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

Re: Re: Re: Regarding The


Or, "the rabid coyotes encroach as the caravan is forced to circle the wagons and chase its own tail in a self-referential ouroboros/mobius strip of rapidly decreasing relevance."

meow,
curt

-

M. River wrote:

> >curt cloninger wrote:
>
> > Joe Nolan wrote:
>
>
> Truman Capote wrote:
>
> It must have been the spring of 1950 or 1951, since I have lost my
> notebooks detailing those two years. It was a warm day late in
> February, which is high spring in Sicily, and I was talking to a very
> old man with a mongolian face who was wearing a black velvet Borsalino
> and, disregarding the balmy, almond-blossom-scented weather, a thick
> black cape.
>
> The old man was Andre Gide, and we were seated together on a sea wall
> overlooking shifting fire-blue depths of ancient water.
>
> The postman passed by. A friend of mine, he handed me several letters,
> one of them containing a literary article rather unfriendly toward me
> (had it been friendly, of course no one would of sent it).
>
> After listening to me grouse a bit about the piece, and the
> unwholesome nature of the critical mind in general, the great French
> master hunched, lowered his shoulders like a wise old . . . shall we
> say buzzard?, and said, "Ah, well. Keep in mind an Arab proverb: 'The
> dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.'

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: join this concept


Hi Jason,

I like this from that project:
"What we should be talking about with WAPO is not artist's ideas per se, but rather the concrete, or material, manifestations of these ideas. This is the only site where originality and ownership can be effectively contested. Outright copying or forgery. Because, given the same idea, no two people will materialize a concept in exactly the same manner."
- kerry james marshall

One of the cool things about teaching is that you can give the same concept as an assignment and get back 12 different implementations of that concept. In a way it's like a lab experiment where the concept is the control and the implementation is the variable. What it reveals is that slipshod, unintentional implementation can mute or muddle a concept, whereas inspired implementation can imbue a concept with further nunances and take it to the next level. All this is true if the concept is robust enough to support such variance.

A concept that allows for (yea, even invites) variance and invention in the implementation phase is, to me, a more interesting concept than one that discourages and circumvents variance and invention in the implementation phase. The former type of concept is necessarily more dependent on invention in the implementation phase, and as such it invites all the chaos and back-and-forth media dialogue that happens in the implementation phase into itself. (Here I'm using "media" not in the McLuhan-esque sense, but in the classic sense of "artistic medium," the "stuff" with which an artist works.) To reference Milkos' spirit/matter analogy, such a concept can lead to a more integrated, holistic work. It's more risky (if the implementation sucks, the concept greatly suffers), but potentially more incarnational. The latter type of concept (what we've called "hardcore conceptualism") bypasses such risks. In so doing, It always leads to the creation of a more "gnostic" work (in that gnosticism makes a hard split between spirit and matter).

Here I mean "matter" only by analogy. I'm not talking about a physical art object (the classic new media red herring bunny trail). "New media" (immaterial bits, pixels, networks) are still analagous to "matter" in this sense because all of it is still "stuff" that pushes back during the implementation phase of the artistic process, stuff with which to be wrestled. The artist is forced to wrestle with more than simply instructional prose (the artist statement), and this forced dialogue with media results in a work that somehow "'takes into account" a world beyond the artist's own mind. It acknowledges the physical senses rather than gnostically trying to rise above them. It's not that the artist's mind is necessarily "imposed" onto the world (such post-colonial rhetorical propaganda!), but that her mind changes the world, the world changes her mind, there is a less than simply hermetic dialogue, and the resulting work of art is something more relevant to everyone else who lives in the world.

It is very easy to deem the "real world" a relativistic social construct of our own devising. Such a world view provides a ready and convenient rationalization for the artist to avoid dialoguing with media in her implementation phase. But making art that avoids wrestling with media doesn't prove one's world view any more than always staying in your house and never going outside proves that the outside world doesn't exist. Other people are still walking around outside, just as other people are still making art in dialogue with what Francis Schaeffer might have called "the world that is there." All you've proved is that you can make mind-wanking, hermetically sealed, self-referential, conceptual art.

peace,
curt

_

Jason Van Anden wrote:

> Curt,
>
> You ought to consider registering your project project with the
> "World Artistic Property Organization":
>
> http://salon-digital.zkm.de/~wapo/ep.html
>
> Jason Van Anden
> <www.smileproject.com>

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: R2D2: Conceptual Art


Miklos Legrady wrote:

> The sum may be greater than the parts, but this one's obvious; if
> the individual work, the content, isn't interesting, the means of
> publication cannot be that interesting... except as potential for
> future interesting works, which is pure spec.

Got it. I think he means that something like http://www.metaspy.com , which simply foregrounds collective, art-agnostic use of the network, is more interesting than any single piece of self-aware net art. But then you could argue that metaspy is an artwork.

DISCUSSION

Re: a bit of


the music of the future isn't music."
- from the liner notes to "Environments 2 - Tintinnabulation (special low frequency version)"

Hi DQ,

I'll address your critiques in turn:

1.
Proto-conceptual instructionalism (my smarmy made-up name for the genre of work that the "\_ This Concept" Project establishes) differs from mere ideas posted on blogs in several ways:
a. it's not mere ideas posted in blogs
b. it's actual instructions for an art project sans implementation
c. it's on your art radar

2.
For inaction to actively resist something, it need become action, and thus become commodified into the world of implementation. Fool me twice, shame on you. We aim below the mark in order to miss the mark.

3.
Anyway, proto-conceptual instructionalism (or just "instructionalism," as it shall come to be known in art history footnotes of the future) is not inactivity. Inactivity would be thinking of the concepts and not posting them (proto-instructional brain-wavism). By posting the concepts and instructions, We've taken an action. It's just a different kind of action. We've placed conceptual art ideas into the marketplace of conceptual art ideas whilst bypassing all the mucky muck of making some conceptual art thing and getting somebody to show it somewhere and then getting somebody else to talk about it.

4.
Instructionalism is not invisible. Heck, it's freakin' "net art news" (and sad news at that for the conceptual artist going through all the formal implementation machinations in hopes of making "net art news"). From concept to headline at the click of a mouse! Millions of dissatisfied customers can't be wrong. We haven't flooded the conceptual art market yet, but to do so is our concept.

5.
Of course instructionalism involves marketing (what contemporary art worth it's gallery space doesn't!). But this is a new level of art marketing. The instructional proto-object itself collapses the gap between contemporary conceptual art and contemporary conceptual art marketing. Your average contemporary conceptual artists has to pimp herself in a two-step process: a. make the art, and b. market the art. Whereas instructionalism kills several birds in a single post -- proto-art pre-object as conceptual art statement as call for collaboration as exhibition catalog essay as promotional marketing tool as conceptual art critique as new genre of anti-anti-art. Now how much would you pay!

I'll be home for Christmans (if only in my dreams),
curt

-

Dairy Queen wrote:

>
> Dear Curt Cloninger,
>
> "We aim to flood the commodified market of the implemented concept
> with unimplemented concepts, thus critiquing and "devaluing" the
> implemented concept."
>
> I am unsure as to how such material would "critique" so-called
> "implemented" concepts, particularly if the only difference between an
> "implemented" and an "unimplemented" concept was the act of
> implementation!
>
> To me, what you're suggesting actually sounds like advertising. A
> smart ad exec comes up with endless ideas and ultimately implements
> very few of them. Those ideas which go unimplemented don't really
> "critique" the ones that make it to fruition, do they?
>
> I would argue that context is very important here. Couldn't it be
> argued that the Web itself, particularly all of its passionate Lefty
> bloggers and opiners, already churns out an endless stream of
> unimplemented ideas on a daily basis? If you're going to deploy
> inaction as a strategy, you have to make it VISIBLE; I would say that
> to critique a given situation or institution, an inaction has to
> RESIST something that is being expected.
>
> DQ

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: R2D2: Conceptual Art


Hi Eryk,

I hear what you're saying, but it goes back to the fact that a recording studio is still an instrument. This article seems applicable:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040221182544/http://www.artkrush.com/mainframe/fromscratch.html

It's all a matter of how close to "scratch" you enjoy working. But moving farther away from scratch doesn't imply a lack of need for craft. It simply means you should be applying craft to a different part of the process.

You define "craft" as "the ability to get your hands to manipulate something in order to bring out an idea in your head." That is only a rudimentary function of craft. It satisfactorily describes a technicians (or a conceptual artists) use of craft. But craft as performed by a master craftsman is much more intrinsically related to the idea; it does more than merely objectify the already existing idea. At its best, craft plays a decisive role in forming the idea. Even in prose, as I write, I think. My writing is part of my thinking. Once I'm finished writing, I know more than before I began to write. Having to wrestle with the formation of the sentences clarifies and refines my ideas. The limitations of media (plastic, digital, semiotic, networked, performative, or otherwise) are not hindrances to be eradicated, but rather collaborators and guides to be wrestled with and ultimately embraced. Bypassing such dialogue with media limitations foregoes the very thing that is uniquely cool about art. If you're not into wrestling with media at some level (however close to or far removed from "scratch" interests you), best stick to chartered accountancy, contract law, or blogging.

All the messy accidents that happen along the way whilst wrestling with the medium are half the fun of making art (the feedback, the distortion, the manifested ghost in the machine). I want to get into it and hands-on tweak as much as I'm able. And I want such tweaking to be in direct and continual dialogue with the ideas in my head. A back and forth, a dance, a process. Designer Stefan Sagmeister did an ad where he made a trophy out of half-filled coffee cups. He illustrated a mock up of the ad concept in Photoshop to show his clients and they said, "this mockup is great. we'll use it as the piece. youre done." And he said, "no, now I have to go fill up the coffee cups and photograph the actual piece." As if the process of having actually "done it" would somehow come through and inform the final work in an integral way. (cf: http://hillmancurtis.com/hc_web/film_video/source/sag.php ). And Sagmeister doesn't consider himself an artist. In our upside down era, many graphic designers get this aspect of artmaking better than many professional artists.

It's not that one *can't* bypass wrestling with the media. Of course it's possible, and increasingly so. There are no rules. You can do whatever you want. You can take the next logical step, sit around your room and think up concepts, never even post the concepts or instructions, and call your new out-o-the-box art process "proto-instructional brain-wavism." You can call art whatever you want. You can even call it interesting, good, and useful if you want.

But as Exene Cervenka says, "I got something better than this."

it's better to burn out than it is to rust,
curt

-

Eryk Salvaggio wrote:

The importance of (relatively) open-access technology is more that it allows
me to create and distribute my work. The quality of the work is obviously
still important. But ultimately, "craft"- the ability to get your hands to
manipulate something in order to bring out an idea in your head- is probably
going to be less important than the artists' choice of stories, structure,
aesthetics- the understanding of what they are making is more important to
me than their understanding of how to, say, edit tape or play an instrument,
or get the cd into my hands or ears. If you have a keyboard plugged into the
www, you have an editing suite, a publishing house, every musical instrument
and a record label right there.

It used to be that you mastered your tools and then did something
interesting with them. Now, the very best software says we can just skip
ahead to doing something interesting.