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: Beastie Beuys


Oh man, that is really scaring me. He's even down with the mini-Roger Daltrey "won't get fooled again" mic chord lasso swing. That one move alone in this context is more brilliant than anything Yoko Ono has ever done or will do.

I'd be curious to read a transcription of what they are singing.

I have a lit crit friend who faults Beuys for being hyper-messianic. I can't decide whether this video will silence that critique once and for all or eternally cement its validation.

crikey,
curt

--

t.whid wrote:

> Joseph Beuys POP star!
>
> for short comment:
> http://www.twhid.com/mteww.com/mtaaRR/twhid/beastie_beuys.html
>
> just the video please (quicktime 4MB):
> http://www.twhid.com/video/beuys/singing.mov
>
> This video is made possible by M.River of MTAA and his fine
> connections
> at the Guggenheim.
>
> ===
> <twhid>
> http://www.mteww.com
> </twhid>
>

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thom Yorke / Howard Zinn


Thanks Eryk,

Fugazi might be considered good political art, and even Mogwai (if
you like Godspeed). I think the Young Ones is good political art,
but then I was raised punk and am fairly apolitical.

I think the reason effective political art is harder to recognize is
that it doesn't spell itself out. Politics are always polemic, but
art is not an argument. Or at least the art I respect and enjoy is
not an argument.

Mark Napier's net.flag ( http://netflag.guggenheim.org/netflag/ ) to
me is effective and interesting political net art. Because he
doesn't just come out and say, "hey, isn't nationalism kind of stupid
on the world wide web anyway? shouldn't we research and respect each
other's cultural symbols, but then move beyond that and make
something less partisan?"

He uses actual "art" (not a text essay masquerading as art) to
encourage and exemplify such opinions and suggestions. Flags are
distilled, dense symbols of nationalism. Flags also speak in a
visual and symbolic language. Napier is a visual artist capable of
remixing such a visual language via Java. So his piece works
visually and aesthetically and interacatively and artistically in and
of itself within the medium, and because it does, we are then able to
extrapolate what is experientially "proven true" in the medium, and
track it back (without having to jump through too many semiotic
hoops) to the realm of political thought. To me the net.flag
succeeds in a way that a mere hacktivist prank like
http://www.vote-auction.net never can. It's not that vote-auction is
an invalid form of human discourse. It's actually pretty clever and
raises interesting political points. But it's more didactic and less
holistic. It's speaking at an intellectual level, not a
soulish/aesthetic level.

Here is the value of "entertainment" (to use a worst case, derisive
term). I may not be able to convince you of my agenda, but if my art
can put you in the emotional position of someone or something with
which I wish you to have empathy, then that becomes a much more
successful "argument" than my mere aristotelian/didactic approach.
Granted, if I use cheap shock tactics to manipulate you, it's
propaganda. But if I defer to you and respect you and let you make
up your own mind about it, it's not.

Now, if you believe there is no such thing as deference and respect
and love and beauty, and that everything is simply a positional power
gambit, then said cynical outlook will poison your ability to make
aesthetically effective art, political or otherwise. The same is
true if you don't believe in a soulish/spiritual realm beyond mere
intellectual discourse. But just because there is cheap mindless
entertainment and dangerous manipulative propaganda doesn't mean that
emotional art is evil or unethical. It just means care need be
taken. (as an aside, i think much of piotr szyhalski work
de-propogandizing propoganda is brilliant. cf:
http://ftp.mcad.edu/piotr2/folkways/start.html and
http://www.mcad.edu/home/faculty/szyhalski/spl/post/post.html )

I think your WTC ASCII piece succeeds as effective aesthetic/political art:
http://www.anatomyofhope.net/wtc/2
Your creative/purposeful use of the medium iteslf adds fresh
emotional insight to the event that no piece of protest network
hacktivism or straightforward documentary film footage or 50 page
prose editorial (or even your own artist statement for the piece)
ever could.

peace,
curt

At 2:17 AM -0500 11/29/03, Eryk Salvaggio wrote:
>Curt;
>
>I blog now, (http://www.one38.org) and this was an interesting article I
>came across during my research period a few days ago. (A note on blogging:
>it's good food for thought, especially because following my "gut" in
>politics changes when I see it in print. I realized, politically speaking,
>there's a ton of stuff I have to learn in order to crack into full fledged
>"observer" status, more or less right now I'm a liberal propagandist and I'm
>working on that.)
>
>But anyway. You said you were curious as to why I posted it here. It's
>mostly because Zinn articulates one end of my art-making spectrum when he
>says, "There are artists who really don't
>have a social consciousness, who don't see that there's a connection between
>art and life in a way that compels the artist to look around the world and
>see what is wrong and try to use his or her art to change that."
>
>Then Yorke articulates the other end: "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."
>
>I feel like I agree with both of them. My own art has taken a sidestep for
>politics, and I wonder about beautiful political art. I think there is some-
>Godspeed You Black Emperor is beautiful political music (but probably
>because it has no words), or Stereolab... But I can't think of many
>beautiful political artists- most political artists are agitpropagandists.
>I'd like to see beautiful art made about stuff like rational idealism,
>measured hope, strategic optimism, aggressive truth, that sort of thing,
>those sort of concepts, and see it in a way that was beautiful and not
>cliche or boring and actually held some power. I probably do see it, I just
>don't see it often and I can't articulate it.
>
>I find I distrust entertainment. I feel like if something is going to make
>me think I can trust it and evaluate it, if something is trying to make me
>laugh or feel something then it's tricking me. I realized this most acutely
>after seeing "Dancer In The Dark," which, at the end of it, I felt
>manipulated and tricked, because the movie made me feel like I was looking
>at "the harsh real world" when the real world is nothing like it.
>
>I also feel like a lot of artists are soulless by intent. I think we need
>one.
>
>So, I had no agenda in generating the discussion, except to see what people
>had to say. I still have no idea what people have to say about it, though.
>
>-e.

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thom Yorke / Howard Zinn


Hi Eduardo,

You really took the Crown Victoria analogy and ran with it. Earlier, Ryan took the surgeon/mechanic analogy and ran with it. All analogies fall apart upon close inspection. They are meant to illustrate their initially stated points of similitude, no more.

I've been "vague" about my opinion of conceptual art on this particular thread because it's tangential to the topic of the thread. I mentioned it only in passing. I've been more specific about it in the past. cf:
http://www.spark-online.com/issue24/cloninger.html
http://rhizome.org/query.rhiz?words=conceptual+cloninger

I would be curious to have Ryan pick up the thread here:
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread256&text!640#21655

I would be curious to hear what Eryk had in mind by starting the thread (although I have a guess).

peace,
curt

--

Eduardo Navas wrote:

> Hello Curt and All Rhizomers.
>
> I would like to note, for technical sake, that I did not receive this
> message as part of the thread in my e-mailbox. I only found out about
> it after browsing through the rhizome website; hence my late reply to
> Curt.
>
> This glitch actually happened before, when Francis had replied to me
> and I thought he never did until I checked the site. This glitch of
> not always getting thread messages in our e-mail boxes should be
> looked into. In any case, My response to Curt is below:
>
> curt cloninger wrote:
>
> > Hi Eduardo,
> >
> > We all live in society, but that doesn't mean we all share the same
> > humanistic understanding of social interaction and power. That
> would
> > be like saying we all drive a car, so we all drive a 1985 Crown
> > Victoria. You take for granted some things that I don't. No
> surprise
> > there.
>
> The main thing is to understand that we drive a car. What one drives
> is not the same as how one drives or how one thinks of driving. The
> style of the car is not important, because the function of the car is
> what really matters. I think what you are getting at is that you rely
> on a particular way of looking at power structures that is not
> materialist. We already discussed this, in the end you have "faith,"
> and that is that. I am not saying that I do or do not, that is a
> private matter, but what I would like to make clear is that one should
> be able to use different methods of thinking to better understand
> society.
>
> I do not take anything for granted. But you do by stating that I do
> and not explaining why you think I do. It is always easier to tell
> someone that she/he essentialises or generalizes without explaining
> the reasons behind such criticism. This is because the criticism in
> the end is on false ground. This is exactly why I prefer to be
> specific about anything that I discusss, and at least give names and
> particular methods of thinking to look through things.
>
> >
> > Having said that, it's exhausting to have to return to your academic
> > square one every time, particularly since I don't necessarily
> > subscribe to it. This is public listserv dialogue, not a doctoral
> > thesis. I've explained my position on hardcore conceptual art ad
> > nauseum in previous threads. This thread seemed to be more about
> the
> > pros and cons of didactic artmaking.
> >
>
> Fair enough. However, bringing up "academia" is irrelevant here. If
> I keep asking you about your position on Conceptual art it is because
> in the past you never really explain it, but rather otherized it based
> on labels that were created by yourself in order to try to escape art
> history. And I already explained that creating different labels does
> not change much. In the end we are still driving cars, some go faster
> than others, some are Porsches, some are Buicks; eventually, they all
> get on the highway and need to deal with each other by crashing or
> respecting the rules of the road. (the cars here would be labels; you
> are still using labels based on a priori of art practice.) Using a
> different term does not change much -- you still need to drive on the
> road. So forget academia. Just drive the car, and always be clear
> about where you are going. Giving general directions will only get
> people lost.
>
> siUSoon,
>
> Eduardo Navas

DISCUSSION

the joys of the craft


The Joys of the Craft

Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as
his reward?

First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in
his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things
of his own design. I think this delight must be an image of God's
delight in making things, a delight shown in the distinctness and
newness of each leaf and each snowflake.

Second is the pleaseure of making things that are useful to other
people. Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find it
helpful. In this respesct the programming system is not essentially
different from the child's first clay pencil holder "for Daddy's
office."

Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of
interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles,
playing out the consequences of principles built in from the
beginning. The programmed computer has all the fascination of the
pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried to the ultimate.

Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs for the
nonrepeating nature of the tasks. In one way or another the problem
is ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical,
sometimes theoretical, and sometimes both.

Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium.
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure
thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating
by exertion of the imagination. Few media of cration are so
flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of
realizing grand conceptual structures. (As we shall see later, this
very tractability has its own problems.)

Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the
sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate
from the construc itself. It prints results, draws pictures,
produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come
true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard,
and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were
nor could be.

Programming then is fun because it gratifies creative longings built
deep within us and delights sensibilities we have in common with all
men.

- "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering" by
Frederick Brooks, 1972, pp. 7-8.

_
_

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thom Yorke / Howard Zinn


Hi Eduardo,

We all live in society, but that doesn't mean we all share the same humanistic understanding of social interaction and power. That would be like saying we all drive a car, so we all drive a 1985 Crown Victoria. You take for granted some things that I don't. No surprise there.

Having said that, it's exhausting to have to return to your academic square one every time, particularly since I don't necessarily subscribe to it. This is public listserv dialogue, not a doctoral thesis. I've explained my position on hardcore conceptual art ad nauseum in previous threads. This thread seemed to be more about the pros and cons of didactic artmaking.

Hence my peevishness. But I still love you and all creatures great and small. Yea and verily, my heart overflows with love.

love,
curt

--

Eduardo Navas wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "curt cloninger" <curt@lab404.com>
> > curt:
> > Thanks for the primer. I could have sworn these were my personal
> opinions
> and pet whims, but now I see that I'm simply operating in response to
> greater social power structures.
> --------
>
>
> Hello Curt,
>
> In the last Whitney Thread you wrote:
> -----------------
> I freely admit the existence and influence of hierarchical structures,
> and
> the importance of accurately understanding their dynamics. My problem
> is
> taking love and intimacy and thanksgiving and creativity and
> celebration and
> barbaric yawpin' and reducing them to sociological-driven responses to
> these
> power structures.
> sometimes the dolphins just frolic and the lambs just leap.
> http://lab404.com/misc/echoed.gif
> http://designforfreedom.com/substitud/Movies/typevsm_small.html
>
> peace,
> curt
> -------------------
>
> I am not sure why you take such a personal position now. Indirectly,
> I was
> asking for a more direct reason why you bash so consistently on
> Conceptual
> Art, that is all. I understand your problem with structures, but as
> you
> admit there is a necessity for understanding the dynamics or as you
> say
> "hierarchical structures." I took a very basic position of analysis
> not
> particularly married to a specific school of thought, except the
> humanities
> in a general way of understanding an individual's position in a bigger
> picture, especially in historical terms. This is a basic necessity,
> given
> that we live in a world were we negotiate through political gestures.
> I
> thought we agreed on this necessity in the past, I hope so.
>
> Do not take it so personal, because I do enjoy the rhetoric.
>
> siUSoon.
>
> Eduardo N.
>
>
>