hi thingsters,

I guess lurking forever is not an option ;-), so I thought this thread of cherishing wolfgang's art suits me to post my miaow from london: 'meow!'

Thanks for inviting me onto the list, I am absolutely sharing the excitement about a neothingie - realspace - platform.

together with my partner mukul, I am running ambient.space in london, where Wolfgang produced a photographic sequence of our view last year. (Which is documented our hot-from-the-printer publication 'Ambient Information Systems', which we launched at the centre pompidou three days ago, to mention our "current craziness", and hope to bring to the States sometimes ...). the publication contextualises &documents our doings of the last decade as interdisciplinary artists. www.ambientTV.NET

I was wondering which catalyst triggered the search for a physical exhibition space and if it will mainly be for 'exhibition'or also other in-progress functions? maybe I am just generally hungry for more of your thoughts &intentions about the new space....

transatlantic greets,

Manu - www.ambientTV.NET

in the event of wolfgang's exhibition opening tonight at postmasters...

having considered the composition of its press release...

http://calendar.artcat.com/event/view/1/9259

i ask...

when standing before a staehle photographic sequence...

do i realize the perpetual Aufhebung...the simultaneity to cancel and to keep? am i deep within the perpetual "now"?

or do i realize that this moment is the part of the whole that divides it? the fatal instant that makes a farce of time?

???

or is it that the "now" is a farce?

(please forgive my inappropriate use of this forum to remind everyone of the show tonight...but hope to see you there.)

arfus

---

thingist mailing list thingist@mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/thingist

wolf (et al),

(and remember, i am the asshole that seems to send longwinded emails, because i am not a twitter, facebook instant guy...perferring rather to size up the dialogue and then respond every one or two weeks...anyway...but listen...chatter aside one can also move to the text at the end for the meat of it...however...)

however, with voice (mladen dolar-esque voice)...

wolf...i loved your opening... (jan gerber was brilliant as an enhancement toward several new translations of the material and j. ayerza was so lovely with the sneakers [quite/quite] and although ge@thing.net appropriately identified me as a robber-baron [kisses to her...because if only]... and various other subtext which is after all the essence of the text itself [the ferris wheels of fascism juxtaposed to the bucolic aftermath of capitalism, in context to the holy roman empire {opposing walls touristic and pastural} eventuates in form--JOY and CONCEPT for a strangely naturalistic techonologic philosophic gesture reflecting upon itself.)

oops... my private thoughts.

still (and still) i wanted the voice and environment of the veritable primordial to surround the space. it was suggested thru the backroom...and yet your balls were not on. (not grabbing your balls like micheal jackson but going full force like a matador (tight pants with an endevour to bloody the bull!) however an opening is an opening and later on i saw that you turned the sound up from the backroom in order to encompass (albeit a philosophically careful selection of the banal "real-time") ALL--the obscurant and yet naturalistic sounds underpinning the history or moreover your (perhaps our) assumptions of "civiliazation" were the true force of it.

kudos!

anyway, sorry that is not why i am here. i am responding to the matter of time that is the thing space...

wolf and i (and brilliant associates like caspar and cory and menick and shamin and gordon, etc. and so many of you) began to develop a language of the space in order to fund-raise while the space itself does not yet exist. and funding in america during this hyper-depression (hysterical and yet oh so necessary depression...because after it is an intellectual depression that needs to happen so that the globe can be refashion to address my desires) ...the funding is tight, fearful and strict. and so we all thought to become mixed-use (become naively young again) and go balls out.

i will stop there.

take a look at the core info for our initial grants that define and at the same time create a structure for multi-interlocution...

ultimately the endeavour is that within today's economic enivronment how does one secure support for projects that refuse as a necessity to deliver the result prior to their activation (to the action.)

and this is our attempt...(see below)!

please, please... everyone jump in here to advise...we are in a situation of newness (no wpa will save us.)

cheers, arfus

________________

Project Description Background

Since 1991, THE THING has been committed to the development of new media culture, fine arts and social activism. With the previous support of notable organizations like Rockefeller Foundation, THE THING has become widely recognized as one of the founding and leading online centres for new media culture, hosting ground-breaking artists' projects in its multimedia lab, diverse discussion forums and events, as well as publishing cross-pollinating cultural criticism.

Anticipating significant changes in the online environment, THE THING has been undergoing a radical transformation which will culminate in its 2009-10 programs. Recent Think Tanks with notable New York and International artists, curators, and writers have foreseen that by following the historical patterns of any new form, it is vital that THE THING now pull from the innovations of new media and re-apply these to established art practices. By now cultivating works that specifically engage the new paradigms of digital aesthetics, distribution and interactivity, THE THING will lead the arena as an innovative exhibiting stage.

Under a new Board of Directors, currently securing our new Lower Manhattan exhibition space, the 2009-10 programs will expand its mission towards the production and presentation of new work in a real physical environment, redefining the relationship of new media culture, fine arts and social activism, and testing new curatorial methods of presentation including actions and initiatives.

Project Description

Today, we come to the (Foundation) for specific support of our core project. ProtoProject is a comprehensive program, comprised of three interconnected units. First, a new model of the discussion series will tackle the three most prescient themes of art and media today. These discussions will then provide the seed content for a series of brut exhibitions and actions. Throughout this process, a series of publications of both documented and commissioned materials will be distributed in bold new ways. Again, by applying models like streaming media, ListServ and pier to pier networks to the process of a material exhibition, ProtoProject will activate the potential of both forms.

Project as Process

Like Proto-Language, the prefix "proto" implies a concept that is the common ancestor of a set of related concepts. Taking what our Think Tanks have determined to be the prescient topics in art today, we have divided the ProtoProject into three interconnected interests, ProtoMedia, ProtoScene and ProtoAction. As a non-institutional, cultural venue THE THING sees its role as one that can ask questions without knowing the answer in advance. Therein the true test of its project goals lies in the quality of the questions created from relevant subjects, provoking thought, invention and exchange.

ProtoMedia will consider how technological progress-from the Printing Press to the BitTorrent protocol-is what essentially drives cultural development and social change, but will revisit the prophetic concerns of Walter Benjamin regarding modern representation: how to reaffirm the positive potential and promise that lies in today's means of reproduction, how to refuse the artificial scarcity that is being created as an attempt to contain the uncontrolled circulation of cultural commodities, how to resist the rhetoric of warfare that only articulates the discrepancy between the wealth of technical possibilities and the poverty of their use, and how to renew the people's legitimate claim to copy, to be copied, and to change property relations.

ProtoScene hopes to suggest a focus upon the mise-en-scène in ProtoCinema work (a Post Cinema departure.) These works expressly use a filmic language but do not strive to create the traditional or linear narrative; rather using it's semiotic (iconic and symbolic) relations as a tool to convey the essence of a set of possible narratives or a singular paradox. Often these result in multimedia installations, the residue of filming or the physical suggestion of a filmic narrative. In other instances, the viewer may be engaged to edit the content through use of multiple channel projections and interactive systems.

ProtoAction seeks to expand the underlying message of consumer created content to not "trust authority" but "explore authority." In new media, authorized information is never beyond discussion; information is authorized through discussion, and this discussion is available for the world to see and participate in. Today, politically conscious artists are on the forefront of provoking discussion to support social, economic and environmental justice campaigns, developing winning strategies that are creative, nonviolent, and take their lead from impacted the communities.

Project as Discourse

Three discussion events will be hosted for each of the three sub-topics. With the host, and developed from our working list, a group of experts will comprise the participants. But because new media replaces the "one-to-many" model of traditional group communication with the possibility of a "many-to-many" web of communication, we will shape the discussions upon the outmoded methods of casual gatherings, dinner discussions and random pass-bys-initiating the possibility of unmediated interactivity, simultaneity, browse-ability and user created content. While mirroring a new media mode, these relatively unstructured discussions will also help to stimulate the distribution component of the project.

Each artist/host will determine the particular form of their discourse, some of which including an artist presentation. Each discussion event will be documented via digital audio, video and digital stills. Transcripts of the discourse will be made available to the artist/host for use in their subsequent publication.

Project as Distribution

The publication model attempts to subvert the traditional mode of production and distribution. Whereas, it is widely recognised that we are all journalists now, and anyone can be a publisher, it is less publicised that, at the same time, and for the same reasons, everyone is a paperboy. Using new media modes of distribution, like viral, linkable, embeddable and social networking, etc., each artist/host will be asked to reshape core materials from the discussions (video documentation and transcriptions, together with their commissioned essay) between the points of creation and the points of consumption-from static to streaming, from content distribution to distributed caching, from real-time to time-shifted information. For instance, due to search engine and social network linking, it is no longer your website that you are distributing, it is each individual page. Every internal link is a piece of distribution. But aren't there other antiquated models to consider and reapply: a smoke signal, a Morse code, a message in a bottle?

Whatever the shape of each of the three publications for each of the three topics, summaries and results on findings of these will be collected for the final booklet publication at the end of the project series.

Project as Exhibition

An important lesson of new media is that as organizational presenters we are no longer delivering subjects but subjectivities: ways of approaching, understanding and interacting. In this way, the primary curatorial force will be comprised of the discourse participants themselves. From both the discussions and the publications, new artists' projects will be culled and developed for presentation. Throughout the 2009-10 program, at least three group exhibitions will be mounted as a result, including an average of seven artists. In this, a continued interactive approach will be cultivated-a veritable network exhibition process-that maintain the integrity of our initiative while posing questions of which now we can only imagine.

Project Proposal Summary

These three interrelated topics of ProtoProject are on the forefront of discussion today. Although the structure may seem non-traditional, it is essential to THE THING that in a post Postmodern environment we create programs where the form and the content are operating in congruence. The exhaustive work of our Think Tanks, over the past year, have created this and other forms in which we might burgeon new and exciting art and art practices.

We are proud to bring this exciting new project to (Foundation) and look forward to the possibility of realizing it with your support.