Category: Reviews

There’s a case to be made that the volume and duration of postings [by a net.art mailer script that accidentally flooded the Rhizome RAW mailing list with spam] makes the work sculpture. That their transgression makes them interrogative of unexamined social norms, which gives them critical content and value. And that this has shocked the bourgeoisie, which you don’t get too often these days, making it radical.

To attempt to make that case would be academic narcissism hankering after the decontextualised frisson of an unreflectively transgressive “real”. Or would it?

This is the problem with neoconceptualism: would it be if it wasn’t? Or rather, is it or isn’t it? There’s assisted readymades and then there’s making something to nominate. The latter is more than a little suspect, a bit like taking a felt pen to a laboratory mouse. If a spam flood attack wouldn’t ordinarily be art, which magical aura of art makes this spam flood attack “art”? If this en-arted (created, nominated) spam flood attack is art, can I nominate any real (authentic!) spam flood attack as (better!) art? Particularly one I might (or might not) unleash on the artist as an appropriation of their ouvre to index its (presumably) vitally important content. Surely the Sistine Chapel Ceiling of this particular genre would be a DDoS on the server hosting the project (chosen randomly from a list of one).

Yeah, this (RAW) is the audience to expect to chin-stroke to the bone over a (simulated?) flood attack. If we can ever be bothered to work out whether the skript is functioning as intended or this is just technical as well as conceptual incompetence. Where can we get the source?

The Tate buying a monoprint by someone who simply cannot draw is not the same as Rhizome Raw being graced by the genius of a would-be skript kiddie (please not “hacker”, we’ll be at “hacktivism” next and then I will have to stab someone to death with their conference name badge). And I say this as someone who can bang out a decent nude as well as a decent killfile entry.

I, for one, welcome our new net.prick overlords.