WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT NOW?
Or "tweeds - Short bursts of inconsequential information"
I try to be brief but I warn you: my text is going to exceed
140 characters.
The question sent to me from Witt de With 'What are you
talking about now' reminds me of Twitter the most trendiest and rapidly growing
social web site there currently is. It attracts millions of users a month and
is based on the single question "What are you doing?" Twitter's popularity is
expected to reach the value of a billion dollars in 2009 (or be worth nothing
by next year) though nobody knows yet how to generate actual money from it.
Familiar?
Witt de With invited me as an artist to be part of a
multi-structured talk marathon/talkathon entitled Rotterdam Dialogues:
Critics, Curators, Artists. The whole event
could have been labeled a "talk show" - had it not been organized by an art
institution. Lectures, panel discussions, and interviews where organized around
separate questions with separate participants at separate times. "The artists" found themselves
answering to the general question: "What does it mean to work as an artist
today?" to lay bare the "foundational layers" of art making, though art works
were only rarely seen on projections during the conference. We – the
artists – were encouraged to be "ourselves" and project ourselves in
front of quite a large audience through our physical presence and our speech or
silence.
Usually artist talks are in relationship to exhibitions and
even Catherine David's "100 days /
100 talks" was in relationship to Documenta X (1997). But the Witt de With talks over several days impressed not
only with the large number of invited artists – we were flown in from around the world – but
as well as by the fact that the talks where not in relationship to an
exhibition but rather in place of an exhibition. I had the feeling of taking
part in a large scale international exhibition even though no art works were
requested. The publicity, the number of artists involved and the scope of these
presentations were so professional and well publicized that it felt like being
in a major biennial without any frustrations over shipment, placement of works
and other logistical or curatorial nightmares.
Interesting enough, social network sites – MySpace,
Facebook, and now Twitter – that consists of nothing more than electronic
postings, posing and chatting have become multi-billion dollar enterprises with
such enormous economic and social significance that they even helped to hand
the US presidency to a man who otherwise would have never had a chance to win.
It comes therefore as no surprise that the art world also goes openly social
and twitters over its stakes. Witt de With's outlines asks about the "politics,
fashions, É market forces, histories and other social forces to private or
personal urgencies" of artists who "negotiate several stakes." Rotterdam made
of us artists negotiating stakeholders posing prominently on the better side of
the audience/participant divide.
The reason why I like to analyze this event in this
comparative way is that it was not an isolated event. 0nly two weeks later I
was host of a similar platform entitled "Our literal speed (OLS)" organized by
several art historians. OLS is a three stage event timed over three years where
a bunch of mostly famous intellectuals and a handful of artists were flown last
year to Karlsruhe, this year to Chicago and next year to the Getty Art Center
in Los Angeles. For OLS, the point is that a talkathon "in the vicinity of art
and history" claims to be a performance/event rivaling with an art exhibition
and performance art. On the OLS web site they
promoted the first event in Karlsruhe as "a 'media pop opera,' or a
'pedagogical concept album' – a kind of artistic/academic
gesamtkunstwerk ... encounter(ing)
fluid/jagged transitions among presentations, discussions, performances, and
lectures. This temporary discursive laboratory offered a space for imagining
non-formulaic, experientially vibrant, and theoretically precise responses to
the modes of distribution, consumption and circulation that currently dominate
our neo-Wagnerian institutional atmosphere. In the end, the conference/event
aimed to present a microcosmic rendering of the contemporary art world."
Different to Rotterdam, most of the OLS participants were
academics longing for a new somehow artistic 'belonging' and not artists happy
to be part of a big exhibition/event without showing. Some if not most of the
presentations tried to experiment with the presentation format and got quite
inventive with it, if not too creative for my taste. The most amazing thing in
those two OLS events so far was the fact that it is incredibly self-sufficient
and compact resembling a traveling circus. The mostly US based academics (with
some Europeans) who were familiar with each other arrived not only with their
highly sophisticated discourses but also with their own public including their
"own" critics which reviewed both events each time in Artforum. At the stock
exchange this overlapping could stir regulatory troubles; in the world of
networking it's social capitalism and on Facebook and Twitter, its automated,
promoted by electronic linkage and wizards, friendsters and tweeters. In the
art world its conditio sine qua non.
Even though, I'm not an active member of Facebook, Flickr or
the sorts, I receive daily invitations to join because somebody wants to
befriend me – independent of whether I know them or not. The main reason
why I was invited to this well sponsored, high profile OLS event had to do with
the fact that I photograph "seminars and lectures" as my art work. In the
aftermath of my Venice Biennial presentation of 2006, the art historians were
very well aware of my S/L images of academics, lecturers and their audiences
and wanted me to photograph them. Since the early 1990s institutional critique
has turned into "institutional narcissism" which went "literally" into
overdrive with OLS: "These emerging, hybrid forms (of lectures) demand a
synthesis of collective activity (OUR), a self-reflexive examination of art
history and its constitutive technologies (LITERAL), and an intense concern for
the pace and texture of our movement through institutional mediation (SPEED)"
The curators in Rotterdam, much less manierist in verbal presentation, didnŐt
have my S/L photographs in mind when I was invited. As usual I photographed the
event.
Earlier this year, my photographic
series brought me to a filibuster-like 24 hours non-stop talkathon organized by
master of ceremony Hans Ulrich Obrist, entitled, "24 hour Program on the
Concept of Time." No building could have better
symbolized the talk and title better than the spiral of Frank Lloyd Wright's
Guggenheim in New York. In Rotterdam artists were separated from curators and
critics during 3 interval events through out the year; in Karlsruhe and Chicago
artists were far outnumbered by art critics/historians but were all present
simultaneously; at the Guggenheim the balance and speaking order between
writers and artists were mixed and the subject was not self-reflective (self-conscious)
but given: Speed. Obrist, a man known for his personal versatility and
impressive speed, did not only invite people from the art world but also
theoreticians of the world of music, architecture, science, sociology and
beyond. There the challenge was to sit in for 24 hours which might reflect the
demands of the host city and institution, where space is in big demand and a
potential audience is less patient and available over longer periods of time
than elsewhere. So why not jam it. In the world of networking and non-stop
electronic hand holding it is hyper-texting, blogging, tweeting, streaming,
befriending, SMS-, IM- , MMS-ing and so on.
On Twitter, an error message for overloading
appears in form of a "Fail Whale" graphic
showing little red birds holding a sinking fat whale going under. In all these
brainy conferences I have been this year, people just leave if it becomes
redundant. Some people also chose to not even show up in the first place.
Needless to say, celebrities (of the field) help fill rooms anywhere, anytime
and were not missing in all these events. On line, celebrity spotting is major
electronic real estate and numerous web sites are dedicated to just that. We
all want to be in touch with each other and a little bit more so with those we
think who are successful. A gathering of many well-to-do artists attracting a
large audience without presenting any art works or performances borders on the
phenomena of celebrity spotting. From what I could tell, all invited artists
felt fabulous – at least I did. I left all these events with the feeling
I did something, I belonged for an instant to something even though I couldnŐt
say what. Even the curators of Witt de With seem to reflect somehow this
phenomena of "inflated greatness" since they distanced themselves from the
original floated idea of publishing all transcripts of all talks. Now, the
organizers must have realized the typical redundancy and prevailing
insignificance of non-scripted talks and seem to have opted for this "tweeteresque" follow up question for all participants: "What are you talking about now". The
small red birds seem to be failing, the fat whales are sinking ! And so be it
!!
And what am I really doing/talking in 140 characters:
<twitter>
GOCRAZY with BABYEDGAR; preparing DADALENIN 4 MAK,
Vienna; BASIC CHINESE study; I WANNA BE CHINESE, Brussels; trying 2 fix
financial troubles, being on line, &love
<twitter>
"HAPPY FRIENDSHIP DAY" – luv u guys !
<twitter>
What's happening right now? Nothing but rain – but
don't tell me what you have 4 dinner!
<twitter>
I really loved these events. I wish 4 more!
U can't find me on facebook, myspace or twitter. Stay in
touch with me via ganahl.info or pleaseteachmechinese @ yahoo.com
Rainer Ganahl
New York, August 2, 2009