thingist October 2010

thingist@mailman.thing.net

5 participants
5 discussions

What about a subjective, evolving, archive?
by Justin Berry 18 Feb '12

18 Feb '12

I am new to THE THING, having only become involved in the last year or so, working with W and Christoph on The.Thing.Net and the White Slab screenings. I became involved almost by accident--I was recently out of graduate school and making non-salable and non-exhibitable work, mostly web stuff, and feeling a bit chagrined about the art world and its various camps of ideology. I was randomly surfing the web and sending out feeler emails to every organization I could find that was involved in New Media. Wolfgang was the one who answered back. I had no idea what THE THING actually was. I went to look it up online and struggled to find information, only coming up with numerous references to someTHING but never an actual history or a literal description. The most glaring example of THE THING online was the Post, and I think enough has been said about that. It took a long time of being involved, listening in conversation, and attending talks by Wolfgang, etc. in order to really arrive at a sense of what THE THING was and what it represented. If it were not so tragic it would be humorously ironic that an organization that did so much to galvanize thinking about the internet as an artistic and political medium has no functioning legacy online. I think that a proper and academic archive could potentially happen, but it will take a long time and a great deal of work. The nature of academia is to quest after a kind of perfection, to create a source of objective authority. Great! That would be awesome. In a few years it will be something we can all be proud of. I think something different needs to be planned in the interim. What about creating a subjective archive? What about creating a nexus for the stories and narratives of THE THING. It could be a relatively simple interface, something like a data or tag cloud full of links to various stories, where the only hierarchy might be determined by font size. People with a story to tell or an event to document could create their own HTML page, with the only standard requirement being a ‘back to home’ button of some kind. The advantage is that this would allow each person’s ‘history’ to be acknowledged without necessarily privileging one or the other. One link might be called ‘eToy war’ and could be an account of those events while another might be called ‘Justin Berry’ and include simply my own experiences. These pages don’t even have to share styling, though we could certainly provide a CSS sheet for people to use if they chose. One person’s page might be a video, while another person could choose to simply write an essay; an event might be documented with only a series of contextless pictures. Something like this embraces the history of THE THING as a forum and a platform. This does not have to exist in opposition to a formal archive; it can be an accompaniment to that project. It also requires less energy to happen. Once a stable and functioning interface is set up it can be left to individuals to create pages as they wish. Each contribution can be considered on its own terms. It does not have to be ‘finished’, it can be an ever evolving project as new pages are added. Perhaps this is only a selfish wish. I would like to hear the stories and see the history and I would like to have that kind of experience sooner than later. There should be an online presence of THE THING’s legacy. In my experience every time people attempt to create an authoritative history of something there are a whole lot of histories on the table and it takes a long time to negotiate which ones stick around. Justin Berry -- Justin Berry (713) 302 9599 www.waymakergallery.com JustinBerryArt(a)gmail.com Waymaker(a)WaymakerGallery.com

15 29

THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD
by w 20 Oct '10

20 Oct '10

THE THING @ WHITE SLAB PALACE: http://post.thing.net/node/3200 mike can't come, but perhaps andy comes by. we're showing the peer to peer version, which you can also download here if you are not in NY or can't come. http://vodo.net/yesmen if you download it make sure to donate a few bucks, they can use it to defend themselves against charges brought on by the U.S. Department of Commerce. http://theyesmen.org/chamber http://www.eff.org/cases/chamber-commerce-v-servin please rsvp and come early. seating is limited. greetings, wolfgang

2 1

The sick movies of Reynold Reynolds
by w 15 Oct '10

15 Oct '10

THE THING @ WHITE SLAB PALACE presents: The sick movies of Reynold Reynolds Curated by Christoph Draeger Monday, October 18, 8 pm White Slab Palace Back Room 77 Delancey Street Southeast corner of Allen and Delancey Reynold Reynolds was born in 1966 in Central Alaska. During his undergraduate schooling at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Reynolds initially studied physics receiving a bachelor's degree under the professorship of Carl Wieman (Physics Nobel Laureate 2001). Changing his focus to studio art he remained two more years in Boulder to study under experimental film maker Stan Brakhage. Reynolds then finished an M.F.A. in New York City at the School of Visual Arts. Influenced early on by philosophy and working primarily with 16mm and Super 8mm film as an art medium he has developed a common film grammar based on transformation, consumption and decay. Reynolds' depictions frequent disturbed psychological and physical themes, increasingly provoking the viewer's participation and dismay. In 2003 Reynold Reynolds was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and in 2004 he was invited to The American Academy in Berlin with a studio at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien for one year. In 2007 he received the German Kunstfonds support to develop two projects in Berlin in 2008. In 2010 he will have a eight month residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany). Program: Burn (2003) Burn is a stunning evocation of those unspoken, unconfronted somethings, those secrets, worries and lies, forming a force which is always a part of the fabric of everyday interactions; at first niggling at the edges, then - provoked by a word or a gesture - suddenly searing through everything and everyone in its path (Belinda McKeon, The Irish Times) The Drowning Room (2001, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley) "A sequence of domestic vignettes from the sunken suburbs. In the house, the stagnant atmosphere has slowly thickened to liquid. The inhabitants try to carry on as normal but beyond the borders of asphyxiation, communication is limited and expression difficult. Filmed entirely underwater in a submerged house to create an atmosphere unlike any other film.” Six Apartments (2007) Six isolated people live in their apartments, side by side, oblivious to each other and the violent process of deterioration happening to the earth, to them, and their apartments. Secret Life (2008) A woman is trapped in an apartment that becomes alive. Her thoughts escape from her and come to life growing like plants out into the space around her, living, searching, overtaking her apartment, wild threatening her. Secret Machine (2009) The same protagonist from Secret Life encounters an antagonist that is studying her, measuring her body and comparing her to units of space and time. Six Easy Pieces (2010) Six Easy Pieces is the last part of the Secrets Trilogy, a three-part cycle exploring the imperceptible conditions that frame life.

1 0

T&C
by James Allan 12 Oct '10

12 Oct '10

It looks like the history is being recorded but I wonder about the email archive; particularly who owns it since this may be a key point when it comes time to archiving it. Wolfgang, are you the, ahem, proud owner of my intellectual property? (Btw, the delays in moderation do little to facilitate activity on the list. It's like playing tennis by post).

4 4

schliengensief at thing at white slab
by w 10 Oct '10

10 Oct '10

ok, this list has degenerated in my private thing spam list. but what can i do? nobody writes anything anymore. come over on monday, this should be good: http://the.thing.net/home.html later, w

4 3

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

thingist October 2010