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Hello everybody,<br>
<br>
OK guys, two options:<br>
We either dive 4500 ft deep and put a plug on The Thing, which is
currently polluting the ocean, OR we have to start building a new
platform!<br>
<br>
(for the new listeners all initial posts before thingist below...)<br>
<br>
Thanks for all the necessary, detailed additions, explanations and
corrections, W! <br>
<br>
Wolfgang carries my question on <i>how </i><i></i>to continue a more
existential
level by adding ...<i>why </i>to continue?<br>
So far most reactions point towards the decision of closing the blog.<br>
<br>
My point in first place was a very practical one: To make a decent
appearance of the archive,<br>
BUT at the same time remain some kind of pilot flame burning.<br>
<br>
Inevitably I opened a can of worms here..especially since everything
points back to the good old days.<br>
<br>
As for considering new concepts / projects - GH I very much like your
idea to introduce a featured artist page.<br>
I am a big fan of VVORK - for being such a radically simple (mainly)
emerging art collection, image only, <br>
No text (just names and links) a vitalizing refreshing tool <br>
for arts/culture academics who constantly OD on art criticism.<br>
I could imagine some curatorial ping pong concept, designed in a
similar simplicity, image only, nonetheless with option for comments /
responses.<br>
<br>
GH, you add in the end:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Personally
I think it would be more effective and have a certain gossip/shock
value if you start with a new project that is all about energy and
doesn't rest on any historical reference to previous faded glory.</blockquote>
On which I disagree. It's not that there is a fresh new project in
place here and somebody wants to built upon an existing and
well-respected network/platform. <br>
It's rather the opposite - making something out of the existing
network itself.<br>
<br>
Speaking of "building upon" and to continue W's and my list of where
THING activities have evolved - only look at this John Hershend guy
and THE THING MONTHLY that has now completely hijacked the name even
for events in NY:<br>
<font color="#000099"><br>
"Join us in NY on Friday, May 14th for the Public Release of Starlee's
Kine's issue 10 of THE THING. Starlee Kine and friends will be on hand<br>
offering onion-cutting demonstrations (using her issue as the cutting
board),... Housing Works Bookstore Café 7:00-8:30PM, 126 Crosby
Street, NYC 10012"</font><br>
<br>
No silly finger pointing intended maybe I just want to I add a drip of
(gulf) oil into the fire...<br>
<br>
Re: Facebook links and interaction with social media <br>
absolutely not necessary in my opinion. A Facebook antidote? Despite
debates on privacy, I dont really understand the big fuss here. What
has one to do with the other?<br>
People come to fb to giggle with (or at) their friends or -as some
THING members- becoming friends with Paul the octopus. That's it.<br>
<br>
So...any more thoughts on GH's proposal of a dedicated featured artists
project idea? <br>
<br>
©<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Hi.
A few days ago I got together with Jan and we started to brainstorm
about possible future scenarios for the online presence of THE THING
(we are in Berlin, therefore no W involved)
The reason is the overall appearance of THE THING ...without organs,
if you want [update: although I should/could re-phrase that as White
Slap Palace event may get very active soon...]
However, after lots occasional talks with Wolfgang and huge chunks of
time passing I finally want to take this initiative and propose a
"clean up" - something we start talking about as the first subject
after the return of thingist.
I would assume that most of you agree with me to say that the legacy
of THE THING it too important to leave it with a mainly abandoned
two-person art blog - especially unmoderated , and in a sad default
drupal design that has as much charm as a blog of a New Jersey dentist
association. Other than that there are too many loose ends flying
around: thingist, events. thing.net , etc.
Jan and me discussed possible options:
1) Make a distinctive separation between archive and active areas,
re-design the blog into a more complex forum and divide event post,
documentation of thing events, art reviews and hopefully a few more
fresh initiatives. ( I had a loose idea for a THING MONTHLY
section, which I call a curator's ping pong project)
Oh and touch up the ugly drupal of course
2) Get rid of the blog entirely and make it all archive, but with a
decent documentation, gathering material that maybe could also be the
touchstone for the long planned print documentation of the history of
THE THING.
I have no info on the stats of post.thing, [W?] how many people
actually read these art reviews of post.thing.net. I have to admit
that for myself I had stopped even checking out this blog for a long
time. But I guess that's the normal progression of everybody cutting
back on online time (hence the radical disappearance of discussion
lists)
If we look back, so much of THE THING's activity of the recent years
has moved into parallel universes, as for art review, there's the old
art net, then Rhizome of course and recently Marc Lafia's arts+
culture, then 16 beaver group for events/talks and we-make-money for
silly media art pranks. (don't get me wrong: I love Regine's work)
among many others.
If we admit there are so many others that do the same activity,
probably even better, why not shutting down the blog and rather making
THE THING a very decent and well-designed archive.
I really admire the hard working Hamburg people among Connie Sollfrank
that picked up the old THING satellite initiative, founded THING
Hamburg, which was highly active for 3 years, then turned it right
away into an archive.
[W, I certainly and consciously left out all ISP and editions
activities here, so ultimately an index page would always need to make
the distinction between archive and active areas..]
Would be nice to hear some feedback on that form all of you.
ahoy,
©
--
caspar stracke
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.videokasbah.net">www.videokasbah.net</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
dear caspar et al,
i agree with you on almost all counts. post.thing.net has been taken
over by two egomaniacs who have nothing in common with anything the
thing ever stood for, but are using it as a springboard for better and
bigger publishing opportunities. i did let it pass, because nothing
else was going on and the thing has a tradition of being an orphanage
anyway (blackhawk's words). but you are right, it's not a good idea to
become associated with people who only abuse the platform for their own
ends and think they are doing you a favor. page views on post usually
range from 150 to 2500 (average i estimate at 1000 reads), not bad, not
great either, but who cares about the eyeballs if we don't care about
these sycophantic reviews in the first place? so i have no problem
shutting it down. there are exceptions though, when alan moore or
joseph nechvatal post something it's usually well worth the read.
archiving bbs.thing.net (1997 - 2004) has stalled since the media branch
of the lbi has been shut down in january. max and walter started
restoring the bbs, but as far as i can tell nothing has happened since
last year. gunther reisinger tried to get the unversity of graz to take
over the project and finish the job, but i really don't know what has
been going on lately and nobody bothers to update me on that account.
i have no idea how to finish this job at the moment. it's a drag, since
it would be a great historical resource.
in the meantime i've been thinking how to keep on going and started to
develop <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://auctionthing.net">http://auctionthing.net</a> with 4 partners (daniel burckhardt,
daniel newburg, phillip brandt, rainald schumacher). the idea is to
bring some more liquidity into the secondary art market and at the same
time support independent art projects. the agreement between the
partners is that at least 10% of the proceeds will support thing
activities. we expect to have auctionthing ready for action by
september.
so ok, the priority seems to be to get the archive finished and save as
much as possible for posterity. maybe max or walter can offer an answer
as to where we stand on that front.
second, what to do right now and in the future. in regards to online
stuff... frankly i am suffering from internet fatique, so i am not the
right person to address this issue now. i don't give a damn about
facebook and twitter and i think anybody who's participating in this
social networking data mining crap should not even be allowed a thing
membership. i reluctantly agreed to have a thing facebook fan (spam)
page set up to reach some of these morons, but i already regret this
decision, since it implies tacit approval of facebook policies (and they
are the exact opposite of what the thing ever stood for).
one has to ask the question what kind of socio-cultural intervention
makes any sense at this historical moment. for the last ten years i
have retreated to the ivory tower of making art and was happy just to
concern myself with aesthetic issues. maybe the best thing is to start
small. we can do a film and video program at white slab in the fall. no
pain, no pressure. then we have time to think about what kind of
program, publication or on-line presence we really need. as to the
latter, i agree that what we have now is a mess, but all this crap was
done haphazardly without any competent coders. in the past the recipe
for our success was the inclusion of competent programmers as equal
partners in the whole decision making process.
the big question still looms: why the effort and what for? there are
many issues out there that that still tick me off. generally, i'm not
happy with the state of the arts. on the one hand you have the academic
part of the art world that overwhelmingly privileges purely
socio-historical aspects of art. then, on the other, you have the market
place, drunk with spectacle, speculation and narcissism. so "real" art
is caught in this horrible pincer movement and i would like to have a
tool or a medium to fight back. nothing wrong with well executed social
activism (like the yes men, who i greatly admire, for example) or
selling art for a decent price to make a living, but there is more to
art than just the socio-political dimension or speculative market value
respectively. so in order to step in and do something about this, i
suppose you need a serious group effort of like-minded people and my
problem is that i don't know if there are enough like-minded people.
it's quite an effort to work towards cultural change, a herculean, if
not sisyphean task. sometimes it just looks easier or more realistic to
make your statement with your art work and that's it. there is only so
much you can do in this short life.
as you say, there are things out there that picked up where we left off.
here are my examples:
* cabinet magazine, which is doing an outstanding job combining art,
literature, essays... it's the kind of mix i always liked.
* e-flux, after shrewdly and relentlessly making inroads into the upper
echelons of the art world's shakers and makers association, is now
positioning itself as the critical stand-in for the status quo, kind of
an updated artforum (now that's the place i didn't want to got to).
* our old "rival" rhizome at the new museum; don't know much what they
are doing these days, but a couple of months ago they hosted an
interesting performance orchestrated by goldin and senneby.
ok, to come to an end, where does all this leave us? the thing had its
glory days. it stood for something. it was more an attitude than
anything else, some kind of anti-authoritarian cyber-punk thing and we
played it well. it was fun with all the clumsy antagonists we enjoyed
fighting, from Mattel to DOW to eToys. and it was also fun to explore
this new medium with all the artists who made their first tentative
moves there. it's history now and it will be a tough act to follow.
but i am open for suggestions.
best,
wolfgang
ps: if nobody objects i would like to carry this over to thingist and
open it up to a larger crowd. if you haven't subscribed yet here's
where you do it: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist">https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist</a>
thingist - the facebook antidote.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">gh comments:
<div>I agree the blog/art reviews should be retired. I
think that the thing should do a very simple concept/interface design.
I think the thing should have one project either by a group or an
individual artist featured for four months. I think a very simple rss
forum can go along with this. Maybe a few people, writers, theorists
etc.. who are interested in the project can be invited to the
discussion. I also think that the thing needs to have a simple way to
interact with various social media from facebook, linkedIn, to
academia.edu as a push alert. </div>
<div>more commentary below;</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div>On Jul 11, 2010, at 11:47 AM, Caspar Stracke wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">1)
Make a distinctive separation between archive and active areas,
re-design the blog into a more complex forum and divide event post,
documentation of thing events, art reviews and hopefully a few more
fresh initiatives. ( I had a loose idea for a THING MONTHLY section,
which I call a curator's ping pong project)<br>
Oh and touch up the ugly drupal of course<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>
</span></blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This goes along with my notion of one project every four months.
Maybe this is an information project. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br>
2)
Get rid of the blog entirely and make it all archive, but with a decent
documentation, gathering material that maybe could also be the
touchstone for the long planned print documentation of the history of
THE THING.<br>
</span></blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I absolutely agree with this idea of getting rid of the blog
idea. Blogs are dead. </div>
<blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br>
I
have no info on the stats of post.thing, [W?] how many people actually
read these art reviews of post.thing.net. I have to admit that for
myself I had stopped even checking out this blog for a long time. But I
guess that's the normal progression of everybody cutting back on online
time (hence the radical disappearance of discussion lists)<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>
<br>
If
we look back, so much of THE THING's activity of the recent years has
moved into parallel universes, as for art review, there's the old art
net, then Rhizome of course and recently Marc Lafia's arts+ culture,
then 16 beaver group for events/talks and we-make-money for silly media
art pranks. (don't get me wrong: I love Regine's work) among many
others.<br>
If we admit there are so many others that do the same
activity, probably even better, why not shutting down the blog and
rather making THE THING a very decent and well-designed archive.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>
<br>
<br>
</span></blockquote>
As
far as I understand W was trying to get the thing archive up and
running with the help of a Ars Electronica but it only lasted for a
little while. That's a really difficult project. </div>
<div><br>
<blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">I
really admire the hard working Hamburg people among Connie Sollfrank
that picked up the old THING satellite initiative, founded<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a
href="http://www.thing-hamburg.de/">THING Hamburg</a>, which was
highly active for 3 years, then turned it right away into an archive.<br>
<br>
</span></blockquote>
<div>I like the idea of doing a time targeted project and then
archiving it. 3 years is a good goal!</div>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br>
[W,
I certainly and consciously left out all ISP and editions activities
here, so ultimately an index page would always need to make the
distinction between archive and active areas..]</span></blockquote>
<br>
</div>
<div>Personally
I think it would be more effective and have a certain gossip/shock
value if you start with a new project that is all about energy and
doesn't rest on any historical reference to previous faded glory.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<br>
<span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div style=""><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div style=""><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div style=""><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div style="">
<div>
<div>G.H. Hovagimyan</div>
<div><a href="http://nujus.net/%7Egh">http://nujus.net/~gh</a></div>
<div><a href="http://artistsmeeting.org">http://artistsmeeting.org</a></div>
<div><a href="http://turbulence.org/Works/plazaville">http://turbulence.org/Works/plazaville</a></div>
</div>
<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder">
</div>
</div>
</span></div>
</span></div>
</span></div>
</span></blockquote>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> </pre>
</blockquote>
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