My thoughts on Theory 2014.5 There is so much I could say, but I have limited myself to this short missive. In a way I feel like I became Rip Van Winkle when I entered Graduate School, as artists usually don't concern themselves with theory as much as you'd imagine, and my first job in academia was surrounded by people openly hostile to theory, and my next where the people with whom I could converse are simply too busy or involved in their own careers. This means that through the sage conversation with the SenseLab and Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, Curt Cloninger, and Sandra Danilovic, I woke up after the postmodern focus on epistemology has shifted to the current trope of ontology, which I am building bridges to. Mind you, I have my questions about our current state, which I have my own suggestions for.
Much of my critique of where, and I'll have to admit that I will stay with the linkage of theory and media art, lies is from a shift from thoughtfulness to artworld tactical positionality constructed to get in the latest anthology. I could be accused of this, but I will speak in my own defense that 90% of the essays and works published have been in the area of Virtual or Augmented Realities, genres that I have explored since 1996 (VR, AR since about 2002). It is what I call le trope du annee, which is something that I have also had a critique of on theoretical circles. In 1998, it was Benjamin (I say this arbitrarily), in 2013 it was Whitehead, And I wonder deeply whether the shifts from Poststructuralism to Non-Human Ontologies, or from epistemology to ontology for that matter, is a reflection of culture, or the resultant disconnect of sheer interest of a community who has, at the call of its finest, decided to follow as a path of least resistance or merely a desire for acceptance and to be part of "the conversation". This is, of course, no less evident in the media art field, there seems to be a new genre every year, such as surfing, New Aesthetics, Post-Internet, Social Practice, which has a dual effect. First, it causes the aspiring artist to conform to fashion, and in many ways, the eponymous song by David Bowie comes to mind. Secondly, it causes spasms within the art market and the academy as every 3-5 years the "new" becomes canonized, and places an emphasis on academic job offerings scarcely with the time allotted for the graduate to matriculate. "We're sorry, we realize that post-Jell-oism was the rage in 2014, but we're really looking for someone with an emphasis in Drone Ontology now." Yes, things do evolve; I can admit an accept that. However, I argue that what is lacking is an ideology and a rigor for sake of position, as Ian Bogost said about the New Aesthetic so well, which he argued was not new, and then later James Bridle, in a Rhizome interview, said had nothing to do with aesthetics in the first place. Also, take for example, the Rhizome panel in which a participant incorrectly stated that there wasn't much net art before 2000, anyway, to which my admonition drew a response of, "Well, what was discussed was _mostly correct_. My reply to this is that, taken to its logical extreme, a panelist might shrug their shoulders and state what it matters if six or four million Ukrainians were slaughtered during collectivization. The answer would be, "two million lives". I know I am grossly exaggerating here, as only in few exceptions does art have the impact of a World War or genocide, but it does affect the historiographic foundations of the contemporary where we have developed a number of artist-theorists (some of them PhDs) who are not well read, or practitioners like Jesse Darling who state that an Animated Gif creates Brecht's V-Effekt, breaking the fourth wall of the cyber-proscenium where it is obvious that the 4th wall consists of an LCD screen on the desk. In addition GIFs constitute performativity and not performance, as they possess no live interaction/1st order cybernetic loop, but no one wants to be as uncool as to call this out. Most of these critiques, or critiques of the contemporary is often placed off into what has been called "The Generational Conversation", between the 'contemporizes' and the 'olds' (who are, what, 90's net artists?) The irony of all this is that in 2013 Marisa Olson was asked about her age by a curator, and Olia Lialina tells her timeline in a May 2014 Rhizome entry. I don't think it has to do with generationalism at all. Sensibilities change, but art is art. Before the New Media, Visual Studies, and Social Practice MFAs emerged after 2000, the academy had very little to offer, there may have been a number of programs in the mid-90's, but they were few, and some were linked to computer science programs. In the days of pre-academization of "New Media", there were largely PhDs and autodidacts, and no funding. But with the institutionalization of electronic media art, sets of practices have been put in place that have made the media arts more consumable and fundable, not that this is bad by any means. It just means that it commodifies the field, and this includes art, theory, even ideology has become dominated by capitalism or a Medici-esque patronage, as in Jeremy Bailey's biting AR portraits. Actually, one of the most prescient quotes about the state of theory today comes from Lady Gaga, who in "Applause", states: "I've overheard your theory . I guess sir, if you say so Some of us just like to read" In many ways, it seems that theory is represented by what the market will bear. In closing, I'd like to refer to two pieces of wisdom I've heard from Cleveland Gallerist William Busta, and both artists Joseph DeLappe and Mendi and Keith Obadike. From Busta, he said that taste follows your peer group, and perhaps this is true, but there are also DeLappe's Drone Project that makes an exception to this. From the Obadikes, they said that the trends, while important, they eventually become like a hamster wheel. There is a time where you have to get off the treadmill and do the work you feel is important to humanity, and more important, important to you. It's isn't about being hip or cool. It's about doing what matters, whatever that is today. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
