iCommons iSummit first session

So this is the opening talk I gave as part of a panel of speakers at the iCommons iSummit, alongside the likes of Gilberto Gil, Minister of Culture, Brazil, Paulina Urrutia, Minister of Culture, Chile, Larry Lessig, Chairman, Creative Commonsm Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia. WOW! Between being a bit rushed, and just standard performance issues, I cut a lot of this on the fly, but here’s what I had written before the start….

Thanks everybody. First, I just want to thank Heather, Daniela, Kerryn, and the iCommons and African Digital Commons teams in general for taking me seriously when I jokingly said, “hey you guys should get an artist and fly them to Rio so they can re-mix the conference.” And it has been pleasure so far, to volunteer for this aduous task. A bunch of visionaries you guys are, really. The whole “CC” thing; it works for me. Double thumbs, Larry.

Next, I should mention that, in addition to a net.art site of video poetry I turned CC last week, I’m re-releasing the interactive installation you see outside under a CC / GPL license. The latest version of it, which as of last night is surprisingly easy to use, will be online for download in an hour or so.

As an artist, I work mostly in new media, broadly understood, cutting across digital and traditional photography and printmaking, video, interactive, multimedia performance, poetry and storytelling, net.art, etc – but I think the media I work in take a back seat to my approach more generally, which tends to be a kind of “questions that take me places.”

More or less, I’m an art geek, and I see myself as kind of snowballing in and around a projectile of questions and failures, inconsistencies, some good crit from others, the occasional new computer gadget, and the ball is like (woot, woot – wee! Over trees, bashing into things), occasionally (shwoomp!) sucking in a dog here and there (wooof!), getting bigger and bigger, too big in fact – and, once in a while, through my dizziness of failure, I manage to look over my shoulder and I’m like “Hey! That was curious!” and that’s really where most of my art comes from, and then somebody, usually my wife, says, “Yeh it was! That WAS curious! Let’s take a closer look, shall we?” – and then mostly it’s crap but sometimes the huge, dirty, kinda lopsided American-South African snowball I’m embedded in, picks up something that may be kind of alright. Ya know, like, it doesn’t bother me. And despite the odd, anarchic freefalling process that is my arts production, occasionally, others find something to the work, too.

And I firmly believe that it’s the inherently collaborative nature, the postmodern referencing, the interdisciplinary and cross-theoretical borrowing, my mistakes and others’ mistakes – and I guess occasional successes, too – that we can build on across one huge snowball fight, etc, etc,- these things make CC, and more generally what it stands for, an important part of my own work, and the arts community at large.

I, flatter, artists I’d like to work with by re-mixing their stuff – in hopes of collaborating more directly with them one day. I give away content and art in order to direct more traffic to my site, more attention to my work, and also to make the pieces that I am NOT giving away more valuable. I, borrow, big ideas, and make them more intimate. Follow through on smaller ideas and make them bigger. Sometimes, I just dialogue with the artworks that are already “working,” in order to remind myself and viewers that they’re there, all moving along in their own li’l snowmen.

And, given my stance as an activist, I will occasionally make very conscious choices to actually take calculated risks and ignore copyright, in order to make a statement about all of the above – or something else.

I believe that this dialogue, these dialogues, these varying production modes, are not only wonderful catalysts towards carrying on many amazing discourses, but actually ever-present and vital to all academic, corporate and creative industries – be them in the public or private interest.

I was chatting to Rebecca Kahn yesterday and Nhlanhla Mabaso this morning, both fellow South Africans at the conference, and we couldn’t help, when speaking of our favorite artists, but to note how different the role of the artist has become over the last century. There’s no more of this “solo genius in isolation,” no more Renaissance Men who produce work in their lifetimes only to be discovered hundreds of years later. Our role is as public figures. We collaborate with and nurture younger artists, we give lectures and public talks, we teach and attempt to hold a standard of cultural and personal generosity in our day to day lives – all of this, and more, is a kind of non-traditional method of production that matches the spirit of the art we make, and essence of the Commons.

So, all that being said, I’m here, at the iCommons iSummit to “make stuff”. To re-mix and "do".

Making stuff is good. As I’ve alluded to already, I think making stuff is good even if the stuff you make isn’t that good.

(Although good stuff is usually better.)

I’ll be moving between rooms and workshops over the next couple of days, please don’t be insulted if I skip about – with my laptop, scanner, phone camera, dv camera, imaging and video applications, big mouth, excitability, large hand gestures, and whatever other mediation tools I have at my disposal or threw into my bag before hopping on the plane in Johannesburg.

I’ll try to set up installations or project images or sound when things allow, blog, podcast, flickr or collaborate on whatever I can’t, re-work old pieces and put them into the ether, drink and be merry, move between conceptual and investigative spaces, juxtaposing and playing just to see where meaning can happen, and who likes what.

I’ll be doing one of the things that CC encourages: I’m just going to be experimenting with your content as a kind of means, rather than towards a particular end, but aware of the fact that “no product” does NOT mean unproductive.

It’s gonna be good. Thanks.

Now is it up to me to introduce the “next act”? My good buddies:

Gilberto Gil, Minister of Culture, Brazil
Paulina Urrutia, Minister of Culture, Chile
Larry Lessig, Chairman, Creative Commons
Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia

Don’t be too hard on them, OK? They might not all be artists, but not everyone can be, and they care about art, so maybe they can be honorary art-helpers or something, y’know? Be nice to them, they’re good peoples….