1000 Revolutionary Actions
DRAFT/BETA
By Paul McLean
02.05.10
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THE AFH TUMBLR BLOG ARRAY
* Real “PURE” Digital: http://artforhumans.tumblr.com/ [89 posts]
* “I Love You, Monster” Exhibit Design: http://artforhumans-4dxdesign.tumblr.com/ [62 posts]
* ALT.dimension: http://afh-altdimension.tumblr.com/ [41 posts]
* HOW TO START A COLLECTIVE DURING A RECESSION: http://afh-recession-collective.tumblr.com/ [76 posts]
* CURSOR: http://afh-cursor.tumblr.com/ [14 posts]
* Defining Art: http://afh-define.tumblr.com/ [72 posts]
* Transthesis: http://afh-transthesis.tumblr.com/ [256 posts]
* VisiOn + Beauty: http://afh-vision-beauty.tumblr.com/ [69 posts]
* Proposals: http://afh-proposals.tumblr.com/ [22 posts]
* American Road: http://afh-theroadusa.tumblr.com/ [68 posts]
* Cali Car Culture: http://afh-cacarculture.tumblr.com/ [64 posts]
* Not an Artist: http://not-artists.tumblr.com/ [11 posts]
* There’s No Art in Hell: http://noartinhell.tumblr.com/ [256 posts]
* Transmissions from Marfa: http://afh-marfa.tumblr.com/ [61 posts]
* White Buffalo: http://scholars-of-war.tumblr.com/ [18 posts]
* ARTSTAR: http://afh-artstar.tumblr.com/ [36 posts]
[Total: 1,126 posts]
[Project Timeline: 09.01.2009 - .02.05.2010]
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CONCEPT: In October 2009, I launched the ART FOR HUMANS MONSTER COLLECTIVE [AFHMC] Ning [social network site] [ http://artforhumans.ning.com ]. One of the projects proposed for Year 1 of the AFHMC is the production of member blogs, which at the end of a nine-month timeline form an aggregate content set. The relevant text follows:
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[AFH Monster Collective]
STAGE ONE: Formation
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CONCEPT NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT (Solo + Collectives)
ARTIST ROSTER DEVELOPMENT
PRODUCTION DESIGN
SUMMARY
Utilizing web 2.0 infrastructure platforms, AFHMC will evolve on principles rooted in Digital Humanities and open source, moving towards cloud computing applications. Given the economic environment, AFHMC STAGE ONE will require no extraordinary expense for participating artists and organizations/collectives. AFH will provide initially a variety of options for MC artists to engage transparently in pre-production and development work. MC artists will be asked for 9 months (starting in November 2009) to produce a blog for their practice, as it relates to the “I Love You, Monster” narrative and collective themes, threads and interests. STAGE ONE will be moderated or curated only to the extent that the MC artist decides is appropriate to her or his process. This is meant to be an open and public practice, but the parameters of openness will be left to the artist to determine, in recognition that some prefer solitude in the conceptual phases of their work and others prefer more communal experiences. At the culmination of STAGE ONE, AFH will aggregate the results into an exhibition array. The format for the exhibition will likely be weighted towards digital and virtual presentation, although there will be components that are actual/brick and mortar/hard copy. Although the MC organizational structure will remain open throughout all stages of production, and artists will have many options for participation levels, after year one a core active crew is envisioned. Based on results and environmental conditions, AFHMC will produce a set of production design propositions, directed towards installation in actual spaces as abstracts.
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The AFH Tumblr Blog Array is the Lead Artist's provisional [temporary] sample set for the AFH Monster Collective's blog project. In reviewing the project progress, we can discuss a number of technical discoveries indicated by the Lead Artist's blog progression. Those will be addressed in the second part of this paper. The object of this text is to share some observations of developments affecting the collective direction and describing the field in which AFHMC will focus its operations.
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CONSIDERATIONS
We will consider how the designated medium for content exchange, the blog, can operate as a virtual text will local applications. We will also consider a new wrinkle in the content producer’s role in this TBA format.
The blog array evidences some of the same defining structural features as other popular social web media, such as the online game syndicate [e.g., World of Warcraft], or avatar-based programs like Second Life. While it is too early in the AFH TBA/MC production cycle to determine whether it is possible to synthesize the immersive features of the cited online communities with an project-based, art-generating community, there are strong indicators in the field [Etsy {retail} or WetCanvas {multiple usages}, to name two very successful examples] that seem to reinforce the conclusion. For the purposes of this production, however, differentiation is likely a necessary factor in a good outcome for the AFHMC project in terms of building constituency. Below we will posit that the most needed value for the project in support of constituency development is relevance. Logistical considerations, such as those associated generally with marketing or distribution, will be faced in later production phases. At this stage AFHMC is in its project analysis and development more focused on determining our meaning and identity, as an art-producing organism, as opposed to an art-producing organization. The blog format is excellent for projecting identity. More fundamentally, since the emergence of the format, the blog has been most useful in answering the question for the poster, “Who am I?” Communities of bloggers congeal on the premise “This Is Who We Are” or “This Is What We Do.” Everpresent in the virtual medium is the issue of dimensional existence. What is real or unreal? What is artificial and actual [or who]? Simply put, this leads to the consideration of usage. Is the computer/web a vehicle for escape from the real world and actual identity. Are we experiencing a dimensional, evolutionary leap into hybridized reality? What are the costs of imbalance between commitment to virtual existence and commitment to actual existence? What are the biophysical effects of virtual immersion? Are the benefits worth the losses? These are some of the considerations that AFHMC will begin to confront in our sequence of projects.
The “Field” of AFH Operations
A sensible question with which to begin this review is, “Who is the ‘base’ for an AFHMC project?” The Lead Artist has, in various forums, including the NEA/Federal Arts Policy panel hosted by WESTAF, concentrated his arguments for defining constituency-building in recent months primarily to an American audience. The stated goals include development of a broadened field of stakeholders, inclusive of all Americans, for contemporary art and artists. The arguments have spanned the affected sectors [government, business and social] and interests [political, economic and cultural]. Much attention has been paid in the Lead Artist’s texts to effects of institutional and pubic policy [or lack thereof] on artists, art and their proper location in the national discourse. Through the AFH Tumblr Blog Array [TBA], I have confronted the major oppositional forces wrongfully limiting or adversely affecting the healthy arts environment, the forces that by dimensional means prevent the arts from operating correctly in the USA. In some facets, the discussion has moved into global effects and phenomena, when the issues in question affect American art and artists, but are also symptomatic of the international art market, or pertain to players who operate multi- or trans-nationally]. The most explicit and extensive AFH TBA sample/Lead Artist blog projects on these issues are “THERE’S NO ART IN HELL” although the arguments and research findings were shared throughout the AFH network and continue to be represented across the AFH platform. My answers to the NEA panel questions also address these considerations in depth.
To reduce the projected “field” to a positive statement: the AFHMC base is functionally/logistically/tactically local and operationally/conceptually/strategically international, connected through virtual tools into a dimensional production model. The base is local. The field is international, or global. We are, after all, ART FOR HUMANS, whatever the iteration or format. I, however, have a mailing address. The concept is therefore not a concept, but a profile. I am real and natural. The collective we are a non-corporatized alliance of I’s. This is reflected in the monster collective design aesthetic [i.e., EYES].
CONDITIONS
Historically, AFH has been consistently international in its open or general approach, especially via web functions. The realization of the AFH GALLERY online/HUM exhibit cycle > ART FOR HUMANS GALLERY CHINATOWN [2005-2007] production, and the subsequent documentation of the work/production in the AFH archives collectively constitutes a proof for the virtual/actual/virtual movement. The dimensional migration of concept, production, documentation in the AFH dimensional collective format was accomplished. Based on this success, it is clear that AFH is viable as an international art exchange program, both virtually and actually. What is not clear is whether there is a logistically and culturally viable trajectory now available to AFH in its current iteration [specifically, as AFHMC] to operate nationally and internationally in the same manner that was possible only a few years ago. Based on early responses/results, I don’t believe so.
Why?
ANALYSIS OF THE DOMAIN
For the AFH Friend Collective, AFHG [2005-6], we used Myspace as the prime mover for generating community online. The timing was fortunate. Since then, Myspace has lost traction, and Facebook and Twitter have emerged as the most active social networks. Although Myspace was [and is] not a perfect artist tool by any measure or means, and legitimate concerns exist and apply to its corporate profile/practices, comparatively it is the richer artist community format. Facebook’s structural exclusiveness is a liability. Twitter’s structural superficiality, its lack of instrumentation, practically obviates its usefulness for artists, although some worthy attempts have been made to maximize its applications.
Other developments have also altered the topology online community-based creative vehicles. Specialization by practice has reduced cohesion in medium extension on the host sites. For example, Flickr has proved an excellent medium for photographers to gather around content and to create projects of a sui generis nature. Flickr, though is not limited in membership to professional grade photograhers. It has also proven vital as a documentation tool for events, travel experience, and hundreds of other constituencies or interests. One can equally easily use Flickr to disseminate soft porn, academic course materials, candid family snapshots, etc. Flickr, in keeping with trends across the social network field, encourages blogging, video uploads, chats and comments and retail operations. This is representative of the all-in-one service array that diffuses - at least in available options - the specificity of these sites for artist usage. This trend - a technical feature issue - has generated an environment that simultaneously breeds sites dedicated to quality control - like CultureHall - or sites driven by market share considerations. The evolving medium is almost entirely void of reliable, objective mechanisms for dimensional analysis of developments. I would argue that this is an intended outcome. An aesthetically/critically anemic web-culture environment ensures that the potential regulation of consumer portable “art” industries online is minimized, the corporate meme of “creativity” over “art” will prevail, and a Digital Humanities standard for the web medium in the interests of supporting public education will be made unworkable, to mention a few consequences.
To pose this finding in terms of a solution: AFH recommends that the US establishes a public option as a fully funded Arts & Humanities web portal, promoting only content that is civically viable and -enhancing. The NEA could serve as arbiter of the content, and the NEH could provide for the generation of materials for standard usage in all American public education institutions.
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[ANALYSIS CONTINUED]
Other trends: Arts practitioners whose interests or activities are specific to their medium of choice have increasingly focused online participation to sites that categorize by medium. Comparing the ways filmmakers and musicians [specifically, corporate content providers] do so, to how artists are attempting to sell themselves, is revealing of how the consumer portable industries’ practices have affected fine arts/artists tactics and strategies to reach constituencies and other artists. In the AFH TBA and elsewhere the Lead Artist has argued that this market intervention is corrupting and harming the fine arts. This argument is reinforced by similar complaints across a range of occupations throughout the sectors. Corporate market share campaigns, conducted over decades, have egregiously damaged the integrity of artistic production and institutional representation. The very identities of artists and the definition of art has been mutilated until they are hardly recognizable as such, primarily by a cynical, corporate-driven machine couched in free market ideology, but operating as the artificial arbiter of public discourse.
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[More reasons for a strong public arts option]
Saatchi’s site has become a nexus for a demographic [art student/contemporary art market professionals] whose ambitions might be characterized as market-oriented. At this point the blurring of ethics-based boundaries ensuring proper separation between the dealer and the museum, the critic and the dealer and so on is nowhere more obviously in force than at Saatchi’s site/operation. The hiring of Jeffrey Deitch by MoCA is another horrible violation of tradition maxims. The power brokers like Saatchi, Deitch, Broad and the DeVos family [ArtPrize] and others are skewing the online art domain into superclass fiefdoms.
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Not all developments are worrying. Some are heartening. Many options exist now for collectives to develop criteria-based web vehicles, which can and do form in a remarkable variety of articulations. Some are exhibition-centric. Others are sub-cultural. Many are simply driven by more traditional forms of artist affiliations and alliances. These include projects or web networks attached to galleries, art schools, museums, foundations, or establishment professional communities. As the typical artist profile continues to evolve towards a virtual/actual hybrid, the domain of online activities created by and for artists continues to expand.
RECOMMENDATION
The Lead Artist recommends that a over the four-year timeline of the AFHMC project, that one of our core missions be a the promotion of relentless confrontation between the corporate-defined artificial artist and the natural artist.
NOTATIONS
“Artists live today in two worlds.”
What is rarely questioned is whether the evolution of the two artist worlds [virtual/actual] in the current, completely unregulated art environment, are primarily serving the interests of natural artists and their communities. AFHMC must be committed to answering this question in the affirmative. Artificial artists must be identified, and their corporate/Superclass proponents diminished. All that is necessary to do so, in terms of action, is currently available to us. What is required of the art community is long-term vision, local focus, and immediate confrontation sustained by collective motivation. The Haves will in large measure be disinclined to provide guidance or material assistance. Our resourcefulness will be a function of comprehension of the consequences of passivity or inaction.
In “THERE’S NO ART IN HELL” and “ARTSTAR,” but elsewhere as well in the AFH TBA, and through discourse conducted on AFH Facebook and through more traditional media [by phone, in face-to-face conversation, e-mail, mail, print and public forums, and in the classroom], the Lead Artist has engaged over time and at depth with the issues of cultural re-definition of art and artist in society. He has shared his findings with the collective. To summarize, the factors most seriously obstructing art production arise from the same conditions that are harming the society as a whole. For natural artists to once again gain the social prestige attendant our social value within a democratic system based on ideals of equality, fair distribution of rewards or losses in a commonwealth, an enlightened civilization, respect for indigenous or civil rights, collective power-sharing, representation and accountability, we must re-earn our place at the pinnacle of the free speech hierarchy, by displacing the artificial paradigm designed only to enrich and sustain the neo-Robber Barons in their globalist aristocracy.
ENVIRONMENT
By far, the most difficult mitigating factor for all forms of cultural exchange is the current recession [or Depression 2.0], which has significantly altered the social topology, here and abroad. As has been suggested in various texts, the Lead Artist* believes that the extreme opposition of globalist and national interests is distorting the field of play. I* would suggest here that this factor, above all else, will require the AFHMC to embark on a series of actions to better situate our work in the schema of what is needed, as opposed to what is convenient, entertaining or enjoyable. */*[Lead Artist/I are identical and formally complementary; abstract-objective/subjective > coded instruction - for framing a collective response to environmental problems; as citizen-artist/natural person… Our motivation must transition to a new position - The enemy is the artificial person. As an immediate adjustment, the AFHMC must re-callibrate our operations to directly confront the corporation and its prime beneficiaries, or face continued near-term marginalization/long-term extinction or irrelevance.]
Whereas, pre-Depression 2.0, it was possible to construct substantial artistic alliances, and manifest them in independent hybridized formats, the motivation and resources for doing so at this writing are severely impinged. Root causes have been confronted in the cited texts, but a brief listing of damaging factors would include disproportion between artist’s material costs versus systemic support, the dominating power of consumer portable “art” industries, the corruption of the public governance apparatus, and the paralysis of the population through systemic oppression, which always disproportionately impacts the art world. The Lead Artist has indicated in “Transthesis,” “Not an Artist,” “Artstar” and elsewhere that these factors are symptomatic of tactical and strategic initiatives of individual and collective entities, operating in all sectors [government, economic and social]. It must be concluded, based on the data, that the factors listed and summarized above, and explored in depth in the AFH TBA and elsewhere in the AFH production platform, are intended outcomes. The causes have been identified. I would suggest, therefore, that a radicalization of the AFHMC program is the appropriate response. Continued member participation on that basis is and will continue to be voluntary. The Lead Artist must clearly state that no artist/member need assume an organizational expectation of continued or explicit collaboration, as in the pre-Depression 2.0 AFH collective formats.
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The AFH artist collectives [DDDD, 01, Journeyman Project, Art for Humans] have consistently operated locally, whether in the rural, regional or urban environment. In this phase of the AFH trajectory, the “field” will be national in scope and internationally inclusive. However, we must acknowledge that over the past decade and beyond, the interventions of surveillance state practices have cumulatively had a chilling effect on cultural exchange. In the arts, trust is a pre-requisite for any exchange. Although this is true in any cultural exchange, the arts field is particularly susceptible to assaults on what might be thought of as the trust framework.
A good example is museum lending practices. When a cultural treasure is exchanged between institutions, great care and exhaustive measures are taken to insure that the item exchanged is protected from harm, whether to its material body or ephemeral identity. The issue of contextual quality is always accounted for by the lending party.
What we have witnessed in the arts field, certainly since the 1980s in America, is the relentless debasement of art’s contextual environment. The prime corrupting agent is the artificial person - the corporation. AFHMC must confront this fact in our project. To do so effectively, our efforts must be local. The online network, which is and always has been structurally fragile, is in all aspects vulnerable to or dominated by corporate interventions, which harm the context for our efforts. In the corporate media, the paradigm for art has shifted almost completely to favor the interests of consumer portable “arts” industries. Our tactics must effectively undermine and counteract this entertainment/information/creative trending in arts domain, which amounts to the corporation-driven paradigmatic re-definition of art. It is not hyperbole to suggest the survival of our society depends on our efforts, which can fuel a broader resistance to the corporate coup endangering our local and national democratic institutions.
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For the purposes of defining the “field,” I will assume that the AFHMC/AFH Tumblr Blog Array constituency initially consists of a of population of artists, academics and culturally invested site visitors. This assumption is based on site history, qualitative evaluations of visitor interactions and membership, diagnostics and other data. Artists have throughout the duration of AFH online production [since 2001] comprised the primary user base for our activities on the web. However, to be more immediately effective in service to the society as a whole, AFH must widen its reach to include a constituency outside the arts domain.
Early indications [based on an evaluation of “followers”] suggest that the Lead Artist’s presented content in the AFH TBA is attractive to a demographic that is young, design-/art-/fashion-/illustration-/commercial-art-conscious, and active in assembling collections of interesting re-samples of photographs, graphics, advertisements, and reproductions of artworks in the clean and attractive Tumblr blog formats. The Tumblr format [with its excellent design “Theme Garden”] is well-suited to this DIY sensibility as a first-usage. I would characterize its technical aesthetic as a variation on appropriation-based “Found” culture, an exercise in user sampling or re-sampling as a means to self-define identity by proxy or presentation. This sensibility is related to DJ or VJ activities. In this format the image I select shows what kind of person I am. Certainly, this is not the only application for Tumblr blogs. The range is fairly extensive, and typical of blog usages - journaling, promotion and as professional usages [I particularly like Robert Reich’s Tumblr blog]. Nonetheless, the ease of setup, customization and posting in Tumblr, which is mobile-device-friendly, makes the format a strong choice for the creative class poster.
It is clear that many AFH site visitors are not arts professionals. It is fair to suggest that many visitors are web “surfers.” Because the AFH network is highly diverse in its aspects, with regards content and technical focus, or cultural context, AFH attracts a highly diverse audience. Taking into account the continued expansion of AFH Web 2.0 features [Twitter, Twitterfeed, Flickr, blogs, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Delicious, Zotero, WIKI and Google Reader/RSS], integrated into the pre-existing site infrastructure [galleries, HTML pages, links to AFH-related projects or activities {including those documented or stored in outside archives or existing on other sites, such as ArtBase at Rhizome, Timothy Yarger Fine Arts’ website, or Perpetual Art Machine}], AFH enjoys a significant traffic, derived in some large measure from cross-pollination of content in multiple iterations across the [interior and exterior] platform. Therefore, although the majority population visiting the site, then downloading content and actively participating in AFH functions through site mechanisms [membership, comments, etc.], consists of artists, arts professionals, commercial artists, art students, educators, collectors and critics or curators, AFH also attracts a strong constituency of the non-arts-centric who use the site as inspiration [repeat visitors], curiosity [responding to Tweet post-summaries] or for specific topics [responding to search engine listings].
AFH has not conducted polling or inserted a gateway device to definitively catalog or identify site visitors, beyond what they might volunteer by way of interaction or other form of self-orginating content. This is a cultural decision, rooted in respect for visitor privacy choices. It is not at all clear that the [administrative] benefits of gathering data on the identities of AFH visitors would outweigh the [aesthetic] costs of interrupting navigation of the websites or their content. Because AFH is a designated art space/free speech environment, the Lead Artist would suggest that a principle of origination is strongly in play.
As AFHMC moves forward into the realization phase of the 1st Year program, based on this analysis, the Lead Artist will engage in actual recruitment. The evaluation of the field and conditions suggest, the profile for potential participants will draw from local contacts. The virtual components will document this process. It is possible that our collective activities will animate responses from a national target base, and our programmatic direction will reflect that intention. The overall trajectory will be in furtherance of opposition to the corporate artificial culture, artificial politics, and harmful economics. In essence it will be a celebration of democracy and free expression. In spirit it will illuminate the value of art and artist to all.
