TIA 2005: Art from Ephemera (Mail Art and the Internet)
Text and Image Arts
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Fall 2007 - Spring 2009

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Henrik Drescher @ UMass Dartmouth

One of the artists we looked at in class, thanks to Jess's presentation, Henrik Drescher, has a show up at the University Art Gallery at UMass Dartmouth. The show is open until October 26th. New Bedford is probably a bit of a commute for most of you, I'm guessing, car-less college students, so maybe we can discuss an optional field trip in class on Monday. Here's a link with more info.

By the way, the discussion threads so far have been great - keep it coming and I'll share my bit as well over the next couple of days...

1 comment:

MarynLeigh said...

So I'm not exactly sure how to get to the newest discussion question, or if there is one even posted, but this is my response for the 10/27/08 readings and interview.
Dieter Daniels' "The Art of Communication: From Mail Art to e-mail" discusses Mail Art as a "new medium...testing the limits of the definition of art." It discusses art as a collective approach that to me, as a Women's Studies minor, plays much into feminist theory and practice, especially that established in the 1960s and 70s under second wave feminism. In this respect, it confirms Daniels' comparison between the 1960s and 1990s (or even today, almost 10 years later). The term "anarchy" almost seems out-dated in reference to the "net, growing and proliferating at collective rates," yet the emphasis on the self as perpetuated by capitalism and the male hegemony of patriarchy (and hierarchical power structures) still very much permeates throughout our culture and society. Less "worth" is placed on the collective whole, and it thus becomes an alternative method of use, and thus subversive and therefore seen as "anarchy" in is opposition to the hegemonic cultural norms.

Jon Ippolito's "Ten Myths of Internet Art" discusses "online art as a major movement with a global audience." I very much liked how online art here is described as an emerging art form, which special attention must be used to collect and keep track of. Again here it is proposed as a kind of "anarchy" medium, online art being describes as, "a creative misuse of technology...peeling off its idealogical wrapper," as well as highlighting the juxtaposition of the "democratizing contact made possible by the internet and the geographic exclusivity of the analog art world."

The online interview between Carrie McLaren (Stay Free!) and John Peretti, participant and creator pf Bored at Work Network (BWN) I found very interesting. His sociological approach to how things spread on the internet i find quite prfound, and laughed when i discoverd he is responsible for the "Rejection Line", a phone number I am familiar with, and can recall from personal experience the effect of its popularity and use in the teen high school demographic. What spoke to me most in the article was specifically three of Peretti's responses. One,"thinking about popularity as bad is a good way to lose. If you're trying to have an impact on the word and achieve certain goals, being popular is a good thing. Of course, it should not be an end in itself." Two, "when information is open, it's harder to manipulate people with it." And three, "I enjoy working in morally ambiguous spaces. I find that is where most of the interesting stuff happens." I think that in the art world in general, as artists, we are encourages to work within these "morally ambiguous" space no matter what medium we choose. Personally i think we're moving into an age where conceptual art and opening up new channels of knowledge, versus the exclusivity of the collection of major names in the art world (and the main-stream revenue theses artists receive).