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20 March 2006 by nathaniel

Andre SC’s take on Compressionism

Andre SC: Search our Family PhotosThere’s been a cross-blogging comment buzz between myself and Andre SC (fellow Jo’burger Andre Clemens – that link is to his prints in discussion) as of late, since he picked up on my Compressionist movement.  Trained in information theory and design, Andre has been crossing over into the fine art realm as of late – beginning with his PornAgain and NetPorn series (some featured at GordArt), and now working with ‘Search Engine Compressionism‘. Beautiful and interesting stuff, created using experimental, generative, iterative and sometimes performative algorithms (mixed with aesthetic decision-making here and there).

We’re talking about a live-ish generative net.art collaboration, potentially. Watch this space….

Left: Andre SC: Search our Family Photos

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04 March 2006 by nathaniel

MTAA @ WSOA

That’s M. River and T. Whid Art Associates, at Wits School of the Arts (University of the Witwatersrand).

There was an awesome response to my MTAA presentation at Upgrade! Joburg yesterday – really interesting discussion followed, mostly about their continual throughline of accenting relationality, as well as their gamut from punk work (Pirated Movie), through community building (Reference Resource), and discussions with the history of contemporary art (1ypv). Below is more from Christo (great to hear a different perspective from that of the presenter!)…

Via atjoburg.net, and posted by Christo Doherty (photographs also by Christo):

The second Upgrade! Event featured the work of New York net artists, MTAA, in a presentation by Nathaniel Stern. Nathaniel began by playing an audio greeting to Johannesburg from T.Whid, one member of the MTAA duo and then launched into an eclectic overview of MTAA’s work, which emphasized the subversive intelligence and humour which is a common thread throughout their work.

 MTAA - artists

For Nathaniel, MTAA – the artists T.Whid and M.River – embody a deliberately anti-academic, punkish attitude towards Net Art. Since the beginning of their collaboration in 1996, they have pushed the possibliities of Net Art and the limits of intellectual copyright in an impressive range of works.

 

The enthusiastic audience in the Wits Digital Arts seminar room were treated to glimpses of works such as Random Access Mortality from 2002, in which MTTA took a couple of hundred short samples from either side of the “Hello Operator” single by The White Stripes and built an interface which allows users to access these samples in a completely random fashion.

One theme that emerged strongly from Nathaniel’s presentation was MTAA’s strategy of "updating" classic pieces of performance art from the 1970s and 80s. These Updates are characterised by a wry retrospective irony towards the "classics" combined with a canny repurposing of the work using the interactive potential of the Internet. Perhaps the most striking example of this was MTAA’s 1 year performance video (aka samHsiehUpdate) This piece, commissioned and hosted by Turbulence.org, reworked a classic piece of performance art, Sam Hsieh’s "One Year Performance, 1980 – 1981". The MTAA update, however, shifted the onus of the performance from the artist’s to the viewers. MTAA transformed the act of living in a cell for a year into over 160 video clips of themselves living in a cell. Viewers who logged onto the site were invited to watch the video clips for a year.

 nathaniel_mtaa_presentation
Nathaniel Stern showing one of this favourite pieces by MTTA,
"Five Small Videos About Interruption and Disappearing".

Other works covered in Nathaniel’s presentation included Endnode (a.k.a Printer Tree) a networked sculpture created during their 2002 Residency at the Eyebeam Gallery in New York; Pirated_Movie in which MTAA screened a pirated version of Disney’s "Pirates of the Caribbean" with a new soundtrack improvised by DJs and musicians; and DC 9/11 – The Evildoers’ Remix a guerrilla edit of a pro-Bush propaganda film.

 
A clip from "Pirated Movie" – a participating DJ is visible in
silhouette on the right hand of the screen.

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03 March 2006 by nathaniel

Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night

Granted, this is mostly a re-blog of some links I got from Art Fag City and MTAA-RR (two of my favorite blogs – and don’t miss the MTAA Upgrade! at Wits this afternoon!), but there are some great posts / reviews already up on the Whitney Biennial. The basic gist is that there are some newbies (which is nice), it is mostly courageous and slightly un-American, it kinda sucks (what else is new?), and they should have asked me for work. Everyone is agreed on that last point.

I think I like some of Jerry Saltz’s review for a start, from artnet:

"Day for Night" is the liveliest, brainiest, most self-conscious Whitney Biennial I have ever seen. In some ways it isn’t a biennial at all. Curators Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne have cleverly re-branded the biennial, presenting a thesis not a snap-shot, a proposition about art in a time when modernism is history and postmodernist rhetoric feels played out. This show and the art world are trying to do what America can’t or won’t do: Use its power wisely, innovatively and with attitude — be engaged and above all not define being a citizen of the world narrowly.

"Day for Night" is filled with work I’m not interested in; it tries to do too much in too little space; it is often dry and confusing. Nevertheless, the show is a compelling attempt to examine conceptual practices and political agency, consider art that is not about beauty, reconsider reductivism, explore the possibility of an underground in plain sight, probe pre-modern and archaic approaches, posit destruction and chaos as creative forces, and revisit ideas about obfuscation and anonymity. This show is less market-driven than usual; in fact it attempts to cross swords with conventions that have brought us to the brink of madness. It’s also an anti-manifesto taking on romanticism, expressionism and decorative psychedelia.
…
This biennial is positively un-American.

I should note that there’s a bit of a double entendre there, in that there are lots of foreigners on the show, compared to usual (um, none), and there are more than a few political pieces. Then, there’s this interview with the curators, which had some interesting bits in it, but I could only skim (something is wrong when art bores me… I just tried again, and there are still some interesting bits and it still kinda bored me). Not a terrible intro tho, "In an undertaking described by Whitney directorr Adam Weinberg as “absorbing the immediacy of artists’ responses to the world,” the curators have focused on notions of uncertain identity, unfixed images, “lavish abandon,” ambiguity and a sense of social and political questioning as evidenced in contemporary art." Look, ma! I can be ambiguous (indifferent?) about ambiguity!

There’re some interesting concerns on bloggy, extensive (but not so great) pics on Heart As Arena, and a slightly hilarious (tho again, boring at points) mash-up (14MB) on Art Dirt Redux. (For those not in the know, definition of mash-up aka bastard pop – we’re latecomers in Africa).

I can’t help but think of my sister, who is taking her first History of Art class as she does an MFA in acting (paraphrasing here) – "Nathaniel, you make this stuff so sound cool, while these books and my lecturers make it sound boring. So, which is it?"

Good f^ck!ng question, and I’m real sorry, Sammy – maybe it’s because I never took a History of Art class? Sigh.

Archives

28 February 2006 by nathaniel

The Upgrade! Johannesburg and Wits Digital Soiree present: MTAA

From the Upgrade! Joburg site:

At their permission, Nathaniel Stern will be presenting the work of MTAA, a Brooklyn based digital art duo, most famous for their extremely provocative and quirky networked art:

Artists M. River and T. Whid formed MTAA in 1996 and soon after began to explore the internet as a medium for public art. The duo’s exhibition history includes group shows and screenings at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Postmasters Gallery and Artists Space, all in New York City, and at The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. International exhibitions include the Seoul Net & Film Festival in Korea and Videozone2 – The 2nd International Video Art Biennial in Israel. In the forthcoming New Media Art (Taschen, 2006), authors Mark Tribe and Reena Jana describe MTAA’s 1 year performance video (aka samHsiehUpdate) as “a deftly transparent demonstration of new media’s ability to manipulate our perceptions of time.” The collaboration has also earned grants and awards from Rhizome.org, Eyebeam, New Radio & Performing Arts, Inc. and The Whitney Museum’s Artport web site.

And Christo’s cool poster:
UPDATE: this awesome poster was made by Arlene Murphy:

MTAA in Africa!

Archives

05 February 2006 by nathaniel

artthrob artbio feature

Nathaniel Stern

Ralph Borland writes:

Nathaniel Stern is an artist, a teacher, a technologist, a blogger, a social catalyst and constant networker in the art community. As an artist, his works spans performance, poetry, interactive installation and video, net.art and print. … Nathaniel’s artwork often touches on the mutability of personal identity, as in his assumption of multiple personas through his video performance work. His ideas around the body, a centre in much of his art and his focus in recent academic work around The Implicit Body, speak of the body and person ‘enfolding’ the world around them into themselves, and so constantly transforming….. Read more

It’s a very generous and comprehensive overview of my current work, and most of my arts career. "ArtThrob is South Africa’s leading contemporary visual arts publication, reporting on the national arts scene and the involvement of South African artists in the international art world." See the full bio.

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