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JOURNAL OF A STRAINED NET:
three days a week: what it is, the web and beyond



    Webflashes:
    Martin Amis:
    "Money."
    "What is this shit anyway?"

    Art Whores
    by David Hudson
    November 8th, 1996


    C atching up with the print media over this morning's coffee, I heard myself suddenly blurt out, "Omigod!" I'd just come across a full-page ad in a slick magazine for NIL cigarettes featuring an old acquaintance. Flatz. The Austrian artist and I, despite our polar opposite personalities, moved in circles that happened to overlap here and there several years ago.

    We were even cast as a gay couple who'd fathered a daughter in an opera that wasn't really an opera though we both did some singing and God knows neither of us can sing, and well, it's a long story. He designed a show I was in, I translated the catalogue for his first solo exhibition. Eventually, those circles gyrated off into separate universes where they probably belonged in the first place.

    Then one afternoon I was listening to NPR and along came a report from Kassel, "Here at the Documenta, I'm fighting my way through an artwork by Flatz..." Flatz had hung punching bags, the really big kind, from the ceiling of one of the rooms so that in order to get through, you'd have to put up some sort of fight. The force of the crowd kept them in constant motion; the path of least resistance would simply get you knocked right back to where you started from. Most of the reviews weren't very nice (same goes for the Documenta as a whole that year), but I kind of dug the fact that Flatz presented you with a choice: Get through or go around. Not a deep work, but one that demanded an immediate reaction.

    And now, here he is stark black and white, in sunglasses and black leather, a big ol' dog by his side, his Flatzcycle revved and ready to zoom him off to that wild, wild life. But first, a quick shot for the boys at NIL. And a few short words: "'Mut tut gut.' Flatz." That's the ad's text and it translates into something like, "'Courage is good for you.' Flatz." My first reaction: Right, the courage to sell out to a tobacco company.

    Then, as I lit up my first of the day, I started thinking, and naturally, before I got far, the standard rhetorical question popped up: How much would "they" have to offer before you succumbed? And then the questions start chasing each other's tails. What's the difference between selling a painting, a story, a song to a gallerist, a literary journal, a record company and selling it to Absolut, Disney, Nike?

    Haven't any recognizable lines between art and commerce all but disappeared? A long time ago? More than anyone else, it was Andy Warhol who deliberately and delightfully confused the issues, selling not only his viewer-friendly style but his own face to Madison Avenue, as it was so often referred to in his day. But there was more than money that was being traded; Warhol's work had been built from the ground up on the most universally recognizable images of the post-WWII period. The deal had already been made before any money had changed hands.

    And there were precedents. Jackson Pollock lending the image of the artist as tortured soul to LIFE magazine helped both parties move their goods, and there's a long line of artists before him who cultivated their own cults.

    So Flatz is selling his rough and tumble image to NIL. Both will profit, and frankly, I wouldn't be surprised to see this ad in Flatz' next exhibition. About a month ago, there was a television report here in Germany on young millionaires, and one of them was a marketing specialist who'd just taken on an artist: Flatz.

    One artist at the Moscow WWWArt Centre, Aliona, has taken this line of thinking to its logical extreme by placing what amounts to a two-page ad on the Web headed with her own three-word message: "ALL FOR SALE". The body of the text explains that in other places and at other times maybe your basic starving artist could afford to starve, but not anymore, at least not in Moscow. Then, the clincher:

    "Thank the Lord, I am a woman. That means that the old and romantic profession of prostitute, as long as I am young, is openfor me. And more importantly - I am an artist and therefore can turn any occupation or detail of my biography into art."

    Whoa. At first glance I see five potential heated arguments ruining or enlivening an evening, but for our purposes here, let's just move onto page two, Aliona's price list, led off with the words, "Art is luxury - It must therefore be expensive". You can't help but love the way that one word, "artist", jazzes up the menu: "Videofilming artist's naked body in any position, 45 min ( $4999)", or "Voyeurism complex (looking at copulating artist, possibility of masturbating for a customer), 30 min ($599)".

    The selling of one's very self, the stench - the mere whiff - of commerce was once an anathema to what used to be "the Net community." But the glittering ideal, "anarchy that works," turns out to be the main attraction of the global storefront window.


    Confession: It's been a hell of a week. A slightly different version of the above appeared in Rhizome in June. Thanks to Mark Tribe for giving the nod to the cut-&-paste.

    Alexei Shulgin, curator of the Moscow WWWArt Centre wrote, "Hello, david, this may be interesting for you: nobody buys aliona! i made this provocation exhibiting her project (she doesn't know what internet is) in order to sell her. but - no response!"

    To which I replied, "...hilarious! Here, the Net is supposed to be this great big harem of cybersex (in the public mind), and yet when it comes down to it, no one's willing to put their money down. By the way, I've had a terrific time exploring the Moscow WWWArt Centre, and I think the Aliona idea is brilliant. ... I once had a story, a pseudo-bio of a writer. Girl contacted me, wildly frustrated that she couldn't find his stuff in the library..."

    Alexei: "The net is one of the biggest myths ever."