Michael Szpakowski
Since the beginning
Works in Harlow United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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DISCUSSION

Third Attempt


Rob - you're a caution!
m.

DISCUSSION

Third Attempt


Well I think you've got something generous and wonderful going with Furtherfield, Marc & I've said it loads of times in print and in person.
Something different is happening here - but I quite like that there are different ways of sustaining a site devoted to whatever-we-call-this-work..
I like the concentrated & focussed view coming from Rhizome at the moment ( partly because I like the work featured a lot..)

Actually I can't imagine life without Furtherfield or Rhizome...
best
m.

DISCUSSION

Behold a Pale Horse (2007) - Steve Bishop


This is quite extraordinary!
I was a bit bemused by the rather bad tempered net 2.0 (or *whatever*, I can't remember, don't care) debate here a few months ago but it does seem to me that work like this represents something qualitatively new or at least a shift..
Of course it is very difficult to call that sort of thing at the time it's happening ( part of the reason for the raised voices, hurt looks and general confusion) and I'm sure someone could post loads of similar stuff from 2001 or something to show me how wrong my intuitions are but there's something about the transfiguration of the banal and the sheer insouciance with which it is done that just makes my heart skip a beat, and it's those two factors which seem to characterise a good deal of this.. erm.. new wave..
(You can see this all at play in the work of Jon Rafman posted here today too..)
More power to your posting elbow , John Michael Boling!
michael

DISCUSSION

Third Attempt


I think that's all a bit harsh actually. I've found John Michael Boling's posts refreshingly un-pious, interesting and stimulating.
I think he ought to be congratulated on his Stakhanovite work rate rather than bad mouthed.
michael

DISCUSSION

OneAvatar


Salvatore
what I wanted to say was simply that I think you over-egg it somewhat ( and my quarrel is not solely with you on this but with a whole school of what one might term to greater or lesser degree 'internet-mystics'). Neither is it your work here, nor indeed your motive for it that I'm impugning ( I too deplore the loss of connectedness but this is not simply something brought about by the net, but by the political character of the last 25 -30 years in which with few exceptions the right and the market-cheerleaders have made the running).
I simply think you massively overstate the case ( and quite honestly I think to some degree you recognise that yourself) - *asserting* however vigourously and in however many words of however many syllables with however many citations that a process mediated in part by a computer is qualititively different to anything that has gone before is unfortunately not the same thing as *demonstrating* that it is - the simplest riposte is "Who attaches the electrodes?" and you can bet your life it's *not* the computer.
I remember going to see the great Trotskyist, Tony Cliff/Ygael Gluckstein speak on Orwell's '1984'.
He said "You know, when I read 1984, with the screen in every room I burst laughing. Why? Because ( and I unfortunately can't replicate his accent or manner here so I'll use caps) WHO THE BLOODY HELL BUILT THE BLOODY SCREENS? -BLOODY WORKERS OF COURSE!" Cliff's implication being that workers can and do go slow, go on strike, organise, even in the most appalling conditions. The same is true today.
That's the political point. The artistic one is the the piece would be a lot more engaging the *less* it was prefaced with the rather tendentious and, as I've argued, impressionistic and inaccurate spiel.
Give us the opportunity to relate to the products of your mischievous and fertile imagination and to allow these to bear fruit in our own without telling us in advance *what* we should be thinking!!
best wishes
michael