks is an autogenerative logo and a psuedonymous etoy-ish art corp creator, and it would have filled in all the requisite net.art blanks. Oh, and surveilance cameras. There must always be something about surveilance cameras!
how you gonna keep em down on the farm
now that outer space has lost its charm
http://www.thedance.net/~roth/SONGS/20th.html
-
-
-
Michael Szpakowski wrote:
> < the
> work explores religion, globalisation and the
> complex cultural and political dynamics of the
> internet.>
> Does it? How does it do this?
> So often I read these kind of assertions in
> artist's/curatorial statements.
> I took a look and it feels pretty ordinary and
> formulaic to me.
> Maybe I'm being uncharitable or missing something.
> Maybe I'm not looking in the right way.
> I'd be interested to know what others think.
> michael
>
> Commissioned by Tate Online
> > (http://www.tate.org.uk), it juxtaposes the real and
> > virtual worlds and encourages visitors to consider
> > how these spaces overlap and merge.
> >
> >
> > Two critical texts accompany the piece:
> > God, Prayer and Politics: The Work of Shilpa Gupta,
> > Heidi Reitmaier
> > Blessed-bandwidth.net: it's super authentic, Johan
> > Pijnappel
> >
> > Both texts and the work itself can be found via
> > http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/blessedbandwidth/
> >
> > +
> > -> post: list@rhizome.org
> > -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> > -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> > http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> > -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> > -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is
> > open to non-members
> > +
> > Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set
> > out in the
> > Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>
>
> =====
> *** QuickTime large QuickTime NUMBER, it is small, office being nearly
> office OF the office OF the COMMANDS office OF the film or many nearly
> time the small order where that, that is the office OF the office OF
> the COMMANDS QuickTime when into the film, is given, it gives the
> office OF the
> http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/Some_QuickTime_Movies
> http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/ ***
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
> http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
http://mmas.unca.edu/~amallen/guardianangel.html
Its copy is more amusing, its concept is more focused, it more thoroughly chews what it bites off, because it presumes to bite off less. In short, the piece critiques fast food religion. At a deeper level, it laments the corrosive aspects of consumer culture on human spiritual aspirations. I could write a couple of papers on it (blah blah blah), but I just rented a Young Ones DVD, and later I mean to take a nap.
Its artist statement is in white html at the bottom of the first page. Select all or view source to see it. Even without the artist statement, the critical intention of the piece is self-evident without beating you over the head with self-conscious irony. And if you're tricked into thinking the piece is real (as some people are with blackpeopleloveus.com), then it serves a critcal purpose along those lines as well.
I think she got an A- or a B+ for it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
The tate piece blenderizes half-baked critiques of fast food religion, all religion, ritual, partisanship, globalisation, and war. All it lacks is an autogenerative logo and a psuedonymous etoy-ish art corp creator, and it would have filled in all the requisite net.art blanks. Oh, and surveilance cameras. There must always be something about surveilance cameras!
how you gonna keep em down on the farm
now that outer space has lost its charm
http://www.thedance.net/~roth/SONGS/20th.html
-
-
-
Michael Szpakowski wrote:
> < the
> work explores religion, globalisation and the
> complex cultural and political dynamics of the
> internet.>
> Does it? How does it do this?
> So often I read these kind of assertions in
> artist's/curatorial statements.
> I took a look and it feels pretty ordinary and
> formulaic to me.
> Maybe I'm being uncharitable or missing something.
> Maybe I'm not looking in the right way.
> I'd be interested to know what others think.
> michael
>
> Commissioned by Tate Online
> > (http://www.tate.org.uk), it juxtaposes the real and
> > virtual worlds and encourages visitors to consider
> > how these spaces overlap and merge.
> >
> >
> > Two critical texts accompany the piece:
> > God, Prayer and Politics: The Work of Shilpa Gupta,
> > Heidi Reitmaier
> > Blessed-bandwidth.net: it's super authentic, Johan
> > Pijnappel
> >
> > Both texts and the work itself can be found via
> > http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/blessedbandwidth/
> >
> > +
> > -> post: list@rhizome.org
> > -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> > -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> > http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> > -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> > -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is
> > open to non-members
> > +
> > Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set
> > out in the
> > Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>
>
> =====
> *** QuickTime large QuickTime NUMBER, it is small, office being nearly
> office OF the office OF the COMMANDS office OF the film or many nearly
> time the small order where that, that is the office OF the office OF
> the COMMANDS QuickTime when into the film, is given, it gives the
> office OF the
> http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/Some_QuickTime_Movies
> http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/ ***
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
> http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree