Conceptual Blogging?

Went to the Spencer Museum of Art this afternoon. Saw the Warhol Heinz tomato sauce box. It was under plexiglass. In an art museum. And that has made all the difference.

There was also an exhibit of video art from Asia. In one work, a Korean man related the story of an old love affair that revolved around trains and train tracks. In an adjacent screen, a stage curtain opens onto a video of train tracks, on a screen within the screen you're watching. As we "move forward" along these tracks, the screen is framed by computer-generated track and scenery that prefectly matches the "actual video."

It occurred to me that one could just as easily install computer monitors that only showed one blog each - or showed blogs' being updated, using time-lapse photography. Might not be very entertaining, but it would make a point.

So, let us say that any blog can be understood as art, provided it is framed or contained by the institutions or social forms of art.

One of those "social frames" would be an MFA thesis. Why not put a blog in it? Plenty of works of conceptual art have been. Of course, if this is as far as it goes, then the thesis would itself be a kind of conceptual art/writing project. For such a project, it would be precisely the (deadpan) blog about your cats (or family or hobby) that would be called for, in order for it to follow the logic of other conceptual art projects.

Conversely, Warhol's Brillo boxes would not have the same effect if they'd been printed in flourescent colors with the lettering in off-kilter, blurry black ink. Then you'd know something was up, regardless of whether they were stacked in MoMA or in the stock room at the supermarket. If it were the latter, the structure (or inherent form) of the piece would produce its own mental frame: this is not what the thing that usually goes here looks like. As opposed to: the thing that looks like this does not usually go here (see preceding paragraph).

Either way, it seems like space/place - esp. public v. private is a crucial determinant. So the fact of your blog's being an MFA thesis would need to be made public in some way - perhaps by blogging on a streetcorner. And videotaping it, and then exhibiting or publishing that video somehow (as some performance art - whether in public or private space - might be videotaped and then shown as DVD or in a gallery).

Probably the best way to do it would be to make the blog reader/viewer constantly aware of the process of writing, approving, and submitting an MFA thesis that is a blog. Culminating in the diploma as a permanent feature in the side-bar. Like the "show invisibles" command in a word-processing program. Then content wouldn't be an issue, since the form would be the explicit conceptual (and visible) "frame."

Blogs qua Art; Media and Messages

OK - let's start with this. This is a work that makes use of the medium by commenting upon it - and upon the nature of representation. And there is text in a painting (!). In the original, wasn't the frame painted onto the canvass, too? 

Also, think of those paintings in the 70s that consisted of a single color applied to a huge canvass in such an even layer that one could hardly tell the paint apart from the flat surface (and that was, of course, the point - the rejection of mimesis and the foregrounding of the physical medium). Again, the "content" of the work commented upon the physical/social nature of the work of art.

As I've said before, the only analog that I've been able to think of in the blog world is Susan M. Schultz' Dementia Blog (Singing Horse). The backwards chronology backs us into the corner of the post-9/11 imperial overstretch and collective amnesia, but it begins with the personal and the quotidian. Likewise, it seems to me that transferring the contents of a blog to a printed book does much the same thing as the revolutionary visual art works I've been talking about - questioning the framing, both textual and social, of the work of art. And raising the question of whether or not web works are backwards-compatible with print works - which may be the most important question of our day, as far as literature is concerned.

So, I'm thinking that a blog as work of art either does one of two things: either it serves as a platform or medium for a work of art that might just as well exist in print form or in a museum, OR it does unexpected, original, imaginative, and subversive things with the structure of the medium itself. Those things might begin as simple parody, but it might spread - or link - from there.

But either way, it has to look radically, fundamentally, structurally different than your mom's blog about her cats.

"So for the blog, can we judge artfulness from an excerpt alone, or only within context?"

And is the context the content? Is the very fact of presenting a blog as an MFA thesis analogous to putting a urinal - or basketballs and fish-tanks - in an art museum? A kind of anti-art art-work?

Ceci n'est pas une MFA thesis.

Now, that is a true statement.

But you wouldn't know it by looking at me. And would you know that this blog is not an MFA thesis, by looking at it? Or that it is?

If I said it was, I could be lying. If I didn't, it could be true anyway. Would there be any textual markers? "Damn, your art is sooooo fine! You' a master, baby!" Back in the day, you studied under the previous master, and he (he) decided when you were a master (or journeyman). Scholasticism. Rules. Frame: parergon - which, to Derrida, is a paregoric (cf. "Economimesis").

These questions are, perhaps, more to the point than asking, "What is art (or lit)?" That is, the institutional accreditation and sanctioning as such determines it, in any given time and place. If R. Mutt brings the urinal into the academy and presents it as his MFA thesis, who's to gainsay him? Indeed, has anyone ever failed an MFA?  I mean, flunked out - if they did the work? How do we say if something is art? Or fine? Or masterful?

If you reject such categories, you can do whatever you want, without the stick of conformity or the carrot of income. God bless you!

But if you accept them - to the point of earning or dispensing MFAs - you'd better be able to define them. Right? Did Jeff Koons have an MFA? Could an MFA thesis be a blog about tatting or a Lyme disease support group? How come? Why not?

Ceci n'est pas une blog post.

Please choose the work of art from the following: Level Two (this one is harder than yesterday's)

The following are recent excerpts from various blogs. Can you spot the art/literature?

[A.] “Or maybe all blogs are art. Maybe we should send out a mass-mailing with MFA diplomas as PDF attachments, and see who clicks on the link. Or maybe we [the Experts] should have an MFA Patrol, like the Publishers Clearinghouse, only you’ve already published yourself. And guess what? We've decided your blog . . . is art!”

[B.]

“I'm running out of listservs to join.
Hey, where are the chinks and niggers?
They're inside already? You don't say!
You mean we're outside? That's all right.
I've always liked to eat and fuck al fresco.”

[C.] “I'm pretty sure I was always the same person, the compass needle just needed proper adjusting. Looking at this photo of the buggy outside the record store now perfectly sums me up. The only difference being my Fell pony cart will certainly have that Ramones sticker on the back, and I'll trot him back to the farm, ipod blaring. Hey ho, let's go.”

[D.]

[E.]

“Billy Tea & Nerada
Coles Supermarket bread mix in a box
Wett-X
licorice from Darrell Lea Shop
TimTams
lolly aisle
violet crumble bar
veet (hair wax)
Elastoplast”

[F.]

“Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye
Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye Rye”

[G.] “I offered his virus to the mechanized virus reader. It had many functions, among these the one that translated ‘virus’ into ‘sick room architectures.’ Thus the design specs for his recovery: a 15 x15 outdoor room with a perimeter of medium height pines, inside of these pines a hospital bed and an eight foot flat screen tv.”

[H.] “Som god Ytrebykven er eg glad i finsk folkemusikk, og fann stor fagnad i ein farsott som har herja dutuba i ujamne bølgjer dei siste åra. Det byrja, så vidt eg har kunna bringa på det reine, her, med vokalgruppa Loituma si a capella versjon av den ubegripeleg catchy "Ievan polkka" ("Evas polka"):” [the post, not the song – which is by a f*in’ great band, IMO]

[I.] “Know your meat source. Grassfed beef biggie Tallgrass Beef of Sedan, Kansas, is the latest client of IdentiGEN North America Inc., subsidiary of the Irish IdentiGEN Ltd. The company’s DNA TraceBack technology allows meat to be traced to the farm where it was raised (unlike, say, the tainted hamburger recounted recently in the NY Times). IdentiGEN Inc. is based here in Lawrence, Kansas. (IdentiGEN press release; Lawrence Journal-World).”

[J.] “’A strong desire seized me of visiting remote regions. My first impulse was to go and see Paris. It was a trivial objection to my aspiring mind that I did not understand a word of the language, since I certainly intend some time in my life to see Paris, and equally certainly never intend to learn the language; therefore that could be no objection.’”

[K.] “I really miss writing the blog regularly but a couple of deadlines have kept me totally busy. One of them is the preparation of the performance with Pierre Joris & Miles Joris-Peyrafitte that will happen this coming Thursday in Angoulême (France). No Thanksgiving for us! We are off tomorrow and below is the info about the show in case you are around this area. This is my first trip to the Poitou-Charente region and I am looking forward to discover their food specialties and have some of the delicious Pineau des Charentes — a mix of wine and cognac. It will be my pleasure to report if I have any time to do so. But right after, I am off to the Pyrenees for more work on Augustus Saint Gaudens. I am leaving you with a few posts from last year, and please do dig into the archives and the categories.”

[L.] “One of the aspects I appreciate about our market is the festive, celebratory air. It’s an event. People bring friends or company from out of town. They use it as a social venue and run into their neighbors. They get to know the farmers, bakers, soap-makers and even the musicians busking on Saturday mornings.”

[M.] “The door is located on the right side of the store and I guess you just habitually wander in the same direction that you arrive. Very quickly my sister spotted Hallmark ornaments on sale 50% off. I didn't think there were any she didn't have, but obviously there are a few. As she pawed her way through the basket, I meandered around, glancing here and there, seeing some lovely bric-a-brac that I knew I didn't have room for. I was making my way around the room and was now facing the wall on our left.”

[N.] “The water people have a little window and a dog. The cigarette people have a stool and an empty shop. The fishing people have buckets and folding stools and rim the canal. The fishing people are rarely women but there is a shop for lures and casters in a hidden neighborhood and this is run by a woman who knows everything. The fishing people go to her finally when their buckets are empty and she is smoking double-happinesses when she tells them which wriggle startles a bottom-feeder and which arouses its interest. The massage people have an entrance that is always occupied in neon. I don’t know what they do. I have suspicions.”

[O.] “These dreams have no portent: I don’t seek their omens or believe such things presage future events. Some other transport—some intimate communion—takes place. Even now the memory of myself in bed, the hall light flooding one side of my room, arrives in dreamlike waves that can only be partially grasped. And yet, those years of going to bed composed an eternity, too.”

Please choose the work of art from the following:

Post-BAUMANN and TIMMONS

This reading was a lot of fun - even if it did kind of start out like a George Jones concert, with the headliner missing in action. Rob Baumann did more than warm up the crowd, he pretty much melted them and sublimated them into a gas. Which it was. He read his brand-new chapbook Robert J. Baumann's A Man About Town, bound with a lovely wood-grain finish. The chapbook contains letter-like texts that are informed by the discursive conventionalities of text messaging and bad sitcoms. They are nasty. And very funny. And he signs every one of the "letters," so it's worth more than $5, but don't tell him that.

Hard act to follow - M. Timmons began by reading from his chapbook Lip Service, which was OK, but pretty rational and socially acceptable after the Baumann episode. But the bit he read (and showed) from his 800-page book Credit was very intriguing indeed. Seems like it's constructed of replicating memes from credit-card solicitations and other usurious come-on's. I don't know that I want to buy the book, since even the author can't afford a full-color copy of it. But I'd definitely buy between 37 and 100 pages of it. Or try to get my local library to buy it.

He (Timmons) closed by doing a blue-streak reading of an excerpt from his forthcoming poetics statement/manifest - which he turned into conceptual poetry by timing the excerpt, and turning what sounded like a fairly reasoned and comprehensive argument into a blur of verbiage. Like a Mexican d.j. reading Eric Auerbach. Which was just the thing to do.

Now what? Well, Mary Oliver is coming in March. I don't hate Mary Oliver the way that some people do (in fact, "Mary Oliver" has become a sort of floating-signifier target, the way that "Robert Pinsky" or "T.S. Eliot" did). But I've read and heard about as much of her as I want to, in one lifetime. She is very good at what she does - whence I have moved on.

So, it may be that the next reading of weird texts will be part of the next Big Tent series in January. But if you know of events in the Heart-o'-darkness-land involving post-avant/experimental/strange writing, please do let me know.

BAUMANN and TIMMONS

. . . are reading in Lawrence today (see above). Then there will nothing left to see above. Or hear in Lawrence. Alas.

What Blog Is Art?

Many blogs (including this one) present themselves as commentaries upon. Upon books, farming, culture, what the kids are doing, etc. They use words to convey information or ideas.

But where are the blogs that are art? Or, said another way, are there blogs that are composed of art-writing (whether or not the author intends it)? And what is your criterion? How do you know?

I ask this question b/c I'm trying to advise an MFA thesis that is a blog. Can you tell which blog it is? Can you pick out the work of art from amongst the "blog[s] about x"?

Or maybe all blogs are art. Maybe we should send out a mass-mailing with MFA diplomas as PDF attachments, and see who clicks on the link. Or maybe we [the Experts] should have an MFA Patrol, like the Publishers Clearinghouse, only you don't get published. Surprise! We've decided your blog . . . is art!

Or one could do blog-sculpting - a mash-up of various elements of mere content-based blogs - a blog in which the blog form would itself be the content.

What if a web log were really a log? I mean a real, damn log!!! What do you think of that, Bucko?! I got yer art form - RIGHT HERE! Organic enough for you? Well, there's a lot more where this came from . . .