<nettime> tell it like it is

[Josephine Berry <josie@metamute.com>]

Envelope-to: josie@metamute.com
From: "Jamie King" <jamie@jamie.com>
To: "Josephine Berry" <josie@metamute.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> *korporat fasc!zt net art questionnaire!*
Date: Sun, 30 May 1999 18:19:15 -0000
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>1) How do you currently support you net art practice?

more tech less talk. pornographic web industry, cumshots to the world. and
there's mummy
gives me a ham roll every chusday. love and leftism. on that note, the
state. once every second friday down the dole office. really.

>2) Do you believe that commercialisation is having an adverse effect on net
>art?

no commerce no tech no tech no turkey mate. reregulate at your peril.
Communicator without Netscape? Explorer without Microsoft? Don't burn your
Berners-Lees, that's my advice to you sonny Jim. & at any rate, TCP/IP
without the industrial meatspace corporation? Coff coff coff, I can see you
trying to sneak out the back way. Mmm, glory-hole days. Less extensions,
more intention. Heroic, isn't it? Hmm? Day before yesterday really. Before
the rest of them came. Just easy enough to pretend it was difficult. Now
everyone knows.

>- If so, what are the determining characteristics of net art that are being
>compromised?

oh, i don't know, just *everything*. thoroughly compromised by the evolution
of net.tech into new scene which leaves us blind. wish it would have stopped
three years ago when once still thoroughly understood darling. Where R our
HTML architectures now? Dissolved in Java and Director. Can you understand
code well enough to parody/ironise/playwith/programwith/ it? Nor me,
neither.
JODI, they're good ---> ANDor;;
if[rANDl;MM*./33rund.dll][THEN}ping{COMSTATS.org};^^%3;] etc. etc. etc. but
I must confess that I hear more and more often that the Net is no longer the
right kind of place for a fragile marxist-leninist dialecticist such as
myself, not the right kind of place for really doing IT. Did I miss a trick?
Determined to catch everything. Determine your practice by what's no longer
possible. OOH THAT'S A GOOD ONE.

>3) Is there something like a discrete net art object which can be bought or
>sold?

I'll take five hundred quid for this one if you like. It's got

1. a limited undertanding of its own context in the general landscape of
everything
2. oozing immature anger of young artist/writer at will to produce new art
product (yike) by formation of hyper-recursive discourse which seeks to
locate
roots of product in anachronism, regards all other net.products with disdain
as though HTTP wasn't net.product as though TCP/IP wasn't net.product as
though browser as though java as though routers as though fat pipes as
though transatlantic backbone were all unnecessary to its very very
important and heroic task of constituting itself as a self-regulating
onanistic entity.
3. shame at even bothering to get angry at others who disregard cultural
conditions of their own artistic practice
4. a certain knowing gallows humour which often characterises the practice
of net art which surely enjoys the intimations of its own doom in the
acceralition of american idiom to imminent global takedown
5. and much, much more

all for $499.99, after tax* - this interesting and informative piece could
be yours in the original HTML specification as supported by NCSA Mosaic 0.1a
(June 1993) and hows that for history buster

*which is for each separate download from
http://jamie.com/netart/$499.999.html. An online payment system is offered,
but it will not work properly because it's only art and I won't even bother
trying to follow through. The concept is quite enough, thankyou. Jesus.

>4) Does the sale of a piece of net art necessarily alter the work in and of
>itself?

No, no, no. Buy me. I'll still be the same tommorow. Look at me, can't you
see I'm a bit thin and in need of a Pork Chop or two?

One day I will get fat to bursting la la la on the riches of the maaaaaaah
megaindustrialised monolithic corporation by dissing them to fuck a lot.
neeeeeeeuuuuh. No it hasn't changed me. I'm still the same two dimensional
HTML page I ever was, just a roadsign on the globalinformationsuperINATION

(by the way, if you think *this* is naive, you should see what a real one
looks like!)

>5) Do you believe that institutions should get involved in the preservation
>of "classic' net art works?

Yes. especially me. preferably same institutions which produce should also
consume, archive and document also. then everyone knows where they're at.

>6) Is obsolescence an inherent characteristic of net art?

Do you mean by this the incipient decay of instrumental rationalism as we
approach then end of the C20th? Is server-death a sign of the signified
always flitting from its sign? This is of course a central part of my
practice. Jamie.com goes down at least twice a month, when all old work is
scrapped and put into the 'server death' folder where work which has had
obsolesence and error coded into it can be viewed in the light of its
inherent obsolescence and err0neousness. the end.

>7) To your knowledge, what is the highest price ever fetched for a piece of
>net art? What was the artwork in question?

My word. I think it was back in 1992 when Hurteq Spinvurt posted the
manifesto-like 'Declaration of the Obsolesence of The User' on a the
art.cod.rt website in eastern ruritania. There were immediate shockwaves
around the net which in those days of course only contained sensible and
interesting people. I remember saying to Hurteq, 'my my what a big one
you've done.' He only nodded mutely, knowing that he'd already sold the
piece to his own Grandmother for nine thousand, six hundred and thirty
french francs that the old tart happended to have in her cupboard in a small
cottage that she was living in in Eastern Czechoslovakia. In those days that
was a pretty big wedge, I can tell you. Hurteq immediately
went out and bought himself a second-hand Mercedes with cream leather
upholstery which he's still driving around Eastern Berlin today. only now
he's completely
addicted to amphetamines and black hash. That's the commercialisation of the
net
for you.

>8) How do you see the privatisation of the Internet affecting net art?

I refer you to the answer I gave some moments ago. First commercial
browser=1991. First piece of Net.art? NSF  backbone sell off = 1993/4.
Heroic period? Bunch of arse.

>9) Do you consider the Internet to be a public or private sphere?

oh, you know, both. just like RL.<grin> and it'S NOT A SPHERE, it's a
Tetrahedron.sorrysorrysorrycrapjoke

>
>10) How does your answer to question 9 influence your opinions about the
>State's responsibility toward funding net art?

question9question9question9question9question9question9question9question9ques
tion9
question9question9question9question9question9question9question9question9ques
tion9
question9question9question9question9question9question9question9question9
question9question9question9question9question9question9question9question9ques
tion9
question9question9question9question9
question9question9question9question9
question9question9question9    question9question9
question9question9question9
question9


FUCK YOUR question9, FUCK THE STATE AND FUCK YOU, question9er

and fuckyour question 10 as well

>11) How important has the Open Foundation's patronage been to net art's
>development?

Don't know anything about it mate. I DO MY ART IN THE


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AND YOU'D be best to fucking accept it, all right?


__________
this way art

Signed the Undersigned
*
Josephine Berry
home and away
15 Durant St
London
E2 7BP
*
h:0171 613 2332
w:0171 377 6949
*
www.yourserver.co.uk/crashmedia

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