Ivan Pope
Since the beginning
Works in Brighton United States of America

BIO
In the place where analogue and digital overlap, that's why you will find me in the kitchen at parties.
Everything is at my site, http://blog.ivanpope.com
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DISCUSSION

Re: Eryk Salvaggio: September 11th, 2001


Michael,
Well, at least we're discussing work on the list, which is really my intent.
I get a bit confused about what you're saying here. I mean, I think the work
in question is good and valid etc. I just don't believe that it needs the
interpretation of the artist to validate it. And further, even if the artist
does try to put a wall around its meaning, he may well be wrong in his view.

> The point is that the particular of Sept 11th connects
> with the universal of the themes you list as
> legitimate artistic 'big' subjects.
> That's what makes good art concrete and living and not
> schematic.

Well, that's why the piece works, its based on the human condition plus the
specific that we recognise. I don't doubt that.

> The same with the names- I'm sure formally you're
> absolutely correct- the point is that in lived human
> experience names do matter.
> Shakespeare- Stalin- Bush- Ivan Pope-Eryk Salvaggio-
> Michael Szpakowski- Leon Trotsky-Frank Black-John Doe
> these all carry to a greater or lesser extent whole
> constellations of meaning and if you object that the
> meanings are purely contingent then of course so is
> all human meaning making.

You are unfair here. If your list above went: Martin Trotwick, Jeliboam,
Francis, Peter Porter, Yip Soon, Angela Sotton I ask what constellation of
meanings you would attach to them. You can't list Stalin and Shakespeare or
even Pope and Salvaggio in this local context, and claim this proves names
de-facto carry significance. They just don't. The names above are local
Liberal Democrat councillors where I live. No they're not - they are the
victims of the notorious 'Satan's Sadist' slayings in 1984. So do the above
names signify anything on their own? As far as I can see, they can only
signify as far as we know they are the names of people, and we assume they
are the names of victims of 9/11. We have to build our response from that
point. And to claim that because they were real people's names and because
they died on 9/11 we get some understanding or emotional response directly
related to this. We don't. If we get an emotional response, it is from an
imagined 'knowledge' of these people. And for that to work, the names could
be any names. It does not matter if they are real names.

> Again there is a rigidity in your thinking over the
> question of whether Eryk could have pulled the names
> out of the telephone book.
> This increases the emotional force of the work for me-
> we see that he *worked* to find the names and to make
> the piece - he honoured the dead and their surviving
> relatives by doing so.

This is your own interpretation, and of course that is a valid response.
But, the surviving relatives may feel he has abused the dead. They may hate
the idea of an artist using the names of their loved one for his own ends.
Would that lessen the power of the work? Or increase it? Would that give us
more or less to think about. I think my main point is that if we just make
memorials, to allow or force us to 'think' more deeply, then we don't make
art. But of course that's not what Eryk has done, he has triggered a range
of responses, none of them right or wrong.

Cheers,
Ivan

DISCUSSION

Re: Eryk Salvaggio: September 11th, 2001


Eryk,
Just to reiterate, I really did like the work. And I don't think it is just=
'clever'. I pushes a lot of my buttons, for reasons I won't go into, but p=
artly because I love pieces that present raw data.
My problem, I guess, is that I don't want you to corral me into my response=
. I know there is a lot of knee-jerk response to responses to 9/11, and I f=
eel you are trying to pre-empt some of them in a defensive way.
If I had to read it on my own terms, I think I'd feel it was saying the opp=
osite of what you are arguing: Look, here is a big list of names, and here =
is a visual format that leaves you (almost) in no doubt that these are vict=
ims of the 9/11 events. But who are these people? There is no way to know. =
As this event happened in America we can have an exhaustive list of them an=
d we can have live footage of the event happening. But we can't know who th=
ey were. Thus, it is not about individuals but about the structure within w=
hich we live.
I wouldn't think the piece has anything to do with people jumping out of th=
e buildings or about the wider issues. It has nothing to do with whether Am=
erica 'had it coming'. If there is a way into the personal stories behind t=
he piece, I can't find it for myself. They are _just names_ to me. And the =
amount of them leaves me cold: there are too many names for any one to come=
at me. And to me, therein lies the success of the piece.

Writing this has made me think about a piece I saw recently by Christian Bo=
ltanski. An installation is built in a gallery with shelves all around the =
sides. Tables with low hanging lights are in the space. The effect is very =
akin to a public library. On the shelves are telephone directories from all=
around the world, from many many countries. At first you just look at it a=
ll and think how like a reference library it is and how gloomy it is. There=
doesn't seem to be a way into a thousand telephone directories. Then you s=
tart to wonder around and look at them individually, and you start to think=
about how many variations there are on a telephone directory. Then you sta=
rt to wonder whether you know anyone in any of the directories. You think a=
bout people you know around the world and you find the country they live in=
. You pull the directory out, and try to work out how it is structured. Aft=
er a while you work it out and you dig out someone's name: a cousin, friend=
, whatever. Suddenly you realise the room is full of people doing more or l=
ess the same as you. I found the name of my uncle in South Africa. He died =
last year and I'd never seen the name of his company written down. There it=
suddenly was in front of me. Only connect.

Well, immediately following september 11th I got into an argument on anot=
her mailing list with a Canadian
who said "Well, it's no surprise, Americans had it coming." And I mean, w=
hat got me was that the people
who had died had suddenly stopped being people and started being "America=
ns Who Got What They Had
Coming." They weren't individuals. And there is a lot of hysteria- as a r=
esult of the media- with disasters.
You stop realizing what "people were killed" means after whatever number =
it was. "Five People Killed in
Bus Disaster in Texas." What's "Five People?" They aren't individuals, th=
ey're now Bus-Crash Victims.
I remember getting an instant message with the image of one of the people=
jumping out of the WTC and
just thinking, like, why would you send this to someone? People are very =
quick to abstract death when
it's seen with images, presented by the media. When the experience is pac=
kaged, we see the packaging
so much that we don't see the event. Hayakawa writes about this in "Langu=
age in Thought and Action"
where he points out that all too often humans mistake reports for experie=
nces. 9/11 is a classic example.
Maybe if you are in New York it is harder to understand this, because you=
_saw_ the event, felt the event,
smelled the event. It was experience. But for the rest of us- it was a re=
port, and the packaging of the report
and the event that report was reporting became confused. I don;t think th=
is is a new theory in new media,
and I am sure Hayakawa is not the guy who invented it, but it's the essen=
ce of any true observations made
from a post-modernist perspective. An "Un-Actual Life" is a life that is =
repackaged into a sum of images.
I think even just looking at the piece, catching one name, and saying "Jo=
seph Keller died on September
11th, 2001" as opposed to "Nearly 3000 People Died on September 11th" mak=
es us connect to the event
on a more human level. I'm not claiming to reduce all abstraction and dis=
connection from these images,
but hopefully the sort of crack in that shell can get people to really th=
inking more and more about what
happened. Because I don't think people have thought about it enough. =

I think you nailed the one thing I was afraid of - that the piece was "cl=
ever" as opposed to saying anything.
While I agree with the idea that the names are abstract- especially a hug=
e list of names- I don't know what
else to have done. Photographs? The idea was simply to look at the image =
with some kind of constant
connection to life, not abstractions, like "America Had It Coming On Acco=
unt of its Foreign Policy." And
while I'm no fan of American Foreign Policy, either- something I hope not=
to get into a debate about on
list- It's just a matter of, yeah, Muslims are allowed to die from Americ=
an Apathy, Christians are killed by
Islamic Extremists, every gets killed by everyone else if you believe in =
abstractions. And I don't think people
can kill people, they can only kill concepts. Palestinians aren't killing=
"people" when they blow up a bus,
they're killing "Jews." And when the Israeli army shoots Palestinians, it=
's all the same. If we can look at
people instead of concepts, an act like politically inspired murder becom=
es a lot more difficult.

In my original response, I referenced the fact that certain names 'lit up=
' or changed colour as the plane 'passed over them' or was it through them.=
This struck me as amazing. I wondered whether that was acceptable, whether=
it was good or bad to be privileged in that way. Whether friends or family=
would like or hate that. Whether there was any reason for that. I guess I =
could wonder whether this was a commentary on the totally arbitary way deat=
h comes to us. And in that way, we cannot be guilty or deserving.

I also wonder now whether the list is complete. Or whether it can ever be=
complete. As I suggested earlier, I wondered whether subsituting the 'genu=
ine' list of names with a totally spurious list would add to the piece. We =
are supposed to believe without question that the list is real. Why do we b=
elieve that? What it would look like if all the names were Chinese. What ou=
r response would be if the names were not familiar western names. Are the h=
ijackers names in there? And if your response to that question is: of cours=
e not, then why not?

As you can see, I don't think the piece is 'just clever' at all. I think =
it raises a whole bunch of issues. But they may not be the issues you think=
it raises, or that you want it to raise.
My view is that it isn't a memorial, it doesn't make us think about the i=
ndividuals or to think harder about the 'actual event' (whatever that is). =
My view is that it raises a whole bunch of other issues. Which is why I don=
't think the artist should set out what a work does or how it works. They s=
hould just loose it into the world for better or for worse. And then stand =
back and deal with the response :-)

Again, I think its a lovely work in its own right.

Cheers,
Ivan

I do not think you can say that, that you can impose this view on theviewer=
. Honestly, people who are dead do not >deserve< anything. Dead peopleare j=
ust dead people, there are a hell of a lot of them about. Do you reallythin=
k it is your role to create a memorial? And if you do, surely the workwill =
stand or fall as that in its own right?

Sure, it may not be my place to build a memorial. I mean who can say "Gee=
, I'm the perfect guy to make a
memorial for that slaughter!" I don't know if anyone can. If the piece ma=
kes people think about things in a less
abstracted manner, then what I did is acceptable to me. And yes, I know m=
ore than anyone about the work
standing on its own- and I present the sort of preface to it against my o=
wn sense of what art is supposed to be,
just so people don't leap into the work without realizing what it is. I h=
ate videotapes of people getting killed.
I've spent my entire life avoiding them. When you're the weird kid in hig=
h school you get plenty of weirder kids
who are trying to get you to watch "Faces of Death" when you're fifteen b=
ecause it's "cool" but it isn't. I think
there is a psychological impact, a kind of trauma, that can be induced by=
witnessing any act of execution, or the
sight- transformed through a camera lens from a human being into video fo=
otage- of a dead person. I mean hell,
I'm a vegetarian. So there's a warning so that no one looks at the piece =
and says "Hey, cool, that's clever."
I suppose maybe I should live with that, but I think a preface in this ca=
se is acceptable.

To sum up, let the work speak for itself. Do not try to protect it bybuildi=
ng a wall around it. Unless you are a commissioned state sculptor ofcourse.

Uhm, why? A commissioned state sculptor? What has that guy got over me

-e.

DISCUSSION

Re: Eryk Salvaggio: September 11th, 2001


> The use of names is, contrary to what Ivan asserts,
> the thing that make it the most personal, the most
> connected - a name is of course not at all an
> abstraction -in the world as we experience it, it
> stands for everything we are

I have to disagree, agreeably. My name, Ivan Pope, is simply a signifier. To
my family it is intimately connected with me as family man. On this list it
may signify mouthy arsehole. But to the wider world, it would signify
nothing special. My point being that a list of names is just a list of
names. Of course we can create within ourselves an emotional response, but
this is to imagined people, not to the names. As far as I'm concerned, I
have no way of knowing whether this is even a list of the people who lost
their lives. Maybe its just a list from a telephone directory or something.
And that would create exactly the same effect.

> If the point you are making is that there are many
> events in our world that require memorials and many
> needless deaths then I couldn't agree more

I'm not making that point. Obviously there may well be an infinite list of
events that 'require' memorials. But that's nothing to do with this piece.

> Because others have died does not
> lessen the horror of what happened to perfectly
> blameless people on September 11th .
> I for one am pleased that there are artists around who
> don't see art as simply a formal and self referential
> game but as something that speaks to us about our
> deepest concerns.

I wonder here what our deepest concerns are here? That we may be blown up in
an exploding building? That we may suddenly die? That our loved ones may
die? That none of us are safe? All of these are valid subjects for art, of
course. But the first one is totally specific to September 11 and thus
hardly germane to the human condition. The rest are, of course, part of the
stuff of art for time immemorial.

My point about memorials is that a memorial implies an institutional
response to an event. An artist can of course designate a work as a
memorial, but that doesn't privelege it in any way, it just states the
artists view of the work.

Cheers,
Ivan

DISCUSSION

Re: your thoughts on upcoming online classes


> Subject: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: your thoughts on upcoming online classes

T. Whid replied:
> i'm curious tho, are these classes going to deal with only the
> 'official' net.art (cosic, shulgin, jody, lialina, etc). imo, net.art
> is a very specific thing relating to a small group of artists,
> whereas net art (no dot) is the generic phrase most people use to
> describe art made using networks, the web, the internet etc.

Im interested in this concept of official net art v. net art. Are you in
favour of there being an official net art and an unofficial one, or not
I cant tell from this post. Or maybe probably you dont care?
Ivan

DISCUSSION

Re: Eryk Salvaggio: September 11th, 2001


> I would appreciate feedback on this piece if anyone would like to
> provide it. I have mixed
> emotions concerning it, the way I do with every piece of work, but
> obviously the subject
> matter here is potentially larger than maybe I should have attempted to
> grasp.

Eryk,
I really like the work, in the way it abstracts time based imagery and raw
data listing and recombines them into a recognisable time based work.

This is my personal view. There is so much hysteria surrounding the events
of September 11th. I have no desire to be drawn into that hysteria. But,
from an art/artist perspective:

... to connect those images of 9/11/01 to the actual lives that were lost

I cannot interpret this. What does it mean, 'the actual lives that were
lost'? I mean, I think we all understand that it was real people with real
lives that died. But I can't connect that to a huge listing of names. That's
not real people, that's about as abstract as it gets. I can't help watching
the piece with a sense of 'cor, that's clever, how did he do that' and
'look, the 'plane' is made up of Xxxx's name. Does that mean anything?' etc.
It is not really possible to connect names (which are surely abstract
symbols) to 'actual' people (and what indeed is an un-actual life?).

... this is not intended to be
a piece of work that you look at on a website and then move on; this is as
close as I could create, to an online memorial, and I think the people who
were killed deserve to have this piece looked at with contemplation as
opposed to blind clicking.

I do not think you can say that, that you can impose this view on the
viewer. Honestly, people who are dead do not >deserve< anything. Dead people
are just dead people, there are a hell of a lot of them about. Do you really
think it is your role to create a memorial? And if you do, surely the work
will stand or fall as that in its own right?

To sum up, let the work speak for itself. Do not try to protect it by
building a wall around it. Unless you are a commissioned state sculptor of
course.

Lovely piece of work though :)

Cheers,

Ivan