Boot

So I’m at Croy Nielsen, and I’m looking at this stuff by Andy Boot and getting all annoyed, when I think to myself, hey – its ok to feel annoyed cos I don’t hate him as a prsn. I mean I don’t even know him, so its not so bad. And then that got me thinking about that whole Henning Bohl thing on FB last yr and I’m thinking – oh shit, there’s it right there. Does me hating Andy Boot mean that I hate Andy Boot? Cos if you hate Andy Boot, its like saying – oh shit, I think he’s a nob and that would trickle down to affecting his income if u say it to too many ppl and then he wouldn’t be able to feed his kids even tho all u wanted to say was that this art is horrible.

'Andy Boot asks, all but rhetorically, not to mention paradoxically, if it is possible to make an image that is not an image.'

Is that part of the reason why ppl just don’t criticise things anymore? That they wanna save Andy Boot’s kids? Its hard these days to separate the art from the person and then the art and person from his market appearance – cos it seems all totally combined.

I was reading some things the other day on speculative realism. This guy was talking about this other guy who says that there’s a manifest image and scientific image and that the first would be something that’s internal to our perception but that the whole point about ppl is that they wanna care for one another so that means science shouldn’t be inhuman or something. So in the end, if u know that something’s wrong ur not gonna say anything about it cos ur gonna wanna care about the community more than what’s "real". 

-

 

Museos

public display is an information whirlpool. the museum is delivering superhighway connectivity to the 'outside world' via outside world 'tropes'. its talking in the people's language, its merging the worlds of art with the worlds of fashion and music and the internet at a gr8r pace than ever before conditioning the information under the subcategories 'kooky', 'quirky' and 'arty'.

the consumption of information by the museum is like the consumption of information by a 12 year old and it is going to increase exponentially as information technology increases. in the year 2019, the human brain will be entirely simulated which means 10 to the power of 16 billion operations per second will be simulated by a single computer that will only cost $1000. the museum will mirror this: its number of interns will increase exponentially each with their own social network's stream that will then stream into the museum brain. like PS1, rooms will get smaller, micro-curating will take place at a faster rate that will stream networks of information continuously and parallely. the viewer will see a splay of 'interests' and 'likes' in an 'art information cloud' at a rate of 10 gigabyte per dollar.


some ppl have been talking recently about the dangrs of privatising the avant guard but can a 'global underground' really exist in the internet age? is information 'safe'? does it need to be if our brains and tastes will be online? the museum will entirely mirror facebook by 2019 and it will mirror every art related 'like' on facebook by only 2014. if u don't 'like' it, somebody else will - and go to a buzzworthy space with it within 9 months today, but within 2.1 days in 2019.

the redundancy of critique as old school is inevitable and eventually it won't exist anymore. 'cool' will be replaced by 'trends' i.e. different collections of forms and interests. we as consumers will plug into one interest and then the next, like we surf the net or art.sy except that we will be going to an event at PS1 with our new devices and plugging into artworks or saving information as 'modern art > lifestyle art > darren bader' alongside 'clothes > acne > shop man > tees', 'urbanspoon > dumbo > vinegar hill house' and 'artwriting > scene and herd' in our intelligent devices.

meanwhile, art production will decay to something like this:




and art appreciation will decay to something like this:

boox

In case you were too busy presenting your face next to the art world person you later want to be associated with during the last weeks' peak season, I was thinking of some improvements in the current cybernetic means of generating capital. One strategy that is becoming too comprehensible now – after even the mainstream 'taste' considers Top 10 lists a little bit obvious – is book recommendations. A 'space' that is cultivating critical marketing, the "Artist's Space", recently opened a bookstore in Tribeca entirely 'q-rated' by artists / connoisseurs. 'Browsing through the shelves' at the opening I only found gold nuggets. Better than amazon's consumer based recommendations, these hidden gems are carefully chosen by a small number of critically acclaimed artists. Books like Bartleby The Scrivener or Robert Walser or Mallarmé. What makes this bookshop all the more special is that every artist really wanted to deliver not only good quality but also the books they really relate 2, which is emphasized by a personalized post card mentioning the name of the choosing artist inside the book. What I mean is it doesn't feel like every1 would just put as many philosophical books as possible into their list to cover educational holes in their art practice. Also it is great to see that only few people were trying to make a joke; D. Campbell by choosing a complete stack of dictionaries, playing on the idea of having all of the knowledge in the world himself and T. Kaspar by putting a bottle of old champagne into the shelf, trying to elaborate his lifestylish personal brand.

The dictum of good taste can create a division between insiders and outsiders.

Choosing a book for someone is a very personal affair and can have a romantic effect on the receiver. In the information-based world of late capitalism it has become crucial for defining one's own desired context. For example if I choose Charles Baudelaire in several lists (books, top10, best of etc.) my name will be closely linked to Baudelaire forever and people will perceive me as a similar type of person. This is the whole point of referential art or dedications in art titles. The other thing it does is via mentioning the same reference over and over again, you increase its presence and therefore force more and more people to get involved in it, which makes them drop the name too, which in turn raises more attention to your own 'work' with that reference.
What now happened in the "Artist's Space" is that some person curated artists to curate books. It is this doubling of 'curating' that makes the whole situation tricky. Assuming that this one person (it might be 3 or 5, it doesn't matter if they are out of the same critical milieu) chose these people, their choices are only one link away from the curator's choices who then should have all of that material in his/her own bookshelf n e way.

Does it make a difference for you if your Bolano book is chosen by Tiravanija (left) or Krebber (right)?

Given that the cyclical mechanism described above has been existing for many internet years now, the 'tastes' of artists have assimilated to an extent that it is hard to distinguish between their individual standpoints. Through this process the available material for art referencing is continuously getting less and minimally more refined. This is accelerated by less known artists who need a well-explored reference as a bait for a curator. Objectively an eclectic mix of leftish philosophers, popcultural 'underground'-ideas, radical figures and alien hybrid creatures these books all make a lot of sense as the 'interests' of artists as they add not only name, content and style to their brands, they also create an aura of 'realness' around them, i.e. the illusion that an 'underground culture' would still exist within the art scene or 'subversive intellectual ideas'.

"Artist's Space" director Stefan Kalmár (left)

Ꭲ8 ᎻᏎᎢᎬᎡᏕ

I wonder if N E one tried to read the Merlin Carpenter vs. Reena Spaulings talk. What did it 'reveal' to you?

"What probably happened is, Merlin thought by introducing a second level of irony onto 'political' art, he could make things more complicated and it worked for some people, but then it got misunderstood for meaningless polit-fashion by john and emily (like the "puppets and banners and stuff" made by occupy-ppl) and put into a lifestyle-setting in a tate-show that was real 'kitsch'. They have made it into something post-ironic without knowing it and post-ironic means apolitical and business orientated. He should have been prepared for that joke." - Diplo fan

"John and Emily are either hipsters or very shallow. Their main excuse is that they are so 'busy' or 'into' their daily business that they don't see a broader picture / larger idea / meaningful moral question. Like the 'revolutionary' 'Occupy'-movement is for them just 'really nice' and 'inspiring' for all of their 'friends' to come together. Curator-friends, artist-friends, collector-friends. It's 'so good that it's unspecific', which is in fact perfect for artists. any spoiled self-alienated bad-consciousness-ridden kid can feel 'real' and have an excuse for their daily waste of earthly resources. Also it's very important that all 'friends' are 'weird'. All of our staff are total weirdos, this city of New York is full of poetry, exported from Chinatown to the uptown museums via yellow cabs, how should we understand London and the politics of the Tate? We thought we have nothing to do with it when we did that show. How naive are all three of them? This is capitalism!! Commercial galleries, commercial museums, collectors are NOT friends, curators are careerists, 'critical' means capital, I feel like I've taken crazy pills." - OWS artist protester

But why didn't you manage to redress the balance now, Merlin?

"What appears to be the problem is that the unashamed political unscrupulous art careerism on the part of RS is not counterbalanced in the slightest by Carpenter's left wing political agenda or rather his appearance/aesthetics of it. It is a pity because quite frankly Carpenter's catharsis is too real to be funny and if lying on a shrink's table in public is evidence of real authenticity, it is not interesting at all. I don't know how to defend his position because the text shows massive cliches but of course I want to. Unfortunately Carpenter comes across as one of those outsider 'lefties' with a chip on their shoulder that hang around pubs in places like Dingle -  platitudes abound except Blair replaces Thatcher, Private-Public Partnership in place of privatization, Brit-pop in place of yuppie culture." - Student in psychological sociology

"Your faults apart Merlin, I really think scabbing is a problem that we have to jump in on: the RS problem. I think the game's too far gone to be able to get them out - but there's corny ways to regulate them with telling them what to do. Let's say they did you in, you shouldn't have blamed them because they ain't ever gonna give up, the best way is to make them say that they lost money and market value with this move so it didn't make any sense - their PR got damaged by the fact they didn't take enough care. I learnt this from the Rupert Murdoch inquiry - there was no way to bring him to his knees but there's a way to tell him - ok you lose hella doshy with scandals like this so you might as well put these ethical barriers in place. this is where Tate isn't the evil one, but RS. You needed to turn the whole thing on them." - East London financial strategist

"I'm happy I bought the leggings then, if my grandmother was still alive she would wear them every day, she was a real GILF." - hipster

"This exercise in institutional critique as payback is all a bit hermetic and self-referential. But the cafe is a great place to sit..."  – NY Times

final anthropo-meat-packing

It has gotten bad.



The 'organic' is in the focus of interest of the young attention-demanders and I have a feeling this won't end well. The post-goth body has learned to acknowledge the attraction of the excrescences of the 'human organism'.

In the happy perception of one's own body and the surrounding environment what is at play is an essential question of rhythm, time and lived temporalities. But if, into the circle of excitement, we introduce an inorganic element such as electronics and impose an acceleration of stimuli and a contraction of psychophysical reaction times, something ends up changing in the organism and its forms of erotic reaction. Orgasm is replaced by a series of excitations without release. Orgasm is no longer the prelude to any accomplishment. Inconclusive excitation takes the place of orgasmic release¹. This is something like the feeling that is conveyed to us by digital art, the coldness of video art, the inconclusive cyclical nature and cylindrical logic of a Derrick Adams painting:


It takes a thick jacket of reassurance/organic matter to be able to convey the emotional whirlwind i'm experiencing in this moment.

David Adamo. I guess this sculpture is 'erect'. Yea bro, I got the hint what you mean, but I can't subsist on wispy hints alone, I need to feel the wrinkled fullness of your haphazardly shaven scrotum sloshing around inside my herpes-free mouth.

Back 2 nature.



Stop manipulating me, social brain!
Stop manipulating me, social brain!
Stop manipulating me, social brain!

Stop manipulating me, social brain!


¹ It was found that in male monkeys there were separate systems for erection, ejaculation and orgasm. with an electrode in the separate orgasm system, the monkey would stimulate this region and go through a total orgasm without errection or ejaculation. given the apparatus could stimulate orgasm once every 3 minutes for 24 hours, the monkey stimulated the site every 3 minutes for 16 hours and then slept for 8 hours resuming the same pattern the next day. if the monkey stimulated the site for more than 16 hours it started to get sicker and sicker until it was unable to activate the switch.

Contemporary Art Blog Positions in relation 2 Network-Capitalism in the Art Markt since 2008, Art Historical Positions since 2004 & the Cologne School

Blogs emerged out of the inadequacy of print publications such as Artforum, Texte zur Kunst and May to express the views of a certain cohort of people – largely ones who were not party to either art’s institutional fabric nor the fan-base of its established alterity e.g. the Cologne school. Whereas blogs such as Contemporary Art Daily exist for the showcase of this latter art temperament (one which arose out of the alterity in relation to main market feedback streams of discourse of e.g. Baselitz) blogs such as Jerry Magoo and Canvas, took the position of “anti-blog”. Issues such as the social network, ‘critical art history’ as readjusted by writers such as Hal Foster, Buchloh, Rosalind Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois (who became the revisionist art historians that created an establishment of their own that alienated the potential for development of new positions in art like mine) and unpalatable style were addressed.

The internet revolution also squeezed them in relation to positions that younger artists such as [insert name here], [insert name here] and [insert name here] had taken to capture certain zeitgeist trends whilst being wholly derivative of Warhol paradigms such as “boHoe”, pop iconography and print technique. In amongst this melting pot and the negative growing influence of Michael Krebber in relation to the glut of gestural post-colognial painting displayed in CAD, the “anti-blogs” deemed it necessary to find an independent position in relation to these pressures of historical and contemporary feedback loops.

The "jet-speed to light speed" operations inside the "pressure cooker" of competitive social network Darwinism forced Canvas to shut down when their name had been appropriated alongside other blogs by Michael Krebber for one of his exhibitions in New York sullying any belligerent effort; and it also forced Jerry Magoo to break through into mainstream real-time market feedback mechanisms that accept the pleasantly grounding effect of reproducing zero degree “patterns”.

Because in second order system’s theory, second-order systems mean that the observer is implicated within them, I can’t claim that what is here stated exists beyond my own lick-spit.

Michael Sanchez


_

At home I realised that whilst reaching over for Chris Kraus's Video Green I picked up the book Coma by Pierre Guyotat by mistake 'cause they look exactly the same. I was so bored these days that I just read it anyway.


Pierre Guyotat likes Ravel and Debussy. He likes to use phrases such as "I can finally look at the world and forget myself" or "my existence, as a humble plowman of language" or "my human senses...are what allow me to see and feel the absolute".

He describes his interests: "scrap school notebooks in public dumps, the gaze of children, the dribble of idiots..."

Gary Indiana says that the book is a "a voice that tears off its bandages."

The only interesting thing that really happens in this book is when he gets walked in on whilst using a stick to spoon out the shit out of his asshole whilst having severe constipation in someone's bathroom.