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: notes for a hypothetical essay on relocating the aura
[The scriptor] is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way
equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, [and] is
not the subject with the book as predicate." (Barthes)
A fairly accurate description of several actionScript programmers I know.
cf: http://www.markamerika.com/filmtext/
At 12:10 PM -0400 5/30/06, Patrick May wrote:
>First I thought we ought to forget about the aura / author, then I
>was amused by the role of the "scriptor":
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author
>
> ~ Patrick
equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, [and] is
not the subject with the book as predicate." (Barthes)
A fairly accurate description of several actionScript programmers I know.
cf: http://www.markamerika.com/filmtext/
At 12:10 PM -0400 5/30/06, Patrick May wrote:
>First I thought we ought to forget about the aura / author, then I
>was amused by the role of the "scriptor":
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author
>
> ~ Patrick
german, french, and made-up words: googlefight
gesamtkunstwerk vs. verfremdungseffekt
[total artwork vs. alienation effect]
http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=gesamtkunstwerk&word2=verfremdungseffekt
736,000 vs. 44,700
flanerie vs. derive
[stroll vs. drift]
http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=fl%E2nerie&word2=d%E9rive
291,000 vs. 62,200,000
Merz vs. Neen
[dada vs. doodoo]
http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Merz&word2=Neen
6,110,000 vs. 2,820,000
[total artwork vs. alienation effect]
http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=gesamtkunstwerk&word2=verfremdungseffekt
736,000 vs. 44,700
flanerie vs. derive
[stroll vs. drift]
http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=fl%E2nerie&word2=d%E9rive
291,000 vs. 62,200,000
Merz vs. Neen
[dada vs. doodoo]
http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Merz&word2=Neen
6,110,000 vs. 2,820,000
Re: notes for a hypothetical essay on relocating the aura
Dirk Vekemans suggested a fifth place in which to locate the aura --
in the psychologically constructed "space" of the non-linear
narrative. I hate to use the phrase "virtual space" because that
seems like VRML and Poser avatars, and that is way too limited (and
techno-dorky) a definition of this kind of mindspace. What I'm
talking about is more like the unconscious mental architecture that
you naturally construct while "surfing" a "site." There's a way to
hijack this mental architecture and embed an aura into it via
disorientation. In such works/spaces/places, the "site architecture"
isn't there to support the the "content" of the "plot." Instead, the
opposite is true -- the "plot" is the architecture itself, and the
content merely serves to give the architecture form. I call such
spaces "fugal narratives": http://deepyoung.org/permanent/fugue/ .
Mine is here: http://lab404.com/plotfracture/ . Another favorite is
http://www.silverladder.com/links/badscary/intro.htm
Dirk's cathedral is here:
http://www.vilt.net/nkdee/
and this from http://www.vilt.net/nkdee/presence.jsp :
In order to build the game i need to create a universe here first .
Now i don't have the time nor the budget to go about it the Star Wars
way so it's gonna be a rather simple universe. Not a model of the
universe, just a space with places in them, so there's gonna be a lot
of fiction involved. I don't like the 'page' metaphor for files that
are accessible by requesting them, i prefer a fictionalisation into
'place'. - dv
curt
in the psychologically constructed "space" of the non-linear
narrative. I hate to use the phrase "virtual space" because that
seems like VRML and Poser avatars, and that is way too limited (and
techno-dorky) a definition of this kind of mindspace. What I'm
talking about is more like the unconscious mental architecture that
you naturally construct while "surfing" a "site." There's a way to
hijack this mental architecture and embed an aura into it via
disorientation. In such works/spaces/places, the "site architecture"
isn't there to support the the "content" of the "plot." Instead, the
opposite is true -- the "plot" is the architecture itself, and the
content merely serves to give the architecture form. I call such
spaces "fugal narratives": http://deepyoung.org/permanent/fugue/ .
Mine is here: http://lab404.com/plotfracture/ . Another favorite is
http://www.silverladder.com/links/badscary/intro.htm
Dirk's cathedral is here:
http://www.vilt.net/nkdee/
and this from http://www.vilt.net/nkdee/presence.jsp :
In order to build the game i need to create a universe here first .
Now i don't have the time nor the budget to go about it the Star Wars
way so it's gonna be a rather simple universe. Not a model of the
universe, just a space with places in them, so there's gonna be a lot
of fiction involved. I don't like the 'page' metaphor for files that
are accessible by requesting them, i prefer a fictionalisation into
'place'. - dv
curt
Re: notes for a hypothetical essay on relocating the aura
Hi Marisa (and all),
It is interesting how historical context can so color a theorists
writing. Here's a classic irony: Greenberg once associated kitsch
with the academy. He likened Beaux Arts academic
aesthetic-by-numbers to what would now be the equivalent of a faux
Roman columnar bird bath at Home Depot. The irony is, after the rise
and fall of Greenberg, the academy is now back to liking kitsch, but
the context is totally changed from 1939.
I'm starting my MFA this summer, so I'm trying to think more like an
artist and less like a critic. My notes on aura were written from
the perspective of my own artmaking. My art doesn't want to be
overtly political. As such, I'm less concerned with whether Benjamin
himself was glad at the loss of aura or sad about it. It seems he
was more ambivalent toward it than you are reading, Marisa, but I've
not read enough of him to argue this convincingly.
Benjamin was there at ground zero to realize that industrailized
media was changing something about the art object, and he was able to
give this "something" a name -- aura. I'm guessing most folks read
(or are assigned to read) "the work of art in the age of mechanical
reproduction" less because of Benjamin's particular marxian
perspective, and more because he was historically one of the first
theorists to put his finger on this shift regarding the art object
(although Duchamp was already exploiting the shift two decades
earlier).
But what was once liberating for Benjamin in 1936 (democratization of
the formerly aestheticized object) has led to certain artistic
vacuums today that are hardly exciting. Without lamenting the loss
of "aesthetic" (lest I rouse the rote response of "who's aesthetic"),
some forms of contemporary art, liberated from the "bonds" of the
spiritual and mystical, have lost something. I'd like to call that
something awe and wonder. Benjamin's "aura" is not perfectly
synonamous with what I'm talking about, but it seems related. Note
the difference between incarnation and reification: with incarnation,
spirit enters body and the two are enmeshed but still distinct; with
reification, an idea becomes an object. (Perhaps) Benjamin merely
sees the unique art object in terms of marxist commodity. I see the
unique art object from a more incarnational perspective -- a physical
body "wherein" something spiritual resides.
Michael S. implies that Benjamin was wrong to associate the aura so
strongly with an object's singularity, and maybe this is so. But I'm
enough of a graphic design historian to get all sexed up about a
potential visit to the library of congress rare book reading room
where I'll be able to leaf through one one of the few extant copies
of William Morris' Kelmscott Press Chaucer. And I didn't spend an
hour in Sao Paulo looking at Bosch's "Temptation of St. Anthony"
triptych simply because of the subject matter and the brushwork. I'm
willing to concede that the "aura" is not housed exclusively in the
object's singularity, but some of it definitely accumulates there
given enough time under the bridge. Assuming Hirst's sheep doesn't
rot, and barring another Satchi fire, even that dumb thing will have
accumulated some aura in 200 years.
Anyway, maybe "aura" is too entrenched in a frankfurt school
historical context for me to take it and use it to mean "awe and
wonder." I'm testing out the implications of such a reappropriation.
As an artist, I'm personally more interested in "where" such an
"aura" might be tactically relocated, now that there's not an art
object any"where." Call it a subjective inquiry into non-objective
incarnation.
++++++++++++++
[Warning: I am about to use the terms "good" and "bad" quite freely.]
Regarding the connection Benjamin draws between aesthtics and fascist
control, even that connection is colored by the era in which he
lived. In this, Benjamin and Greenberg have something in common -- a
reaction against a Nazi-sanctioned, state-approved art. The irony is
that something like Hirst's sheep -- a work that Benjamin, Greenberg,
and Hitler could all have agreed to dislike (although for radically
different reasons) -- is now state-approved art. What can we infer
from this? Correct politics don't always lead to good art.
Intelligent art criticism doesn't always lead to good art. Why?
Because there is more to art (and life) that intelligent criticism
and correct politics.
There is a Sex Pistols documentary called "The great rock 'n' roll
swindle" which is itself a Malcolm McLaren swindle. I'll call the
following proposition "The great dialectic swindle":
Nobody wants to get duped. Heaven freaking forbid you get duped.
All ideologies are suspected as tools to control the minds of the
proletariat/disenfranchised/duped to keep them from rising up,
claiming their due, and getting unduped. Thus the goal is to ever
suspect and critique -- proving yourself intelligent, free, radical,
enlightened, and above all, not duped. To quote T. Rex, "You won't
fool the children of the revolution!" Of course, the only ones able
to recognize that you are not duped are the few free souls also not
duped. Anyone unable to recognize your lack of dupedness must
themselves be duped. (They may have read Derrida, but they didn't
read him in French.)
I propose that this inordinate fear of being duped is one of the
biggest dupes of all. If the human soul exists, if a spiritual realm
exists, if God exists, if certain objective truths exist, if certain
universal aspects of human nature exist apart from historical
materialism -- then those who suspect such things as being "duping
constructs" are getting meta-duped. This is indeed a thorny,
catch-22 mindfuck -- to suspect as duping constructs the very things
that could free you, all the while being duped by the very
safeguards you think are keeping you from being duped.
(Couldn't my own suspicion of the meta-dupe be an even bigger
meta-meta-dupe? So says Derrida in French.)
peace,
curt
At 7:51 AM -0700 5/29/06, Marisa Olson wrote:
>Hey, guys. This thread is interesting. My two cents...
>
>I don't really think that the loss of the aura is such a bad thing--or
>something that Benjamin necessarily laments. I read the aura as 'stuff
>that gets in the way' (ie perceived phenom of a distance), or
>moreover, as the immaterial (but weighty) presence of history,
>hegemony, and aesthetics.
>
>I think that, in Benjamin's discussion of property systems, and
>particularly in his citation of Marinetti's futurist proclamation that
>"war is beautiful," that he's call for us to relieve ourselves of
>aesthetic models that impose certain negative relationships between
>works and individuals. I believe he's saying that these same models
>inscribe our subjectivity--as traced by our models of consumption--as
>victims of the property/fascist system(s) that have beget our
>aesthetic systems. In this vain, "war is beautiful" is not such a
>confusing statement. A fascist system begets an aesthetic system that
>says X, Y, and Z equal beauty; ergo war equals beauty. It's a way of
>seeing how violent the aesthetic "regime" (to perhaps overdo it a bit)
>has become...
>
>Anyway, I'm travelling and don't have the book with me so I can't
>offer any relevant quotes, but it's something I've also been thinking
>about lately, so I wanted to chime in.
>
>Best,
>Marisa
>
It is interesting how historical context can so color a theorists
writing. Here's a classic irony: Greenberg once associated kitsch
with the academy. He likened Beaux Arts academic
aesthetic-by-numbers to what would now be the equivalent of a faux
Roman columnar bird bath at Home Depot. The irony is, after the rise
and fall of Greenberg, the academy is now back to liking kitsch, but
the context is totally changed from 1939.
I'm starting my MFA this summer, so I'm trying to think more like an
artist and less like a critic. My notes on aura were written from
the perspective of my own artmaking. My art doesn't want to be
overtly political. As such, I'm less concerned with whether Benjamin
himself was glad at the loss of aura or sad about it. It seems he
was more ambivalent toward it than you are reading, Marisa, but I've
not read enough of him to argue this convincingly.
Benjamin was there at ground zero to realize that industrailized
media was changing something about the art object, and he was able to
give this "something" a name -- aura. I'm guessing most folks read
(or are assigned to read) "the work of art in the age of mechanical
reproduction" less because of Benjamin's particular marxian
perspective, and more because he was historically one of the first
theorists to put his finger on this shift regarding the art object
(although Duchamp was already exploiting the shift two decades
earlier).
But what was once liberating for Benjamin in 1936 (democratization of
the formerly aestheticized object) has led to certain artistic
vacuums today that are hardly exciting. Without lamenting the loss
of "aesthetic" (lest I rouse the rote response of "who's aesthetic"),
some forms of contemporary art, liberated from the "bonds" of the
spiritual and mystical, have lost something. I'd like to call that
something awe and wonder. Benjamin's "aura" is not perfectly
synonamous with what I'm talking about, but it seems related. Note
the difference between incarnation and reification: with incarnation,
spirit enters body and the two are enmeshed but still distinct; with
reification, an idea becomes an object. (Perhaps) Benjamin merely
sees the unique art object in terms of marxist commodity. I see the
unique art object from a more incarnational perspective -- a physical
body "wherein" something spiritual resides.
Michael S. implies that Benjamin was wrong to associate the aura so
strongly with an object's singularity, and maybe this is so. But I'm
enough of a graphic design historian to get all sexed up about a
potential visit to the library of congress rare book reading room
where I'll be able to leaf through one one of the few extant copies
of William Morris' Kelmscott Press Chaucer. And I didn't spend an
hour in Sao Paulo looking at Bosch's "Temptation of St. Anthony"
triptych simply because of the subject matter and the brushwork. I'm
willing to concede that the "aura" is not housed exclusively in the
object's singularity, but some of it definitely accumulates there
given enough time under the bridge. Assuming Hirst's sheep doesn't
rot, and barring another Satchi fire, even that dumb thing will have
accumulated some aura in 200 years.
Anyway, maybe "aura" is too entrenched in a frankfurt school
historical context for me to take it and use it to mean "awe and
wonder." I'm testing out the implications of such a reappropriation.
As an artist, I'm personally more interested in "where" such an
"aura" might be tactically relocated, now that there's not an art
object any"where." Call it a subjective inquiry into non-objective
incarnation.
++++++++++++++
[Warning: I am about to use the terms "good" and "bad" quite freely.]
Regarding the connection Benjamin draws between aesthtics and fascist
control, even that connection is colored by the era in which he
lived. In this, Benjamin and Greenberg have something in common -- a
reaction against a Nazi-sanctioned, state-approved art. The irony is
that something like Hirst's sheep -- a work that Benjamin, Greenberg,
and Hitler could all have agreed to dislike (although for radically
different reasons) -- is now state-approved art. What can we infer
from this? Correct politics don't always lead to good art.
Intelligent art criticism doesn't always lead to good art. Why?
Because there is more to art (and life) that intelligent criticism
and correct politics.
There is a Sex Pistols documentary called "The great rock 'n' roll
swindle" which is itself a Malcolm McLaren swindle. I'll call the
following proposition "The great dialectic swindle":
Nobody wants to get duped. Heaven freaking forbid you get duped.
All ideologies are suspected as tools to control the minds of the
proletariat/disenfranchised/duped to keep them from rising up,
claiming their due, and getting unduped. Thus the goal is to ever
suspect and critique -- proving yourself intelligent, free, radical,
enlightened, and above all, not duped. To quote T. Rex, "You won't
fool the children of the revolution!" Of course, the only ones able
to recognize that you are not duped are the few free souls also not
duped. Anyone unable to recognize your lack of dupedness must
themselves be duped. (They may have read Derrida, but they didn't
read him in French.)
I propose that this inordinate fear of being duped is one of the
biggest dupes of all. If the human soul exists, if a spiritual realm
exists, if God exists, if certain objective truths exist, if certain
universal aspects of human nature exist apart from historical
materialism -- then those who suspect such things as being "duping
constructs" are getting meta-duped. This is indeed a thorny,
catch-22 mindfuck -- to suspect as duping constructs the very things
that could free you, all the while being duped by the very
safeguards you think are keeping you from being duped.
(Couldn't my own suspicion of the meta-dupe be an even bigger
meta-meta-dupe? So says Derrida in French.)
peace,
curt
At 7:51 AM -0700 5/29/06, Marisa Olson wrote:
>Hey, guys. This thread is interesting. My two cents...
>
>I don't really think that the loss of the aura is such a bad thing--or
>something that Benjamin necessarily laments. I read the aura as 'stuff
>that gets in the way' (ie perceived phenom of a distance), or
>moreover, as the immaterial (but weighty) presence of history,
>hegemony, and aesthetics.
>
>I think that, in Benjamin's discussion of property systems, and
>particularly in his citation of Marinetti's futurist proclamation that
>"war is beautiful," that he's call for us to relieve ourselves of
>aesthetic models that impose certain negative relationships between
>works and individuals. I believe he's saying that these same models
>inscribe our subjectivity--as traced by our models of consumption--as
>victims of the property/fascist system(s) that have beget our
>aesthetic systems. In this vain, "war is beautiful" is not such a
>confusing statement. A fascist system begets an aesthetic system that
>says X, Y, and Z equal beauty; ergo war equals beauty. It's a way of
>seeing how violent the aesthetic "regime" (to perhaps overdo it a bit)
>has become...
>
>Anyway, I'm travelling and don't have the book with me so I can't
>offer any relevant quotes, but it's something I've also been thinking
>about lately, so I wanted to chime in.
>
>Best,
>Marisa
>
notes for a hypothetical essay on relocating the aura
Walter Benjamin says that people used to attach an "aura" (roughly,
sense of awe) to the scarce, original unique, physical art object.
Benjamin observes that since everything is now infinitely
reproducible, we've lost this aura.
As an artist not making one-of-a-kind objects, where can I relocate
the aura? To answer ,"In the network" is like answering "in the
air," or "in time," or "in existence." I need a more specific,
behavioral/tactical description of this new locus of awe and aura.
Designer Clement Mok says designers should describe their practice
not in terms of media deliverables ("I make websites"), but as
doctors and lawyers do, in terms of services performed and results
achieved. A doctor doesn't say, "I make incisions." A lawyer
doesn't say, "I generate paperwork." This seems like a better way
for a "new media artist" to describe her art. (Note: Even the term
"new media artist" describes her in terms of media deliverables.)
She shouldn't say, "I make net art." Better to say, "I cause x to
happen. I orchestrate x. I'm investigating x." Thus in describing
"where" I relocate the aura, I should avoid saying, "It's in the
podcast, weblog, RSS feed, wearable mobile computing device, etc."
As an artist, my self-imposed mandate is to increase a more lively
dialogue with the Sundry Essences of Wonder. If wonder is akin to
awe is akin to aura, I'd better figure out where to relocate the aura.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There are four places I can house the aura that seem interesting:
1.
In the destabilized/variable event/object. Generative software makes
this possible. My bubblegum cards are a personal example (
http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/ ) Cage
and Kaprow are precedences. The aura is embedded in the chance and
variability that the artist invites into the destabilized/variable
performance.
2.
In the perpetually enacted and iterated act/stance/position. My
ongoing [remix] series of posts to rhizome RAW are a personal
example. Ray Johnson's life/death and mail art, Joseph Beuys
pedagogy, and D.J. Spooky's perpetual remix as talisman are
precedences. Even Howard Finster, Daniel Johnston, and Henry Darger
qualify, albeit in a less consciously tactical capacity --
prodigiously outputting without thought of object
uniqueness/scarcity/worth/market value. The act of perpetual
creation is the art, and the output is (to greater or lesser degrees)
incidental ephemera. William Blake almost qualifies. The stream is
perpetual; it becomes the new "event object;" and in this stream the
aura is embedded. Note: This approach takes lots of energy.
3.
In the boundaries of context. Our Deep/Young Ethereal Archive (
http://deepyoung.org ) is a personal example. Precedences and
co-examples are:
http://www.mjt.org/ ,
http://www.grographics.com/theysaysmall/small/RotherhitheUniversity/ ,
http://www.museum-ordure.org.uk/ .
http://www.thatwordwhichmeanssmugglingacrossbordersincorporated.com/
, http://www.dearauntnettie.com/gallery/ .
This approach necessarily involves disorientation and re-orientation.
The contextual frame is soft, and the aura is embedded into this soft
frame. Keeping this frame soft is a delicate matter. It requires a
heightened, sometimes schizophrenic sense of performative awareness
(cf: Ray Johnson, David Wilson). It may require the artist to
alienate "real" art institutions wishing to fit the art into their
frame. As the artist of such work, I can't overtly foreground the
soft contextual frame as my intended locus of aura. If I do, the
soft frame I'm working so hard to construct and keep soft immediately
solidifies and is in turn meta-framed by a much more solid, didactic,
"artist statement" frame; and the aura flies away. Note: Warhol well
understood that an object's scarcity was a silly contemporary place
for the aura to go. Instead, he ingeniously embedded the aura in the
foregrounded concept of the object's scarcity. His deep awareness of
this ironic relationship may explain why his art objects now sell for
so much. (cf: http://www.dream-dollars.com/ ).
4.
In human relationships. Personal examples might be
http://www.lab404.com/data/ and http://www.playdamage.org/quilt/ .
Co-examples might be http://learningtoloveyoumore.com ,
http://www.foundmagazine.com/ , and some of Jillian McDonald's
performance pieces ( http://www.jillianmcdonald.net/performance.html
). You could describe this as "network" art, but compare it to Alex
Galloway's Carnivore, which is also network art, and you realize
"network" is too broad a term. This human relationship art is not
about the network as an abstract monolithic cultural entity. It is
about humans who happen to be interacting with each other via
networks. The aura is embedded not in the network, but in the human
relationships that the art invites. As with locus #1 (In the
destabilized/variable event/object), this locus necessarily involves
chance, because human relationships necessarily involve chance.
These four places for housing the aura are not mutually exclusive.
Conceivably, a single artwork could house the aura in all four
places. This warrants further artistic investigation.
curt
sense of awe) to the scarce, original unique, physical art object.
Benjamin observes that since everything is now infinitely
reproducible, we've lost this aura.
As an artist not making one-of-a-kind objects, where can I relocate
the aura? To answer ,"In the network" is like answering "in the
air," or "in time," or "in existence." I need a more specific,
behavioral/tactical description of this new locus of awe and aura.
Designer Clement Mok says designers should describe their practice
not in terms of media deliverables ("I make websites"), but as
doctors and lawyers do, in terms of services performed and results
achieved. A doctor doesn't say, "I make incisions." A lawyer
doesn't say, "I generate paperwork." This seems like a better way
for a "new media artist" to describe her art. (Note: Even the term
"new media artist" describes her in terms of media deliverables.)
She shouldn't say, "I make net art." Better to say, "I cause x to
happen. I orchestrate x. I'm investigating x." Thus in describing
"where" I relocate the aura, I should avoid saying, "It's in the
podcast, weblog, RSS feed, wearable mobile computing device, etc."
As an artist, my self-imposed mandate is to increase a more lively
dialogue with the Sundry Essences of Wonder. If wonder is akin to
awe is akin to aura, I'd better figure out where to relocate the aura.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There are four places I can house the aura that seem interesting:
1.
In the destabilized/variable event/object. Generative software makes
this possible. My bubblegum cards are a personal example (
http://computerfinearts.com/collection/cloninger/bubblegum/ ) Cage
and Kaprow are precedences. The aura is embedded in the chance and
variability that the artist invites into the destabilized/variable
performance.
2.
In the perpetually enacted and iterated act/stance/position. My
ongoing [remix] series of posts to rhizome RAW are a personal
example. Ray Johnson's life/death and mail art, Joseph Beuys
pedagogy, and D.J. Spooky's perpetual remix as talisman are
precedences. Even Howard Finster, Daniel Johnston, and Henry Darger
qualify, albeit in a less consciously tactical capacity --
prodigiously outputting without thought of object
uniqueness/scarcity/worth/market value. The act of perpetual
creation is the art, and the output is (to greater or lesser degrees)
incidental ephemera. William Blake almost qualifies. The stream is
perpetual; it becomes the new "event object;" and in this stream the
aura is embedded. Note: This approach takes lots of energy.
3.
In the boundaries of context. Our Deep/Young Ethereal Archive (
http://deepyoung.org ) is a personal example. Precedences and
co-examples are:
http://www.mjt.org/ ,
http://www.grographics.com/theysaysmall/small/RotherhitheUniversity/ ,
http://www.museum-ordure.org.uk/ .
http://www.thatwordwhichmeanssmugglingacrossbordersincorporated.com/
, http://www.dearauntnettie.com/gallery/ .
This approach necessarily involves disorientation and re-orientation.
The contextual frame is soft, and the aura is embedded into this soft
frame. Keeping this frame soft is a delicate matter. It requires a
heightened, sometimes schizophrenic sense of performative awareness
(cf: Ray Johnson, David Wilson). It may require the artist to
alienate "real" art institutions wishing to fit the art into their
frame. As the artist of such work, I can't overtly foreground the
soft contextual frame as my intended locus of aura. If I do, the
soft frame I'm working so hard to construct and keep soft immediately
solidifies and is in turn meta-framed by a much more solid, didactic,
"artist statement" frame; and the aura flies away. Note: Warhol well
understood that an object's scarcity was a silly contemporary place
for the aura to go. Instead, he ingeniously embedded the aura in the
foregrounded concept of the object's scarcity. His deep awareness of
this ironic relationship may explain why his art objects now sell for
so much. (cf: http://www.dream-dollars.com/ ).
4.
In human relationships. Personal examples might be
http://www.lab404.com/data/ and http://www.playdamage.org/quilt/ .
Co-examples might be http://learningtoloveyoumore.com ,
http://www.foundmagazine.com/ , and some of Jillian McDonald's
performance pieces ( http://www.jillianmcdonald.net/performance.html
). You could describe this as "network" art, but compare it to Alex
Galloway's Carnivore, which is also network art, and you realize
"network" is too broad a term. This human relationship art is not
about the network as an abstract monolithic cultural entity. It is
about humans who happen to be interacting with each other via
networks. The aura is embedded not in the network, but in the human
relationships that the art invites. As with locus #1 (In the
destabilized/variable event/object), this locus necessarily involves
chance, because human relationships necessarily involve chance.
These four places for housing the aura are not mutually exclusive.
Conceivably, a single artwork could house the aura in all four
places. This warrants further artistic investigation.
curt