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: Re: rent-a-negro.com


Do you think we could change the subject line now, please?
--
Ivan Pope
ivan@ivanpope.com

http://www.ivanpope.com
http://www.tochki-inc.com

"Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death"
Hunter S. Thompson

> From: ryan griffis <grifray@yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: ryan griffis <grifray@yahoo.com>
> Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 12:36:09 -0400
> To: list@rhizome.org
> Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: rent-a-negro.com
>
> (happy birthday to eryk!)
>
>>> So, I ask, how do we address these problems? Is new media
>> hopelessly
>>> inbred, inscribed by cultural boundaries, or what? Can we make the
>>> boundaries more porous? How?
>
> what about the work of groups like OnRamp Arts, KAOS and others that function
> through educational and performative structures using new media?
> i know one can point to the issue of exploitation as some do for Tim Rollins'
> KOS project, but at least with OnRamp and KAOS, the "artists" fade into the
> background while the work and those making it become the focus. i'm sure there
> are things that need criticism here, as everything does and should, but do
> these offer anything for anyone?
> could organizational tactics be useful?
> best,
> ryan
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DISCUSSION

Re: On the profound and meaningful (was A Posteriori art)


> Ivan Pope mentioned that he knows plenty of artists who set out to make
work
> that is shallow and meaningless and that this seems like a valid response
to
> the world. Well, doesn't it then have the potential to be profound and
> meaningful in it's meaninglessness?

Well, yes, that was my point.

Anyway, to demonstrate the difficulty of using a glib phrase like 'profound
& meaningful' to define what artists attempt to do, consider the definitions
of profound (from dictionary.com):

1. Situated at, extending to, or coming from a great depth; deep.
2. Coming as if from the depths of one's being: profound contempt.
3. Thoroughgoing; far-reaching: profound social changes.
4. Penetrating beyond what is superficial or obvious: a profound insight.
5. Unqualified; absolute: a profound silence.

Do we use profound here to mean coming from the depths of one's being or do
we mean penetrating beyond what is superficial? Surely these are very
different things.

Cheers,
Ivan

DISCUSSION

Re: A Posteriori Art - follow-up


I guess what gets me about the original post is the subtext that artists are
frauds, conniving at producing what the world expects rather than what they
'really' should be producing. And that 'art' and 'other stuff' can be
separated into neat compartments.
Of course there are people like that, but what of it? For most artists the
struggle is their life.
Cheers,
Ivan

From: "Jess Loseby" <jess@rssgallery.com>
To: <list@rhizome.org>
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2003 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: A Posteriori Art - follow-up

>
> > Supposed you are an artist, but you find that you really enjoy cooking.
> > Since you have a very little chance at achieving something profound with
> > cooking, you suppress this desire, or keep it moderate, not to take too
much
> > time away from making "art".
>
> actually its possible to do both. I'm an artist but the profundity of my
> chocolate cake is breathtaking;-)
>
> The events that create the ['net.] artist as genius' is multiple texts
like
> this by people that go to bed with a copy of derrida's greatest hits under
> their pillow.
>
> http://www.rssgallery.com/trivialconnections/cookthecode.htm
> http://www.rssgallery.com/trivialconnections/computerand-cup_red.htm
> http://www.rssgallery.com/trivialconnections/rundamnyou.html
>
>
>
> o
> /^ rssgallery.com
> ][
>
>
>
> + ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
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> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
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>

DISCUSSION

Re: A Posteriori Art - follow-up


> From: "Dyske Suematsu" <dyske@dyske.com>

> Supposed you are an artist, but you find that you really enjoy cooking.
> Since you have a very little chance at achieving something profound with
> cooking, you suppress this desire, or keep it moderate, not to take too much
> time away from making "art". In this fashion, your true interests and
> passions get pushed down to the bottom of your priority list, because, as an
> "artist", your priority rests on creating something profound. A healthier
> approach would be to simply follow your passion, whatever it is. If
> something profound and meaningful comes out of it, that's great, if not
> that's great too; at least you didn't alienate yourself.

Pace my previous post. Dyske, I think you miss what it is to be an artist.
You say that you may be an artist, but cooking could be your passion.
However, you cannot pursue cooking to the exclusion of art, because cooking
is not profound. I would suggest that often artists would love to do
something that produces simple results, but the artist inside them will keep
dragging them back to the struggle with more complex issues. Which cannot be
explored in cooking. Its not

DISCUSSION

Re: A Posteriori Art


Dyske, well, there can be arguments with almost everything you say. It is
like you set up an aunt sally in order to knock it down. Artists are not
some homogenous block who all come out of the academy thinking in the same
way. I know plenty of artists who set out to make work that is shallow and
meaningless. This seems like a valid response to the world. It is for the
audience to decide whether it is actually profound and meaningful. I dont
even accept that this is some sort of fundamental descriptor of art.

Your arguments have a sort of first year art student quality about them. It
seems fairly pointless worrying about the institutions of art unless you are
an art administrator or an art world politician.

There are millions of people around the world who make wonderful creative
energized work outside of any institutional art world. Plenty of engineers
have become artists and plenty of artists have become engineers, etc, etc.

I would suggest that any human endeavour needs a set of defining
circumstances in order to develop its processes. I dont believe that art is
somehow a magical process that sits outside normal human behaviour.
Therefore, it is entirely natural that there is an art world, and entirely
natural that there are people outside that art world. An engineer is an
engineer. Sure, they could be as creative as an artist, but if they do not
desire to enter the academy, why is that a problem? Their recognition will
come from elsewhere.

As for the desire to be profound and meaningful being conceited, I dont see
why aspiring to succeed in a profession is conceited, and if it is, why it
is the fault of the aspirant. Artists are just people, they need to eat, to
love, to be recognised and loved back. They have families. Sure, art is a
strange and difficult thing to live with, but that does not make us bad for
trying to succeed with it.

Personally, I know that there is something deep inside myself that wants to
be expressed. I know that I have certain skill sets and a love of creating
things that are not really that useful in a functional sense. These
attributes of myself have led me up and down and round and round in my life.
They are not all art skills, there are entrepreneurial skills which are as
deeply embedded. And while I have skills such as aesthetic and motor skills
which mean I can produce beautiful objects, doing so quickly leaves me
bored. I have looked deep into this issue as regards myself and have come to
the conclusion that art is really what I should do. That said, I am still
unsure on a day to day basis how one really goes about this in an honest
way. I am still prone to temptation to produce stuff that looks like art.
But, on a good day, new stuff will bubble out from who knows where, no
thoughts of profoundity or meaning bothering the creative act. And my
validation comes form outside myself. And not even from the art world.

OK, blather over. But I suspect that most artists have a similar
relationship with their art and its production. While it may look from the
outside like art is sort of produced in a perfect finished state complete
with frame, gallery etc, this is far from the truth. This is the work of
agents of artists. And I have no problem with that, for we are all people
living in the world.

Cheers,

Ivan

> From: "Dyske Suematsu" <dyske@dyske.com>

> Artists are "artists", because they make art. Their products are art because
> they are "artists". Art has evolved into a highly self-conscious act. When
> we call something "art", we expect some form of profound meaning in it.
> Suppose an artist says, "I'm going to make art." This is something most
> artists do on a daily basis, whether they literally say it or not. What does
> it mean to say that you are going to make art? It means that you are going
> to create something profoundly meaningful. So, even before you pick up your
> brush, you are assuming that you are creating something profoundly
> meaningful. If you think about it, this is quite conceited, but our current
> art world essentially requires you to do this. By "art world", I don't just
> mean the institutions of art, but everyone in the art world including the
> artists themselves.
>
> Because artists want to be "artists", because they see themselves to be
> artists, what they make by default must be profoundly meaningful from the
> get-go. This leaves out certain possibilities. Say, an engineer made
> something fun for himself. It was a big hit among his friends, so he decided
> to make more of them to give them out. They started using his device daily,
> and eventually had a profound impact on their lives. One day the engineer
> realized that what he had created was something more than a piece of device;
> it was something more profound and meaningful. He decided to call it "art".
> The current art world does not have any means of supporting, or even
> recognizing, activities like this. The intentions of any activities in the
> art world must be to make "art". I feel that this is quite limiting. As a
> modern artist, you must be able to explain why what you are about to make is
> profound and meaningful. Otherwise you won't be able to get any support or
> recognition.
>
> Again, the institutions of art are not to be blamed for this, because the
> artists do this to themselves. They want to be recognized as "artists", so
> they would only do something if it can be profound. They would not waste
> time with something in which they can't see any meaning in advance, even if
> they felt that it could be fun or interesting. If they are just doing
> something for fun by following their own passion, they won't be recognized
> as "artists", and that is not something that they want to accept. First and
> foremost, they want to be called, and be able to call themselves, "artists".
> And, there is a price for that.
>
> Interactive art, especially when the interaction is with other people, your
> message as an artist is often the medium itself. That is, the artistic
> meaning is not in the content of the interaction, but in the way the medium
> influences the way people think, feel, and live. Mediums like radio, TV,
> transportation, cell phones, email, and the web had profound impact on our
> lives, but it was not always clear how these mediums were going to change
> our lives. A medium that was invented for one purpose often ends up being
> used for an entirely different purpose. Where you thought it would have
> meaning, end up having more meaning elsewhere.
>
> Today with the help of technology, we can create a medium that can be used
> by millions of people without getting millions of dollars in funding. That
> is, a medium no longer needs to be a physical device. A piece of computer
> software is a medium that is entirely intellectual, and can have an enormous
> impact on our lives. Although most applications are written with specific
> profit-making goals, one could build an application that has a potential to
> create a profound meaning. However, as with any medium, whether it achieves
> that goal or not is not something you can accurately predict. The only
> guidance you have in this endeavor is your gut instinct, curiosity, and
> passion. If your primary concern is with being called an "artist" or being
> able to call yourself an "artist", then you are probably better off not
> pursuing something like this.
>
> Dyske
> http://www.dyske.com
>
>
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