New Langton Arts "... we live in a society that is increasingly shaped by events in cyberspace, and yet cyberspace remains, for all practical purposes, invisible... the most dynamic and innovative region of the modern world reveals itself to us only through the anonymous middlemen of interface design." Steven Johnson (Interface Culture) "... if network_art_activism begins to establish stronger ties with the previous generations of artists who have faced the dismantling of the political in art – both in the North and the South – so that this very immature form which is net.art can gain a sense of history about institutional critique, in order to develop both a deeper aesthetic and historical knowledge about what other artists have done before history was erased by the digital hype." Ricardo Dominguez (interview with Coco Fusco, Mute Magazine) "Day Jobs," the new show of networked art at San Fran's New Langton Arts, represents the work of four web-based artists in an attempt to contextualize current net.art production. This is accomplished (arguably) by contrasting and comparing these artists' works performed as employment against that done with artistic intentions. The stated goal is to define net.art as a definitive genre, one closely related to (dependent on?) the more overtly commercial applications of the Web. In "Day Jobs," the works are to be represented in a novel manner (sans the usual art historical lineage model)- in order "to shed light on the influences and conditions in which digital media art in created." The connections established between the two different aspects of new media production (art and industry), however, seem dependent on the same traditional personality-based readings familiar to art history. So, what we end up with is a strangely decontextualized reading of both the "commercial" and "artistic" products in question. The works of Maya Kalogera and Jody Zellen seem to fit the curator's model most aptly, as their work has some of the traditional notions of separation between day and night jobs. Here, we're presented with the familiar story of the artist-craftsperson dichotomy, where the worker utilizes similar skills in the pursuit of different objectives. In this instance, the web designer adapts images, code, and style from one endeavor to assist in the creativity of the other. The artists' roles as both artist and craftsperson is narrated by "Day Jobs" with a biographical tone ( http://www.coyoteyip.com/bio.html ), speaking of the positive influence each part of their professional lives benefits from the other. I can't help but see the resemblance between this construction of new media workers (paint monkeys and programmers) and the older vision of the creative individual amongst the otherwise anonymous workforce. Bringing capitalism's (and the art world's) fetish for individualism and creativity as productive byproducts of competition into the digital age. The other two artists in the show present a more problematic instance of net.workers for the exhibit, but still become consumed by the drive for normalization, and in some ways assist it. Valery Grancher is represented on the one hand by a project completed for UC Berkeley's Art Museum with student participation, and on the other by a project to archive lectures by Roland Barthes. Interestingly, much emphasis is placed on a contract developed by Grancher to sell the Berkeley project to the school. The person archiving some of Barthes work, the author of Death of the Author, is credited with developing a means for net.artists to be recognized as authors. Whatever the specifics are for Grancher's contract and its relationship to "community", this brings net.art closer to previous forms of art – that is, more like a tradable commodity with all the trappings ( http://www.archimuse.com/mw99/papers/rinehart/rinehart.html ). Mark Tribe, the originator of Rhizome.org, is represented by that project as both instances in the artist's professional life. Referencing Joseph Beuys' practice of "social sculpture," Tribe makes the separation between work, play, and politics the subject of discussion. The "work" is both the concept and execution of Rhizome as artwork and as a functioning non-profit, with stakes being real for both. Not unlike other versions of social sculpture, Mierle Ukeles and the Christos comes to mind, the work is as much in the social network as in the tangible things produced. But there are some conceptual problems here, not just with Tribe's work, but with the concept and practice of social sculpture in general, at least the dominant versions of it. The notion that an artist can perform the same work done by many, while claiming notoriety and novelty seems a bit patriarchal – the artist becomes self-conscious CEO. In the least, it seems to overlook the status required for such a transformation of labor into something with both symbolic and exchange value. This is not to say that the practice can't be useful, only that it raises new problems in its attempt to deal with others, and is often cloaked in neo-utopian rhetoric. The major question I have regarding "Day Jobs" is: "Why make the distinction between artwork and employment at all?" How new of an approach can it be to separate the work done by artists based on whether or not it's employment. How do commissions fit in, especially since more and more net.artists (at least the big names) produce in such a manner. And what about the growing shift in programming labor from the North/West to the recolonized South/East and the art reverberating in between that reality. I must admit this line of questioning is highly rhetorical. No one should expect arts institutions to break from the ideological imperative to keep labor alienated while presenting the illusion of a possible, less alienated work ecology. But neither should we expect it to go by without critical discussion. If "Day Jobs" wanted to be a show about the current and historical necessity of wage labor in the production of leisure, there are plenty of examples to be found that make the connections between net.art and industry motives visible. It could even have been done with the artists' works chosen. But of course, "Day Jobs" doesn't want to be that. Why would it, when that might cause some unwelcome feedback within the network of arts institutions and high-tech sponsors. URL>New Langton Arts Copyright © 2002 soundtoys.net™ All artists rights reserved.

"The textile industry is where capitalism began; it was the industry the brought the industrial revolution from England to America - and it is the means by which capitalism is gradually conquering such places as Pakistan, to the eternal regrets of Luddites like Bin Laden." "Equipped with networks and arguments, backed up by decades of research, a hybrid movement - wrongly labeled by the mainstream media as "anti-globalisation" - gained momentum. One of the particular features of this movement lies in its apparent inability and unwillingness to answer the question that is typical of any kind of movement on the rise or any generation on the move: what's to be done?" After recently connecting to the xurban collective's online portion of _Knit++_ a few relationships between "global" social/protest movements and the rise of networked art and culture presented themselves as interesting for discussion. Or at least I imagined these connections within the context of other projects and discussions on New Media, tactical media, US aggression, and cyberfeminist practice. Not that any of this would be new, or form a consolidated theory, but – maybe suffering from the inability to answer "the question" as Lovink and Schneider argue of new social movements - the asking of questions can be as serious a project as answering them, even if those questions may seem redundant. _Knit++_ presents an interface that allows visitors to navigate through narrative, pictorial, and animated information that, when seen in the context of the project, makes connections between textiles, computer and social networks, and institutional power. While the composition of the interface is fairly familiar, with a screen-like field for changing information above a control panel of sorts, the conceptual links created are not. The control panel symbolically replicates the group's proposition of _entanglement as opposed to intertwining_ (artists' statement), which is what occurs conceptually when one moves through the project's space. Various projects incorporating sewing, issues of women's work, and global locality can be moved through by selecting from the tangled map of virtual locations in the control panel. Drawing connections between textile production and the WWW, especially in terms of work, has been explored in other projects, most recently Helen Whitehead's _Web, Warp, and Weft_ . As has the Neo/Luddite connection, though perhaps, not always adequately. The original textile worker Luddites of 19th Century England fought to destroy the machines that were replacing them, not just out of fear of the machines, but because they knew (at this early stage of industrialism) that the machinery was the evolving capital class's method for dealing with the problem of labor. Looking at the questions and attempts at solutions raised by _Knit++_ through the historical and contemporary rhetoric that forms the narratives of the Neo/Luddite movement can be useful and interesting for those interested/involved in continuing social movements and networked communication. The work of the xurban collective takes, what many would call an oppositional position toward the global expansion of capital and state sponsored culture: "Civil society should be constructed outside the State and the Capitalist sponsors network. Non-profit organizations are traps." Statements like this would place Xurbanites into a new catagory of Luddite for many technocrats and economists that represent libertarian interests like Forbes or other, authoritarian yearnings. Many such technocratic pundits find it ironic that groups of people (like the Carbon Defense League ) are using high tech to fight so-called "progress." But there is also irony in the rhetorical use of _Luddite_ to describe someone like Bin Laden, someone who has profited from modernization and construction and whose terrorist organization isn't exactly an international labor movement. Of course, I feel ridiculous even having Al Queda and arts/activist groups like the CDL and Xurban in the same paragraph, for obvious reasons, but, after looking at US Congressional hearings on "cyber protests" and DdoS attacks, I'm not sure the authorities would feel the same . Terrorism and attempts to form networks that operate in opposition to undemocratic institutions are apparently the same, and it doesn't matter if the virus is of the biological or computer variety. The line between email from Electronic Disturbance Theater participants and envelope bombs from the Unabomber is a fine one according to the US Congress and its business leaders, who seem to want to draft another Frame Breaking Act-like law governing digital information (where the DMCA doesn't). But all this throwing around of loaded historical terms like "Luddite" seems to fit nicely into the, by now well-worn, discourse of "the Other," allowing us to easily create shells of identity based on irrational fear and aggressive desire. While most discussion of "the Other" (academic or not) has focused on gender, ethnicity, and race, the model is equally useful when looking at contemporary incidents that have a history in the ongoing treatment of labor in the West in general. But this nice fit is not so comfortable. As modern Western/Northern capital is more globally expansive than ever, the models for personal and labor relations seem to be homogenizing, so "the Other" is adapting to the needs of capital. Race and ethnicity become problematic as locations of fear and anxiety in a global economy ruled by capital, but class - and many argue gender – is multicultural as far as economics is concerned. At least it could seem multicultural by masking lingering racial/ethnic fear – since overt class oppression is apparently acceptable (in the US anyway) while other forms aren't. The rhetorical power of terms and concepts like "Luddite" to simplify both history and the present is not easily dismissed. Such concepts may become the mask for older fears that will allow for the popular repression of future resistance to domination by capital, especially in a so-called global setting. While _Knit++_ appears to primarily function as an interactive, if fairly static and by now conventional, artwork, one can also view it as a document and solicitation for something else. It's obvious, as one goes through the project that you're only getting a remnant of what's going on - and I don't just mean the coinciding physical installation, though that's a part too. Visualizing relationships, like that between the struggles of women, labor, and geography can be a tool that helps us allow for difference while forming working networks. Copyright © 2003 soundtoys.net™ All artists rights reserved.