Rhizome Inclusive: News, Blog, and Writer's Initiative

Image: Schedule for 24-Hour Program on the Concept of Time

Tonight at 6 p.m. the Guggenheim presents a marathon symposium titled "24-Hour Program on the Concept of Time." The museum's chief curator Nancy Spector organized the event in the mold of Hans Ulrich Obrist, who has presided over similar symposia in other cities, most recently a "mini-marathon" in Beijing on New Year's Eve that lasted a measly 12 hours. Like its predecessors, the 24-Hour Program is presented in an art-world context but brings together thinkers across many disciplines. Tonight's (and tomorrow's) lineup of speakers includes Ronald Mallett, a physicist who has devoted his life to building a time machine, and Joseph LeSauteur, an expert in the psychology of circadian rhythms. Also slated to participate are Philippe Parreno, Angela Bulloch, and Liam Gillick, artists featured in the exhibition upstairs whose run will end when the symposium does. "theanyspacewhatever" is about ten artists who emerged in the 1990s, but it doesn't show any 1990s art. Instead, it comprises new installations conceived specifically for the Guggenheim's rotunda. That should give a clue about these artists' attitude toward temporality. Over their careers they have avoided producing static, stand-alone objects, which are doomed to become relics or fetishes over time, while proposing that art lies in the viewer's reception of a proposition made by the artist at a specific place and time. Obrist conceived his experimental symposia with a similar sensibility -- which makes sense, since he is of the same generation and matured in the same intellectual milieu -- but when "theanyspacewhatever" turned out to be so undemanding that it was largely written off by many as a bore, one wonders what the artists will have to say about the marathon's punishing spatial and temporal parameters -- respectively, a darkened theater and a full rotation of the Earth. This Rhizome correspondent will attend and report back in the near future. - Brian Droitcour

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"A webcam feedback loop of the "WHEN WILL YOU DIE?" permanently cycling ad on myspace."
More work by Kari Altmann

Video: Response from the iConfessional at Mattress Factory
Image: Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Hole-In-Space, 1980

Mattress Factory went live with their iConfessional kiosk recently, which allows visitors to instantly post response videos to museum exhibitions using YouTube's Quick Capture feature. Mattress Factory's Jeffrey Inscho got the idea from the Brooklyn Museum, who built a video response station for their exhibition The Black List Project using the same technology. Both illustrate ways museums are attempting to use the web to enhance visitor experience; as the lowercase "i", Apple's signature branding for personal customization, they are geared towards allowing visitors to visualize and share their responses to the exhibition, i.e. leave their personal mark. Simple and inexpensive to implement, it's not difficult to imagine that stations like these will become more commonplace. I viewed an installation of Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz's Hole-In-Space (1980) at the "Art of Participation" exhibition at SFMOMA two weeks ago and I was both amused and blown away by the footage. In the work, crowds in New York City and LA could video conference with one another via this public installation. The crowds were clearly elated about this possibility, hooting and hollering at live feeds of their counterparts on the other side of the country. It was amazing to see their excitement, especially now that video conferencing has become so ubiquitous. This activity hits at the heart of participation online -- but it also raises questions in regards to the limits of this sort of participation, especially if it is realized in the form of talk back mechanisms, such as video kiosks, which are simply an addendum to a larger exhibition, and do not influence its scope or shape.

Brooklyn's Issue Project Room will host two evenings of improvisational violin by luminaries Tony Conrad and Genesis P-Orridge this weekend. Organized by filmmaker Marie Losier, the event promises to be a unique collaboration, for sure. For more information, visit the link below.

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More work by Peter Nowogrodzki

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Artist Steve Lambert just added a video to Artists Space's YouTube Commentary Project, above. For this ongoing series, Artists Space invite artists to select a YouTube video and record their own commentary, which is then uploaded to Artists Space's channel. Lambert deviated a bit from this format by hiring actors to read the commentary posted to the video "Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5." His reasoning is that even "high brow" videos on YouTube generate goofy (e.g. "I like the white tuxedos!") and trivial discussions. His version of the video, with the inclusion of the dubbed comments, was then reinserted into the original conversation as a posted comment.

More work by Tauba Auerbach

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More work by Ramsay Stirling

Jonathan Harris, the interactive designer/artist behind We Feel Fine and Universe, kicks off a new project today, according to CR Blog. The project is, as yet, untitled but will follow Harris as he travels solo from southern Africa to eastern China, using only local transportation. He plans to go through 27 countries over the course of this yearlong trip, and will collect stories "in a very specific way." Beyond that, details are vague. Much of his work is a research into modern storytelling through digital mediums, with special attention toward the representation of human emotion through these avenues. The article on CR Blog emphasizes Harris's dismissal of the existence of "masterpieces" in digital and online artwork, while also suggesting that, in attempting to create artworks which are both moving and epically evocative of a larger, ever-shifting zeitgeist, Harris is seeking to achieve something of the like in his own practice.

Join YACHT For New Year's Eve from Jona Bechtolt on Vimeo.

In this short clip, Yacht proposed a "Digital New Year's Eve Party." Videos tagged "YACHTNEWYEARSEVE" or added to the group in Vimeo were assembled into one big video. All the footage went into a performance they staged last night, which they will hopefully put online soon.

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Image: Philip Ross, Junior Return, 2005

It's easy to see Philip Ross as a recent embodiment of an age-old spirit of inquiry, where aesthetics, personal discovery, and scientific knowledge are linked, and all seem to tap into the fertile edges of local industry. In San Francisco that means computing and biotechnology, and Ross's work makes use of both. The transplanted New Yorker has a body of artwork that centers around human interaction with biological materials like fungus, plants, and mollusks. Ross was also curator of the BioTechnique exhibit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and frequently teaches classes and gives lectures, such as one he delivered December 2 to amateur mycologists at the Oakland Museum of California.

His current projects include a long-term effort to grow a large building out of mushrooms, and a new, ongoing salon ("Critter") at the Studio for Urban Projects, a unique cultural center opened in 2008 by Alison Sant and Marina MacDougal. Ross describes the studio as "a collective of collectives," with about five or six contributing programmers, all similarly interested in ecology, education, technology and other related fields. - John Alderman

John Alderman: Can you tell me about Critter and the new center that is hosting it?

Philip Ross: One of the reasons we're interested in urban ecologies is that -- with the writing that's been on the wall for a long time -- we wonder how to make our cities better and more interesting places, so that you don't have to drive out of the city necessarily to get a nature experience. You might just walk down the corner to the Studio for Urban Projects. They've done things like An Unnatural History of Golden Gate Park with walking tours showing how our nature has been constructed.

Often we demonstrate to people how something is done, in a neighborhood space, as opposed to an institution which might carry with it some prohibitions. At Critter, there are fun crossover events, stuff like music or cooking -- interesting things that you might want to do anyway.

Images: Snapshots from the most recent Critter event, a presentation by Adriane Colburn and Amy Balkin

So it's more hands-on and educational?

Absolutely. We're not interested in doing shows so much, but exploring things that people can do themselves or contribute to. The next event that I'm having, called "Clone Home," is a drop-in plant-cloning afternoon. We'll serve tea and have live music, and you can bring a plant and we'll have people who will show you how to make cuttings of it. We'll also have people who do more advanced cloning, like orchid growing, and people who can show you how to make genetically engineered plants if you care to. Just basic stuff showing how easy it is to do this, and how if you have a plant you can make all kinds of other things.

Another event is a kimchee contest. There's a huge repository of knowledge in this city around pickling, particularly around kimchee, and there's like 10,000 people whose grandmother makes the best kimchee – it's sort of like chicken soup – so we have an open call to put it to the test with a cash reward. I'm just thrilled to the idea of having a room with 200 open jars of kimchee in it; like a wall of sound, but this will be a wall of smell.

Is this a coming around to something that existed in the past?

I think so, we're at this strange place in history where there's a sense that something is about to be lost that we're not ready to lose yet. But if you can't go to your mother or father or a cousin to learn that, where do you turn? Especially since some of these things don't seem important enough to learn in college.

To me so much of the stuff that is biotech-y is really low tech-y also, or that people don't realize that they're doing all the time. So if your grandmother is making kimchee or you're doing plant cuttings, you're actually doing something that is not dissimilar to what technologists are doing but with slightly fancier tools or surroundings.

So you're repackaging it?

A lot of it is aesthetic redirection, a framing to say that these are nature studies. Most people feel very alienated from nature and they don't know how to get into it, or what the direction is. The ways that people generally interact with nature are like we're living in some archetype of a '70s version of a '50s version of something that preceded that – there's always a recycling of what's considered natural. But genetic engineering is now a naturalized process, like making plant cuttings – this is the way that we connect with nature. So if you're making a pickle you're keenly aware of what's going on in the microbiology of that thing, despite no one saying that you're working on microbiology.

Wasn't cooking an introduction for you to the use of biological materials in your art?

Yes, it was a big point of entry for me. The processes, materials and techniques that you would use for microbiology are in cooking as well.

Image: Philip Ross, "Pure Culture" Series, 2001-Ongoing

So this follows that spirit of everyday nature by being a more open, event-driven work than the museum shows that you've been involved with?

Nature is a dynamic ongoing thing. When you have art works that stand in for that it becomes kind of strange, so social situations are much more conducive towards art and ecology. You can have a plant cloning session and have a musician right there and they're not necessarily working against each other and can even enhance the situation. If you did that at a gallery you'd have to frame it as something really arty, but in this way you can let that happen out of each person's reaction to it; they learn something and it was a nice experience.

My other reason for doing it as something other than capital A artwork is that you want people to reproduce these things and do them in their own kitchen or show someone else and if it seems friendly and enjoyable then people will probably do it again and invite their friends over to do a kimchee contest or whatever it is. It's something that's easily reproducible and has less of that notion of authority.

But that notion of artistic authority is often a prerequisite for your larger individual works, right?

I work on these mushrooms things for so many years, and if you show them in-process people are disgusted, but if you show people a drawing of it, they go "ahh!" because it looks like art. Kind of like the model of the mushroom building - it's not going to look anything like this at all, but I can show that to a person - an architect engineer or a funder and gain credibility. Of course, if I showed them what it would really look like it would wig them out. But somehow seeing your aesthetic skills at play validates your cockamamie theory.

John Alderman is a writer and creative director living in San Francisco. His most recent book is Core Memory, a visual walk through computer history.

Excerpts from the first international satellite "installation" which was broadcast on New Years Day 1984

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More work by Jon Rafman

Made at the age of 16.

Do you know what a $1000 contribution to Rhizome's Community Campaign will get you? A Liquor Store Bag. This not any ordinary Liquor Store Bag, mind you, but an an original laser cut drawing by artist Michael Mandiberg. The work is part of a series that explores lines, algorithms, and instructions -- and recalls both Sol LeWitt and John F. Simon Jr. The subdued diagonal lines of Liquor Store Bag need to be on your wall, now.

That's not all! Council members also receive a number of additional benefits, including:

* Two complementary VIP tickets to Rhizome 2008 Benefit

* Special curators tour of Rhizome Exhibitions

* Two additional Council events/ per year, including studio visits with artists and conversations with leading technologists and entrepreneurs

SUPPORT RHIZOME AT THE COUNCIL LEVEL, RECEIVE LIQUOR STORE BAG AND EXTRA BENEFITS TODAY!

In an essay hoisted upon every media studies student ever, Walter Benjamin argues that the mechanical reproduction of art works separates the viewer from the original object and therefore diminishes that object's "ritual value." Strangely enough, Stephanie Syjuco's work takes a different approach. She gives us all reproductions, all the time. From paper TV's to faux designer furniture, these readily-reproduced images and things comment on the importance of the originals in our daily lives and the cultural value we've built-up around the notion of originality. Her current solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, entitled "Stephanie Syjuco: Total Fabrications," is full of fake design objects pulled from circulation within the mainstream -- or culturally specific niches therein -- and recreated in a way that references their genesis as well as the contextual implications (or even clichés) of reproduction. In fact, Syjuco's work further delves into the processes of production itself, and it's ritualization. Her reconstructions comment on the origin of materials, their high and low statuses within culture, the technologies through which they operate, and their impacts on systems ranging from the environment to the visual vocabulary of the zeitgeist. This is highly manifest in her ongoing project, The Berlin Wall, in which she pulls what she calls "proxy chunks" of the famous wall out of spaces around the world. These are not souvenirs from the wall, but rather a different kind of facsimile, which Syjuco feels approximates the political and architectural situation of the wall and the promises offered in its deconstruction. The proxy chunks have embarked on their own roadshow, exhibiting in new cities under plaque-capped vitrines, so as to however-falsely invoke the aura of the wall and the hope its demolishedness represents. Her Towards a New Theory of Color Reading takes local Houston Spanish-language, African American, and Filipino American newspapers and translates the text into blocks of color which have been printed on billboards and re-printed on newsprint and given out to museum visitors. The connection between color and race at play is obvious, if not tongue-in-cheek, but the resultant unlabeled illustration of similarities and differences in layout and orientation--and the visually profound invocation of change--allows readers to parse relationships and come to their own conclusions about what it means to bring these papers out of and back into circulation. These and other projects are on view at CAMH through February 22nd, and continuously on the artist's website. - Marisa Olson

Image: Stephanie Syjuco, Towards a New Theory of Color Reading, 2008

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"Video Game Soundtracks 1983-1987" is from the "Title Variable" (2001-) series and was originally released as a CD-R. These compilations researched "the ways that digital technologies have effected music production, both in popular forms as well as in more rarified modern composition" and were each accompanied by an essay. This particular installment assembled video game soundtracks found on the internet. Link to an mp3 of the compilation and the original essay below.

Video Game Soundtracks 1983-1987

Excerpt from the accompanying text: "Until now, these songs have existed solely as digital information: programmed, encoded, extracted, sometimes going through MIDI translation, uploaded and downloaded, finally burned to compact disc; all the while passing through numerous data compressions and file formats. The album release wraps them in plastic and cuts them loose from their origins. In a sense, the shift of context is a liberation; on the other hand, they are stamped with the authenticity accorded to genuine cultural articles (as opposed to mere electronic data)-- and this raises the question of how much an authentic article of culture depends on legitmization by packaging and distribution system of the market."

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(Via UbuWeb)

Thanks to the generosity of artists, readers, curators, critics and all those who rely on Rhizome, we are now $2,500 away from meeting our goal of raising $30,000 by midnight December 31st. All Campaign supporters are listed here; we hope you'll join the ranks today!