joy garnett
Since the beginning
Works in United States of America

ARTBASE (1)
BIO
Joy Garnett is a painter based in New York. She appropriates news images from the Internet and re-invents them as paintings. Her subject is the apocalyptic-sublime landscape, as well as the digital image itself as cultural artifact in an increasingly technologized world. Her image research has resulted in online documentation projects, most notably The Bomb Project.

Notable past exhibitions include her recent solo shows at Winkleman Gallery, New York and at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC; group exhibitions organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, P.S.1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center, Artists Space, White Columns (New York), Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (UK), and De Witte Zaal, Ghent (Belgium). She shows with aeroplastics contemporary, Brussels, Belgium.

extended network >

homepage:
http://joygarnett.com

The Bomb Project
http://www.thebombproject.org

First Pulse Projects
http://firstpulseprojects.net

NEWSgrist - where spin is art
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/

Discussions (685) Opportunities (5) Events (8) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Plastic Turkey (or: is everything symbolic nowadays?)


[found by Googling "plastic turkey" -- ok, don't ask...]

Happy Holidays
+++

Stuffed by a plastic turkey

Bush's gesture politics suggest a man seriously worried about his career

Mark Lawson
Saturday December 6, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1101255,00.html

The 1980s movie The Ploughman's Lunch took its title from an early example
of what we have now come to know as spin. Ian McEwan's script took its
central image from the fact that the bread-and-cheese snack that claimed
to link yuppies in pubs to their ancestors who toiled on the soil was an
invention of the contemporary advertising and catering trades. In Richard
Eyre's film, this fraudulent food became a metaphor for political lying
and pretence at the time of the Falklands war.

If anyone makes a similar film about the attack on Iraq, the title would
now have to be The Plastic Turkey. In a revelation certain to be taught at
schools of democracy and journalism for years to come, it has been
revealed that the apparently appetising turkey that President Bush carried
towards beaming troops last week in Baghdad had been genetically modified
to a degree that would lead even the most profit-hungry farmers to
protest. The bird was the kind of model used by butchers and Hollywood
set-dressers.

Following this disclosure, the president is, unlike his political prop,
stuffed: with a gap in the storyboards for his re-election commercials. A
picture intended to say to viewers "The Eagle Has Landed", in fact spelled
out: "This Bird Never Flew."

The fakery went further. The hoax roast in the president's hands cannot
even be claimed as a symbolic stand-in for the steaming birds that were
actually served. Reports say that the US troops were given airline-style
meals of pre-packaged meat. And the pretend chef had flown to Baghdad in
an Air Force One that filed a fake flight-plan, pretending to be a small
corporate jet.

The latter act - though embarrassing for a politician who promised to end
the easy lying of the Clinton years - can probably just about be excused
as security. But the affair of the plastic turkey can only be attributed
to insecurity.

Although the image of George Bush, until recently, was of a man who could
do whatever he wanted in both America and the world, recent events have
suggested a man seriously worried about both his image and his career. The
president seems to have entered a phase of gesture politics, and the
gestures are those of a man who, while still swimming vigorously, has
suddenly come to accept the possibility of drowning.

Apart from risking his life to deliver a stunt turkey to the Baghdad mess,
the president is now set to revive the US space programme: it's rumoured
that Nasa will, this month, announce new missions to the moon. And a man
accused of imperial arrogance has even made a significant concession to
the rival powerbase of Europe by abandoning protectionist steel tariffs.
It can be argued that this is a cosmetic move - because Bush had already
lost the votes of the steel states in the US - but the move indicates a
politician much less happy than he once was to be seen as isolationist.

Even during an American election cycle, the apparent decision to aim for
the moon is surprising. The original lunar programme grew out of the
bipolar political world of the cold war. Kennedy was only interested in
landing in the Sea of Tranquillity because of the fear that the Russians
might splash down first. Now, with only one superpower, it will be not a
space race but a space lap-of-honour or training run for America.

It's a measure of Bush's reputation that environmentalists have already
accused him of planning to rob the moon of mineral deposits or light. But
there's another possibility. A pattern is emerging in which the Bush White
House - like a child hiding its face at a bad memory - seeks to replace a
negative image with a positive one.

The original Gulf war photo-op planned for use in the 2004 election
campaign was the commander-in-chief landing a jet on an aircraft carrier
that flew the banner: Mission Accomplished. Now that Mission Impossible
might be a more fitting message to fly from US ships, a substitute image
was needed for the militaristic bits of the ads. This was provided by
Dubya as carver-in-chief on Thanksgiving Day. The mooted new moonshots are
calculated to wipe from the collective memory the images of the Challenger
disaster.

If the president were to use the plastic turkey of Baghdad in commercials
now, his opponents would make a real meal of it, so Bush 2004 needs some
other photo-ops. Perhaps the new Nasa plans indicate that he intends to
disguise Air Force One as a rocket and stage a photo-shoot on the moon.

Whatever the details, the message is clear. Though he still lacks anything
as pesky as a plausible Democrat opponent, Dubya is starting to fear that
his administration may become the second one-term turkey served up by the
Bush dynasty.

+++

DISCUSSION

NEWSgrist: *Joy Episalla: "for the birds"* Vol.4, no.19


NEWSgrist: *Joy Episalla: "for the birds"* Vol.4, no.19
============================
============================
NEWSgrist
where spin is art
http://newsgrist.net
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subscribe // unsubscribe
============================
Vol.4, no.19 (Dec 8, 2003)
============================
============================
*Underbelly*

Bulletin board: post your own news, press releases, urls:
http://pub11.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum

DISCUSSION

send in war-related [+net.art] links


greetings Rhizomers,

I was recently in Ghent for the opening of a multi-media group exhib.
called Without Fear or Reproach, which turned out to be very cool and is
getting 100s of visitors a day. The show focuses on the current American
'pulse' (ahem!) and the work ranges from conceptual critique to ironic to
performative to documentarian... etc. The curator, Jerome Jacobs, has set
up a website and is asking people to send in relevant links to post on
their main page. I've sent in about 9 links so far (see below) which were
posted almost immediately. I think they would appreciate more input,
provided it was succinctly relevant to the theme.

cheers,
Joy

.......
WITHOUT FEAR OR REPROACH
Pulse of America
http://www.aeroplastics.net/WFOR/WFOR_00.html

WITTE ZAAL
http://www.kunst.sintlucas.wenk.be/wittezaal/index.html
Posteernestraat 9000 Gent Belgie/Belgium
Preview/Opening Monday/maandag 17.11.2003 18.00 > 23.00
Exhibition/Tentoonstelling 18.11 > 13.12.2003

[...]

SPECIAL LINKS

http://www.newsgaming.com/newsgames.htm

http://fuckitall.com/bsh/

P.O.E., a short dr. strangelove piece, by Curt Cloninger
http://www.lab404.com/poe/

Democratic party talk about money
http://www.blah3.com/money.html

The Bomb Project, by Joy Garnett
http://www.thebombproject.org

The Great Game, by John Klima
http://www.cityarts.com/greatgame/

Who owns what in the media
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/index.asp

Carnivore, by RSG (The Radical Software Group)
http://rhizome.org/carnivore/

Antiwar Game, by Josh On
http://www.antiwargame.org/

Your best source for anti war news, view points and activities
http://www.antiwar.com/

Velvet Strike, a collaborative project with Anne-Marie Schleiner
http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/

If you have interesting ideas of interesting links that relate to this
subject, please send them to us and well add them to the LIST

wamb2130@wanadoo.be
//////////////////////////

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Thom Yorke / Howard Zinn


YES
Yes
yes
amen!

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, curt cloninger wrote:

> Hi Ryan,
>
> To clarify:
>
> I mean to disrespect hamfisted didactic art. Not all conceptual art (whatever that means) is hamfisted and didactic. Much lately is. Not all political art (whatever that means) is hamfisted and didactic. Much lately is.
>
> In the excerpt Eryk shared, we have a political activist dismissing the circus as something incapable of changing the world in any meaningful way. If you believe that, why call yourself an artist? Go hand out pamphlets. Zinn seems to be not merely adding an interesting perspective to the artistic dialogue (as you posit); he's trying to shoehorn art into his non-artistic understanding of llfe and human communication.
>
> Most experts think that being an expert in their one field makes them an expert in every field. Like a brain surgeoun trying tell his auto mechanic how best to repair his Mercedes. Academia is prejudiced towards methodical, didactic communication. But the best art speaks a wholly different language. I wouldn't call it an ambiguous language. "Ambiguous" is a pejorative term that reveals an underlying preference for the didactic. You want me to put into words the quality of art that I most value? I most value the quality of art that communicates stuff which can't be put into words.
>
> Radiohead (despite their music's lack of any overt political stance) positively influences contemporary culture to a much greater degree than Howard Zinn, and at a much more primordial, extra-didactic level. Because Radiohead are artists, and that's what artists do. If the creative approach I'm advocating seems uncomfortably intuitive and irreducible, perhaps you would enjoy a career in one of the social sciences?
>
> the big 3 killed my baby,
> curt
>
> _
>
>
> ryan griffis wrote:
>
> > i have to say that for an argument that seems in opposition to the
> > over-simplistic practice of political/conceptual art, it seems a
> > simplistic response itself. it's also strange that "political" and
> > "conceptual" art keep getting collapsed. certianly there are examples
> > of "political art" going back to Goya through the Mexican and
> > California Muralists that i don't think is being criticized here
> > (because it involves manual craft, hence "Art"?).
> > It also seems to have something to do with a valuation of ambiguity?
> > Certianly, the roots of much political-conceptual art, dada/surrealism
> > and situationism, embraced and employed ambiguity as a political
> > tactic. the politics included pleasure.
> > but much celebrated conceptual art was as apolitical as it gets (in
> > overt terms) On Kawara, LeWit, Bochner, even a lot of Kosuth's work.
> > so i guess i'm not sure what's being critized here. is it feeling like
> > one's being "preached" at with no formal outlet to distract from the
> > "sermon?" or is it a desire for manual craft? i don't have problems
> > with these positions, i'm just trying to figure out exactly what the
> > critique is, because i think some art perceived as cut-and-dry or
> > overly "didactic" can be read with much more ambiguity and
> > sensitivity.
> > but to say that "it figures that a political scientist would expect
> > this from art" as a dismissive is, well, not very useful. it overlooks
> > other forms of knowledge that might have something useful to add to a
> > critique fo visual culture. i'm not saying that it should be given
> > priority by any means (that might be scary), but it shouldn't be
> > dismissed. unless this is all about taste, in which case, whoever has
> > the most cultural power wins ;)
> > it's also strange to insist that artists don't have to try to
> > communicate, they "just do" by being part of the environment. what?
> > take care,
> > ryan
> +
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> +
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>

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Thom Yorke / Howard Zinn


rock on, curt. I got the same feeling off that exchange (except I doubt I
will end up ditching painting for pure rock/writing) -- the problem of
'political art' is so thorny; I happen to be reading a tiny book of essays
by Howard Zinn at the moment (hot off the press: Artists in Times of War,
Univ. of Wisconsin Press), who I respect, but who, like a lot of
folks--artists included--doesn't understand or want to understand the
first thing about 'art' -- and that there is a problem the minute you
try to make art with a message...

moralizing just plain defeats the function of art BECAUSE it attempts to
steer or limit interpretation. which would be the job of propaganda,
agitprop, sloganeering, campaigning or whatever counts as political
speech. the function of art--or one of them--is a more complex one. if
your content includes or focuses on the political, the social, the Big
Issues, you end up having to find ways to avoid moralizing--there all
kinds of ways to do this, but sometimes it isn't so easy. people fall into
the trap.

one might say that the language of (any) art is by necessity amorphous,
open-ended, and in fact, risky. one risks interpretations one didn't
intend. which is an important factor to consider: you put something out
in the world that resonates with something larger than yourself, that
perhaps you fail to comprehend entirely. the thing then has a life of its
own.

[Yorke]:
> These are the things surrounding your life. If you sit down and try to
> do it purposefully, and try to change this with this, and do this with
> that, it never works.

yep.

best,
joy

:::
http://thebombproject.org