thingist September 2010

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1 participants
4 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

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Pirate Cinema Berlin joins THE THING @ WHITE SLAB PALACE
by w 30 Sep '10

30 Sep '10

Pirate Cinema Berlin joins THE THING @ WHITE SLAB PALACE Mon, Oct 4, 2010, from 8 pm Delancey & Allen (southeast corner) Pirate Cinema Berlin would like to share with you some of their recent discoveries at the margins of documentary film practice. Ferdinand Khittl - The Parallel Street (1962) "The Parallel Street is one of the most mysterious pioneer films of the New German Cinema. It was produced by GBF, a production company for innovative industrial and promotional films and received awards in inter national film festivals. French critic Robert Benayoun called it 'a philosophical thriller, a western of meditation which compensates for a whole year of inevitable manifestations of stupidity,' Jacques Rivette put it on his list of the most important films of 1968. [Pirate Cinema] presents for the very first time this 'unjustly forgotten masterpiece of the New German Cinema' (Martin Brady)." -- Edition Filmmuseum, Munich Gerhard Benedikt Friedl - Did Wolff von Amerongen Commit Bankruptcy Offenses? (2004) "The most remarkable discovery in recent German-language cinema: Gerhard Friedl's first feature is a hypnotic visual puzzle at the interface of documentary, essay film and pulp fiction. On the soundtrack: an unflinchingly 'objective' account of the labyrinthine genealogies, criminal involvements and afflictions of Germany’s economic leaders in the 20th century. On the screen: pans and tracking shots through European financial centers, production sites and landscapes. The sheer depth and crispness of these images is a treat in itself; a transformation into cinégénie of what artists like Candida Höfer or Jeff Wall have done by means of still photography. At times, image and sound are aligned, at others they just miss each other. They invariably suggest correlations. Paranoia? Irony? Can the prosaic, criminal state of affairs of a modern economy be depicted at all? Pierre Rissient, the French film historian, puts the film where it belongs: 'Fritz Lang would have loved it!' -- mubi.com Patrick Keiller - The Dilapidated Dwelling (2000) "The Dilapidated Dwelling ... [is] focused, quite precisely, on the question of the systemic logic of capitalist markets. A television documentary, it was made with the intention, in part, of influencing government policies towards housing. It remains some of the features of the Robinson films, including the journey/investigation format and a minimal fictional frame; however, these aspects are less pronounced that they are in the earlier films. Keiller describes The Dilapidated Dwelling as a 'comparatively straightforward televisions documentary' which he originally conceived as a 'piece of architectural research.' It contains a combination of archival footage and interviews with experts - many academic - linked together by a narration which circles around an investigation into the state and prospects of residential dwellings ('old space')." -- Paul Dave, Visions of England: class and culture in contemporary cinema, 2006 () >< pirate cinema berlin www.piratecinema.org

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THE THING @ WHITE SLAB PALACE: Monday screenings
by w 24 Sep '10

24 Sep '10

THE THING @ WHITE SLAB PALACE Colab Documents from the End of the '70s Monday, September 27, 8pm Delancy and Allen (southwest corner) Raw courage or criminal stupidity? Early adventures in musical performance and alternative space making. "X Magazine Benefit" (1978/2009; 12 min., b/w) Nearly all-black Super-8 document of the pre-No Wave concert with Contortions, DNA, Boris Policeband shot by Alan Moore; edit by Coleen Fitzgibbon “The Real Estate Show” (1979/80; 28 min., b/w) On-site uncut video of artists setting up the insurgent art exhibition that spawned ABC No Rio shot by Mitch Corber

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THE THING @ WHITE SLAB PALACE: monday screenings
by w 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

hi everybody, hope you had a good summer and enjoyed the calm after "the thing archiving" eruption in july. just a quick note to let you know that we are starting off our fall video series at white slab palace this monday, september 20 at 8pm. we begin with a program of contemporary french video. initiated by christoph draeger and curated by annie auchere aguettaz it includes the followinng artists: - Philippe ASTORG - Sebastien CAILLAT - Clorinde DURAND - Mihai GRECU - Pascale GUINET - Veronique HUBERT - Pascal LIEVRE - Laurent MARESCHAL - Frederic NAKACHE - Jean Gabriel PERIOT - Franck & Olivier TURPIN more info at http://the.thing.net beer will be served cold. next week alan moore will present historical videos from 1980ies produced by colab members and the "potato wolf" cable tv show. stay tuned for further announcements... THE THING @ WHITE SLAB PALACE monday screenings white slab palace 77 delancey street, new york, ny

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thingist September 2010