<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><SPAN style="">I find the fact that David and Cynthia posted their questions (about television and the circulation of the art market respectively) to the list around the same time quite interesting. And while they serve two different threads of thought there may be some overlaps to consider. <O:P></O:P></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><SPAN style=""><SPAN style="">David makes the astute observation about television “dropping out of most new media discussions.” I found this to be the case in my own research on Stan VanDerBeek who may be a case study of how TV gave way to other networked-based media. <SPAN style=""><SPAN style="">He honed his animation techniques that appeared in his experimental films while working on the 1950s broadcast television children’s show “Winky Dink and You”—a proto-interactive TV show where kids were encouraged to draw along with the program on plastic sheets that would cover their TV screens at home. By the 1960s he was writing letters to the Chairman of CBS seeking to be an artist in residency at the network. Clearly, VanDerBeek wasn’t alone in his enthusiasm for the potential of network television, the projects initiated at WGBH in Boston including VanDerBeek, Kaprow, Dan Graham and many others are a testament to this particular moment. But then the 80s does become a terminal point as David points out whether due to the rise of Cable or Ronald Reagan or both, but that history I think is uniquely mapped in a publication like Afterimage which tracked the heated debates around media, art, and issues of access. In the case of VanDerBeek, he seemed to have found burgeoning computer science departments more hospitable hosts for his residencies and in the late 70s and early 80s and turned to using digital animation techniques and computer networking equipment rather than television. His many published articles and notes always seem to stress the need for artists “to use what you can get your hands on.” I think the first line of David’s book sums it up, “Television tames the comet by turning light into private property.”</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><SPAN style=""> <SPAN style="">Cynthia’s post about Art Basel and a broken food chain may be served by David’s book too. Instead of saying the general artmarket, it might be more specific to talk about what marketers have termed the “Grand Tour 2007” in Europe this summer which is boasting events like Art Basel, but also the Venice Biennale, Documenta 12 and Skulptur Munster. The “grand tour” that Vogel outlines in the article mentioned by Cynthia could best be described using David’s analysis of a “closed circuit.” With apologies for short-circuiting David’s well crafted arguments. Like television, the “Grand Tour” was conceived as a closed circuit “folding network into commodity and vice versa.” </SPAN><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In<SPAN style="">stead of expanding, biennials & fairs often restrict the dialogue about contemporary art to specific types of artists, with the result that the same handful of artists keeps appearing in these types of venues over and over again. So I think raising the note about “Quality” is a total red herring. The network of people that fuel the Grand Tour function as endorsers, or maybe what Pierre Bourdieu would have described as an act of consecration, bestowing value on something that had no prior intrinsic value. Then the role of the curator within this context is a literal filter, making a value judgment while at the same time conferring value.</SPAN></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><SPAN style=""><SPAN style="">Not to overly trumpet David’s book but he does also offer another important reminder… rather than creating an IKEA for the art market or turning to the internet to create an alternate to the art gallery – (which Charles Saatchi has already managed to co-op) the history of TV and video art in the US outlined by David is a clear example that there’s no cohesive ‘alternative’ to the market. Nor do I think it’s as simple as choosing to participate or not. We only have to read the writing of diverse artists such as Renée Green or Martha Rosler to get of sense of the disparate tracks that the issue of distribution and access can take. I am inspired by London Film-maker’s Co-operative and Anthology Film Archive; in the 1980s Sankofa and the Black Audio Film Collective; and more recently, organizations such as Rhizome.org and others, which, <I>while not thwarting the system, have offered up different paths</I></SPAN><SPAN style=""> beyond “The Grand Tour.”</SPAN></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none">--Gloria Sutton</P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><A href="mailto:suttong@humnet.ucla.edu">suttong@humnet.ucla.edu</A> <O:P></O:P></P><BR><DIV><DIV>On Jun 19, 2007, at 4:08 PM, David Joselit wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <DIV><FONT color="#000000">Hello:<BR> <BR> My name is David Joselit, and based on my new book,<I> Feedback: Television Against Democracy</I> (</FONT><FONT color="#0000FF"><U><A href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=111">http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=111</A><SPAN></SPAN>09</U></FONT><FONT color="#000000">), Trebor invited me to pose a few questions to the list.<BR> <BR> One of my motivations for working on television of the initial network era (whose terminal point, in my view, occurs when cable becomes the dominant delivery system) was my surprise at how TV seems to drop out of most new media discussions even though its genesis as a medium, like radio before it, is very similar in its structure to that of the Internet: military research and development leading to a technology with uncertain use value; adoption and dissemination by enthusiasts; and commercial enclosure. I was particularly struck in my research by how closely the early discourse around cable-when it was still based in community access-mirrors the early claims made for the Internet. Is TV irrelevant, or does it embody a possible future for the Internet?<BR> <BR> And secondly, as an art historian I'm attracted by the prospect of displacing our analysis of images from what they mean-i.e., their face value-to<I> how they circulate</I>, how they get concentrated (visual tumors even) as icons that may create publics (think of the Abu Ghraib photos, but, for those of you who are American and old enough, Campbells soup!). Is it possible to do for images what Franco Moretti has done for the novel-create a kind of political geography or economy? Obviously television and the Internet are two important public "spaces" structured by the circulation of images.<BR> <BR> Thanks for any thoughts on these questions.<BR> <BR> David </FONT><BR> <FONT color="#000000"></FONT></DIV> <X-SIGSEP><PRE>--
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