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

Deep/Young Ethereal Archive opens to the Public at Large


http://www.deepyoung.org

"You bled with Wallace, now bleed with me."

In the Heart of Shining Rock Wilderness, at the very Base of the
Shining Rock itself, lies the entrance to Deep/Young Anodyne
Laboratories.

In response to the increasing demand of those who, for whatever
reason, lack the wherewithal or proclivity to journey to the Root of
All Things Shining, the Deep/Young Ethereal Archive has been
established to facilitate a more lively remote dialogue with the
Sundry Essences of Wonder.

As You Wish,
Archive Registrar
Deep/Young Ethereal Archive
http://www.deepyoung.org

DISCUSSION

Re: public service announcement from a dead junky


> >And yet you trust your own reasoning enough to use it to debunk this
> >announcement and self-assertedly declare its reasonic vampiric.
>
>To reject your "public service" is not to provide my own.

I never said you were providing a public service. You are
criticizing Burroughs for trusting his own reasoning. You've used
your own reasoning to make that critique. I was pointing this out.

> >to speak is to assert.
>
>How so?

Because in speaking, you've decided something and have taken pains to
make your decision known. This is a form of assertion. If you don't
want to assert, be silent or babble nothings.

>So in countering my argument, have you asserted yourself?

of course.

>So in countering that counterargument, am I asserting myself?

of course.

> So assertion becomes as arbitrary as an utterance?

Some people's utterances are admittedly more arbitrary that others'.

>One can be taught to speak. A computer can be programmed to speak.
>If speech means assertion, then we must clarify what is actually
>being asserted. The trained animal, the computer program, is only
>asserting its master.

agreed.

>Which is generally accepted to be self-demeaning.

Not self-demeaning. Just demeaning. Although I doubt a computer
feels demeaned.

>
>So how can I 'assert' myself as such?

Because you are your own master (or are you?) If you're bothered by
the ,mean/non-peaceful/aggressive connotations of the assertive act,
just don't posit anything or disagree with anybody. Otherwise,
welcome to the wonderful world of assertion.

>How do you know you have removed all the pieces of flak from the eye?

If God exists, you ask God. If not, it's a little trickier. I
suppose your best bet is to ask people whom you resepct, people whom
you think have clear eyes themselves. (The catch 22 is, if you've
got a big old plank in your eye, other plankeyes may seem clear-eyed
to you).

>I agree with you that to doubt is to -assert- as you say, but not in
>the way you conceive it. The only item doubt secures is the
>--insecurity of that which it doubts--. Meaning, we do not live in a
>simple polar world, black and white, where to negate black means to
>assert white. There is, approximately, a 'smooth gradient,' if we
>must stick to the limits of a spatiotemporal model. Anyway, I think
>you may have confused the limited 'assertion' from doubt with
>something that is not there, namely, an assertion that what I say is
>correct. I have merely articulated a doubt--the assertion that I had
>made (too passionately, I admit) was that the public service
>announcement was not definite, and thus insensitivity to the
>mentally ill is not justified.

But you have asserted that your doubt is correct. I realize you're
not asserting a fully described counter-position, but you are still
claiming to have the means to assess what is correct. Just like
Burroughs is saying he has the means to assess who is a fool.

>Insensitivity to the mentally ill is _never_ justified.

To clarify -- The excerpt is from a monologue called "advice for
young people." So by it's very genre, it's didactic. It's advice.
By mentally ill, Burroughs doesn't mean disabled/mentally retarded
people. He doesn't even't mean people who live in an insane asylum
(per se). In the context of the excerpt, he's talking about the
fools from the previous paragraph. I don't even think Burroughs is
saying that his personal assessment of "fool" need be everbody else's
personal assessment of "fool." He's just saying, when you recognize
a fool by your own intuition or knowledge or instinct or whatever,
follow said advice.

>By speaking you thought you asserted, and by assertion you thought
>you were 'right.'
>
>Might makes right??

??? Posting a quotation to a mailing list doesn't make me mighty.
I'm no more or less mighty than anybody else who posts. If it's
right, it's right (or varying degrees thereof). Maybe it's not so
right. But, just as merely asserting that one is right doesn't
automatically make one right, neither does merely asserting that one
is right automatically make one wrong. If that were the case, who'd
be left to call you on it? Anybody who stands up and says, "you're
wrong (and I'm right about you being wrong)" is immediately
disqualified by her own criteria. Such are the thorns of
deconstruction. Pure deconstruction either leads to silence, or to
inane, "I know you are but what am I," rote, anti-aristotelian babel.
Fun, fun, fun (like a case of anthrax).

> >but you probably know better, vijay pattisapu. you're probably right.
>
>Sorry, it's not black and white. And why the condescension? No hard
>feelings, Curt.

Cool. Sorry I was such an ass. I agree it's not black and white.
But one can't make an assertion (even a counter-assertion) without
having some position from which to assess validity (regardless of how
much one asserts that she isn't operating from such a position). At
least that's what I'm asserting from my position.

peace,
curt
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DISCUSSION

Re: public service announcement from a dead junky


And yet you trust your own reasoning enough to use it to debunk this
announcement and self-assertedly declare its reasonic vampiric.

[I am not paid to listen to this drivel.]

to speak is to assert. to assert is to believe. to believe is to
have judged. it's the plankeye conundrum. first remove the plank
from your own eye, then you can see clearly to remove the speck of
dust from your brother's eye (if you still care to).

william burroughs understood this conundrum full well. he spent a
lifetime wrestling his own demons up and down. He was an old man
when he wrote this advice, and well over being gun-shy about calling
a fool a fool.

but you probably know better, vijay pattisapu. you're probably right.

peace,
curt

At 10:20 PM -0800 1/2/03, Vijay Pattisapu wrote:
> >Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit.
> >Tell them firmly, "I am not paid to listen to this drivel -- you are
> >a terminal fool!" Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.
>
>Brilliant! Because I know I'm perfectly rational in my entire
>belief-system (and they're insane), I know I'm a success (and that
>they're fuckups), and that I am effusive point of spiritual light
>(and they're vampires)! YES!
>
>It's exactly the kind of reasoning from this public service
>announcement that causes vampiric self-assertion.
>
>
> >Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 23:06:33 -0400
> > list@rhizome.org Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com> RHIZOME_RAW:
>public service announcement from a dead junkyReply-To: Curt
>Cloninger <curt@lab404.com>
> >
> >If, after having been exposed to someone's presence, you feel as if
> >you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like
> >you need pernicious anemia.
> >
> >We don't like to hear the word "vampire" around here; we're trying to
> >improve our public image. Building a kindly, avuncular, benevolent
> >image; "interdependence" is the keyword -- "enlightened
> >interdependence".
> >
> >Life in all its rich variety, take a little, leave a little. However,
> >by the inexorable logistics of the vampiric process they always take
> >more than they leave -- and why, indeed, should they take any?
> >
> >Avoid fuck-ups. Fools, I call them. You all know the type -- no
> >matter how good it sounds, everything they have anything to do with
> >turns into a disaster. Trouble for themselves and everyone connected
> >with them. A fool is bad news, and it rubs off -- don't let it rub
> >off on you.
> >
> >Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit.
> >Tell them firmly, "I am not paid to listen to this drivel -- you are
> >a terminal fool!" Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.
> >
> >- WSB
> >
> >_
> >_
> >_
> >+ ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
> >-> post: list@rhizome.org
> >-> questions: info@rhizome.org
> >-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> >-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> >+
> >Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> >Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>
>
>
>
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DISCUSSION

Re: public service announcement from a dead junky


At 4:04 PM -0500 1/3/03, Matt Piacentini wrote:
>who are you people and how did i get in the middle of your argument?

hi matt. my name's curt. i guess you're subscribed to rhizome raw.

To death:

This one got through the filter because it wasn't FROM you, and i see
you're still living the good life. You are like some unnatural spawn
of the tar baby and jaques derrida and beavis and butthead.

>> > to speak is to assert.
>>
>> No, it is NOT.

So you assert.

>> > to assert is to believe.
>>
>> No, it is NOT.

So you assert.

>> > to believe is to have judged.
>>
>> No, it is NOT.

So you assert. (we could go on like this all day, like children. i
trust you will.)

>> In fact, you have no idea what any of the above are.
>> Not only that, but you're projecting your own brain-monkey
>> obsession as if that is how everybody else is.

so you psycho-analytically assert.

>> > it's the plankeye conundrum.
>>
>> No, it isn't. It's your own delusion.

so you assert.

>> > first remove the plank from your own eye, then you can see
>>clearly to remove the speck of
>> > dust from your brother's eye (if you still care to).
>>
>> Take your own pill.

that is the goal.

>> > william burroughs understood this conundrum full well. he spent a
>> > lifetime wrestling his own demons up and down. He was an old man
>> > when he wrote this advice, and well over being gun-shy about calling
>> > a fool a fool.
>>
>> Ja. And you wouldn't know anything about Burroughs to save your life,
>> babycheeks. Having not removed your own 'plankeye'.

so you condescendingly, psycho-analytically assert.

>> > but you probably know better, vijay pattisapu. you're probably right.
>>
>> Guilt-trip knee-jerk (emotional energy leeching).

agreed.

>> Just like all of your posturing behind Burroughs.

i reposted an excerpt by him that came to mind and seemed applicable
to the list. but you're right, i'm posturing behind great minds.
curse you! curse you a thousand times kadinsky/death/d42/evil betty
(may I call you evil betty?), for exposing me as the delusional
monkey i am! you and all your [naughty] public spanking of my
heretofore esteemed super powers, well dang! i entreat you, have
mercy. you see, rhizome raw is my life. it's all i have left.
that's why i post to it 20 times a day. it's all about computers,
and... San Dimas High School Football Rules! I'm sorry, what were
you saying?

>> > peace,
>>
>> U-hu. Let's hear it for calling a simpleton a simpleton.
>> As appropriate to you.
>>
>> Maybe you can monkey some 'wise men' again.
>>
>> Then we be fooled that you're wise.

you lost me there. i assume you're dissing me. you are really high,
though. As Bob said of Dr. Leo Marvin, "We can't hope to understand
him. We're like ropes on the goodyear blimp."

>> Oh yes, and wise men did things so simpletons can use them
>> to put those not yet of wisdom down.
>>
>> Moreso they did it so that one can 'wear the right uniform'
>> of citing wise men, and peddle their own idiocy behind
>> the surface. They did it so you can replace THEIR intent
>> with your 'agenda'.
>>
>> Burroughs wouldn't give you the time of the day, Curt.

but you're down with burroughs yourself? you and he are like this,
and this is me over here?

>> Mwa.

"show me your face and i'll cure all your ills."
- Agent K.

Well, that was thrilling. But now I've got to put you back in the
trash bin. Too much of your conversation would infect my [monkey]
brain.

I love to love you baby,
Donna Summer

http://ctgr.free.fr/ctgr-chante/flame-songs.htm
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DISCUSSION

confusion is sex [richard_feynman remix]


the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. it is
the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and
true science. whoever does not know it can no longer wonder, no
longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.
- albert (1954)

http://web.utk.edu/~blyons/spelvin.html

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

squeeze me
come on and squeeze me
come on and tease me like you do
i'm so in love with you
- mama (1975)

http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/squeezebox.txt

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