Olson has served as Editor & Curator at Rhizome, the inaugural curator at Zero1, and Associate Director at SF Camerawork. She's contributed to many major journals & books and this year Cocom Press published Arte Postinternet, a Spanish translation of her texts on Postinternet Art, a movement she framed in 2006. In 2015 LINK Editions will publish a retrospective anthology of over a decade of her writings on contemporary art which have helped establish a vocabulary for the criticism of new media. Meanwhile, she has also curated programs at the Guggenheim, New Museum, SFMOMA, White Columns, Artists Space, and Bitforms Gallery. She has served on Advisory Boards for Ars Electronica, Transmediale, ISEA, the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, Creative Capital, the Getty Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kennedy Center, and the Tribeca Film Festival.
Olson studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and Rhetoric & Film Studies at UC Berkeley. She has recently been a visiting artist at Yale, SAIC, Oberlin, and VCU; a Visiting Critic at Brown; and Visiting Faculty at Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and Ox-Bow. She previously taught at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' new media graduate program (ITP) and was Assistant Professor of New Media at SUNY-Purchase's School of Film & Media Studies. She was recently an Artist-in-Residence at Eyebeam & is currently Visiting Critic at RISD.
Blast Theory's talk at Sonar
Well... when i write Blast Theory, i mean one of its members: Matt Adams (i took some extremely loosy pictures of him during his talk, so the portrait of him was stolen on The Age.)
Matt Adams started by giving a brief history of Blast Theory then explained with more details their latest work: The Day of the Figurines.
In the beginning, Blast Theory was particularly interested in British clubbing culture, they were trying to make out art in clubs in the early '90s. Clubbing at the time wasn't a branded activity like it is now (clubs selling their t-shirts and other "merchandising".) Matt background is in theater and he was interested in how people were staging themselves in clubs. In clubs you have a certain control: you can decide to be and stay a spectator or to be the center of attention, to become part of the show. Clubbing were a very fluid space. THe other main interested was: how do you find and build an audience? how does it form? Visual art is usually shown in galleries, galleries have their audience. Artist have a very personal dialogue with their work and get their audience via the gallery. So matt wanted to find other ways to find new audience.
This reflected also a political interest influenced by the Russian constructivism of the '20s and also by the radical forms of theatre that emerged in the 60s and 70s.
Matt wanted to see how culture could have a transformative role and to make art works which are not narrative. Stories have limits. None of us lives a linear life, our life is more fragmented. Looking for works which would be non-narratives while being also accessible for a broad public, he found out that there was already something out there ...
The Third Eye
After a long legacy of game, literature and cinema it is easy to forget that the third person perspective is a purely invented perceptual construction, being now deeply rooted in contemporary western culture.
This brilliant experiment by Takehito Etani lifts the third person perspective from its various representations and maps it directly onto himself. As a result he becomes his own operator, his own player.. Here's a video of him taking himself for a walk in Times Square, New York.
Thnx Marta!
Newly Launched: The Fair Use Network
THE FAIR USE NETWORK: INFORMATION & RESOURCES FOR FREE EXPRESSION
This is the site we've all been waiting for, the hub of "all things fair use," a newly launched online resource tailored for artists, scholars and creative people that includes practical resources, reference guides and glossaries, a budding attorney network, and a nifty newsfeed in the left sidebar generated by their internal blog.... brought to you by the folks at the Free Expression Policy Project @ the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law.
via their homepage: http://fairusenetwork.org
About Us
The Fair Use Network provides information to activists, artists, scholars, and anyone else who has questions about "IP" (intellectual property) law. Our basic purpose is to support fair use and other free expression safeguards within the law, because free expression is essential to creativity, culture, and a healthy democracy.The Fair Use Network is part of the Free Expression Policy Project (FEPP), a program of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. It grew out of the findings and recommendations in FEPP's 2005 report, Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control. The report found massive confusion among artists, scholars, and others about fair use, and a need for pro bono legal help and comprehensible resource materials.
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A Bit of Background
In the last few decades, the rights of copyright and trademark owners to control the use of their works has increased dramatically. Corporations have lobbied successfully for longer copyright terms and expanded their control over trademarks through legal doctrines such as "trademark dilution" They also have used cease and desist letters and section 512 takedown notices to try to stop legitimate, fair uses of copyrighted materials, or well-known trademarks, for such purposes as criticism and parody.The enhancement of IP owners' powers has come at the expense of those who build upon, critique, or make other creative, scholarly, or political uses of existing works. The wholesale shift of rights from the public's to the owner's side of the scale has fundamentally changed the delicate balance in IP law that makes creativity and informed political debate possible.
The combination of rapidly shifting laws and new technologies has left many people uncertain about their rights as users. In the face of uncertainty, many individuals and groups have understandably steered a conservative path around possible legal landmines. Unfortunately, this response fails to take advantage of significant rights that users retain, even today--first and foremost, the rights to fairly use trademarks or copyrighted material.
Why the Fair Use Network?
How much can you borrow, quote or copy from someone else's work? What happens if you get a "cease and desist" letter from a copyright owner? These and many other questions make "intellectual ...
One Link, Much Great Art
The online exhibition, 'Link-A' reinstates the good old-fashioned web portal in providing access to eleven important and engaging internet-based art projects. Organized by Media Lab Madrid, the show's site is intensely minimal, with each artwork's title and link arranged in a frame, symbolically encompassing the show's heavy subtitle: 'policies of affectivity, aesthetics of biopower.' Each work is included on the basis of its demonstration of 'contemporary affectivity and its technological mediation.' The international roster of participating artists is about as heavy-hitting as the subtitle, and includes Rob Bevan in collaboration with Tim Wright, Laura Bey, Candy Factory, Collective 8552, David Crawford, Jess Loseby, MTAA, Akira Mori, and Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries. Together, their works construct romantic, melancholy, and otherwise richly dramatic narratives about the past, present, and future of individuals and their intersubjective relationships. The show is accompanied by a trio of very thoughtful essays by Franco Berardi, Michael Hardt, and Juan Martin Prada. A broadband access point is offered for the exhibition, at Madrid's Centro Cultural Conde Duuque, through July 23rd, but considering that this is the online equivalent of a blockbuster museum show, you might consider scoping things out from the comfort of your own internet connection. - Marisa Olson
Rhizome Today: A critic, with opinions about postinternet art
My own effort in talking about Postinternet, at least in those early instances, as on the panel, was to (a) expand Rhizome's mission--I was then Editor & Curator--to cover and support a wider variety of practices; and (b) just to describe my own work and how a project like my Monitor Tracings (totally "offline" drawings) could be contextualized as internet art, or art 'after' the internet (i.e. In the style of & made after I log-off.) I think Michael puts it *perfectly* when he says, "we should understand all our gestures, 'online' and 'offline,' as actions in a network that is mediated and administered by computers." Perhaps this is obvious, but I'd say this applies to all of waking life, not just art production+reception.
I've personally moved from discussing Postinternet Art as "art after the internet" toward discussing Postinternet as "the symptoms of network culture." I am less interested in discussing PI Art specifically/exclusively, now that people have brow-beaten and/or branded the term into something far different than what I originally meant, and much more interested in discussing the social affects around the production of postinternet conditions and their manifestations. And, meanwhile, I have said (particularly in the Ullens catalogue & also in an interview in the Art and the Internet book put out by Black Dog) that, to me, Postinternet is just a 'placeholder' term around which to convene in having conversations around the latter symptoms. (I've started working on spelling these out more explicitly in recent & forthcoming writing-- including the keynote lecture I just gave at Pratt's UPLOAD conference, entitled "Postinternet is Dead. Long Live Postinternet.")
Likes/Dislikes around the word, aside, I hope this very long-running conversation around art and the internet can continue to incorporate careful consideration of the affects of network culture, as networks themselves evolve.
Breaking the Ice
Like most of the folks above, I too am a "forever member," from the days of the Rhizome Communications ascii RAW listserv and, later, fancy Dreamweaver/Flash "Splash Pages," to the present. Reena Jana and I were the first two paid writers (poached from Wired!), when Alex Galloway was running "content," which at that time meant programming and editorial--though Rhizome was declaratively non-editorial, so they just commissioned book & exhibition reviews, and some interviews from us that were fed into the RAW stream and included in the Digest as Features. Oy vey, I can still remember the cross-eyed weekly ritual of trying to untangle parallel conversations to reassemble them into a coherent thread for the Digest, when I was editing it--and the race to get it out by noon one day each week!!
I've seen Rhizome go through so many changes, and I've been a part of the back channel conversations on years of them, including huge ones that we decided not to go through with. I have to say that it's always hard to serve a membership-based organization, which is what Rhizome has always thought of itself as. But I can say that every change in content or form has been discussed critically, at length, and typically not without a degree of passion.
I am also biting my tongue because I *really* do not want to put words in any staff member's mouth (past or present), but I can say that I believe everyone who's ever worked there has taken their position as a labor of love, with users/reader/members/community (everyone has their favorite self-identification; semantics trolls please don't hate today!) in mind, and everyone has collaborated with the staff to bring a unique take on how best to serve you in the current creative and technological climate. For instance, I remember that my big objective coming in the door was wanting to change the mission statement to reflect not only net art and not only highly technological art, but also art that "reflects" on technology in a meaningful way. In fact, I think contemplating this change was very much a part of my conceptualizing Postinternet.
There is so much to say here, but I think I'd best sign off. This is not my soap box, and in some way, it feels weird to comment so much. I used to be a Superusing Megaposter, but as soon as I became Editor & Curator, I stepped back to focus on trying to facilitate and amplify other voices, which I do believe every Rhizome Editor has done in their own way.
I'll end with this, then. I'd be surprised if every reader, writer, or editor loved everything that ever appeared (structurally or content-wise) in their newspaper of choice. I'd be surprised if every curator or museumgoer loved every artwork shown (or every exhibition design decision) in their favorite museum. But it's the day we stop reading, stop going to look at art that disappoints me. It's the day Rhizome stops experimenting that scares me. And I wish them well on this new experiment.
Conference Report: NET.ART (SECOND EPOCH)
Thank you for these points of clarification. I actually tried to convey (and forgive me if I failed) that your presentation was unique in identifying multiple generations of networked artists, and I particularly liked the way you talked about artists working before the internet in ways that anticipated network culture.
You also made that great point (via Hal Foster) about the ways in which critics' work is influenced by what is/ was happening at the moment they entered the art world. I admire how you helped pioneer new media criticism and yet have continued to stay on the pulse of new work. This is what I had in mind when recalling your point about your relationship to a previous generation of net-dot-artists, versus the artists of the era Inclusiva was calling the "second epoch." I just really liked the way you fleshed out more than two epochs and I wanted to highlight your catalyzing role in the net-dot-art scene, in particular.
In my own presentation, my intent absolutely was not to dismiss any previous artists, movements, practices, etc. It was simply to flesh-out one niche of new media art practice. In fact, I really liked the pointed questions that the audience asked afterwards, because it helped us have a really meaningful discussion about the problematic relationship of pro surfer work to art historical discourse, and my calls to action revolved around getting those artists to participate in learning about their own pre-histories and writing historiographies that situate their own trajectories on their own terms.
So I don't think we're in disagreement. But I appreciate your call to fine-tune my articulation of these scenarios.
Go Ahead, Touch Her
Go Ahead, Touch Her
I'm sorry that you found my article objectionable. I didn't intend to make the implications you suggest, but I believe your response cuts to the most interesting aspect of Laric's piece, which is the effect of remixing.
For those who care to review the lyrics to this song, they are here:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mariahcarey/touchmybody.html
They include the refrain:
Touch my body
Put me on the floor
Wrestle me around
Play with me some more
Touch my body
Throw me on the bed
So, in fact, I do think that Carey's lyrics (and video) invite sexual fantasy, but my article doesn't say that she is asking to be violated, it says that she's asking to be remixed. Of course, the slippage between the two that you identify is what's so interesting.
In an interview with Laric, he told me that he noticed that the video takes-on an increased sexual tone when all but Carey is masked out. He was interested in how this first-person invitation to "touch my body" could be construed as an invitation to remix the visage of her body (and/or the voice emitted from it), particularly given (a) the implicit link to digital culture embodied by both the lyrics and video, and (b) the fact that the remix is now such an important part of the media ecology of pop culture.
In the last 25+ years of pop music, lining-up celebrity remixes and making singles remix-ready has been an important part of the production cycle, often preceding the release of the original recording. Almost all historical accounts of Madonna's rise to fame cite her relationship with DJs and openness to remixing as a key factor in her success. So while you may see the remix as a violent act, clearly those participating in this industry see it as an imperative.
Discussions of why a remix is or isn't violent are interesting, as they get to questions of the status of the digital reproduction. Are we remixing a person or "just" her image, and what's the difference when thinking about how a person's identity--particularly a famous person's identity--hinges upon their image? Carey's image was already manipulated before it came to us. In the interview with Laric, he pointed to a segment in the original video in which the shape of a cup becomes distorted as a result of distorting the footage to make the singer standing behind the cup appear slimmer. So this is already not her. If you listen closely, I believe there is also a question as to whether all of the voiced parts of the song are her, so the audio issue adds another layer to the phenomenological question of the brute force of the remix.
These issues of the import of the remix, the relationship to broader pop culture (rather than an insular art world), collective authorship, and the nature of Carey's invitation are what I hoped to address in this article.