[Nettime-bold] Re: RHIZOME_RAW: GENERATION FLASH: Lev / Sawad

[Nmherman@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/29/2002 3:21:35 PM Central Daylight Time, klima@echonyc.com writes:


> the questions i'm posing actually are very much a
> conversation about interaction


Hey John, you mind if I check if I'm getting unsubbed?  That sentence you wrote is a grotesque burlesque of you as an artist.  

I went to see glasbead, so here goes.  It's for one a G2K logo-image.  The math, the symbolism, the venue, and context are weakening as well.  

Your glasbead goes out, or between, yes?  And EARTH goes around, as I hear.  You're manipulating the idea of the globe, mapping it, with a particular aesthetic; yet your conclusions--if I may ask this of your work--are not artistically masterful in my fervent opinion.  

Now, as in cello art for example, I can't judge in the higher levels of skill.  Maybe there is a need for your vision of earth, your art; yet perhaps the need is inflated.  In my opinion you are not a very good artist.  You code, you animate, why would I care if you do?  You have no authority over me.  

For those who do not know, when I argue directly with certain people on Rhizome, they threaten to bail out to Thingist in protest.  So, negotiations are tense and there is little hope for any compromise.  

There is also the question of eroding brand quality.  Rhizome is a brand, Thing is a brand.  Check the fine print.  If you join, you join for good.  They are like rival publishing houses in my opinion, minor but ambitious and backed with talent or talents, who can say.  There are editors, and they exert editorial policy.  There are also moderators, as in any political group.  So, let's say Rhizome is Republican and Thing is Democratic, and be fun chaps about it.  Or else, continue with political debate.

The internet is changing because of Genius 2000 and ideas like it.  Critics with reputations, careers, and ambition are competing in the free-market-funded market of culture as we live it today; here in the US and maybe there too?  Read Woodcutters about the Austrian art-grant set in the 60's in Austria.  As a professor of mine--Gayle Whittier, a brilliant Shakespeare scholar at SUNY-Binghamton--once said, "academics are sheep with fangs."  In general I have found this to be true.

Perhaps the philosophical differences between Rhizome and The Thing are bitter yet bred of conviction, and should be respected.  Many fear the demise of Rhizome; some fear the demise of The Thing.  People value their time, and I accept that.  But this situation, confusing as it is, comes down to one issue:  censorship.

"For who is God, but them that speak the truth; and let no man tear asunder what God hath planted."--Ecclesiastes 4:16-18

Max Herman
www.electrichands.com/genius2000

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