Anti-Factory RESTOCK! Spring Fling!

Dude, it's been a while since I had more than just a few things for sale in the store. But yes, there's more than a baker's dozen being offered. My interface is still a bit weird and you have to email me to purchase anything, but at least it's up!

Fling it, baby!

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PROSUMERISM: social networking = free labor?

I keep coming back to an article I found via design theorist and educator Ellen Lupton's blog Design Your Life on the idea of "prosumerism." Now fast becoming a buzzword (I think I first heard of it six months ago, and now it's popping up all over the place), prosumerism is essentially a melding of the words "producer" and "consumer." The article "Designing Our Own Graves" by Dmitri Siegal is a critique on the DIY online movement in general, not to be confused with the craft-centric term of DIY.

From Lupton:

"Siegal has coined the word "prosumerism" to describe the convergence of production and consumption triggered by the D.I.Y. movement. Scrapbookers and knitters spend lots money on their supplies, creating markets for goods. More interestingly, on-line community Web sites rely on the time, labor, and creative capital of users to create their own product: "You do not own your Flickr account and you never will. When you update a MySpace account you are building up someone else's asset." (The same can be said for blogs like this one.)"

Hence, we are all "laboring" and "working" when we make content by posting to blogs, del.icio.ous, myspace, youtube, flickr, etc. And we labor to share our information and interests with the world. And yet the nagging reality is that we are "free" content creators moving around on operating systems and structures that we do not own or profit from. Our generosity is translating into "cultural capital" for the corporations that buy out the YouTubes of the world and reap profit via advertising to us.

When reality TV shows hit the air and gained popularity here in the States, the fallout was that writers and actors--folks covered by the Screen Actors Guild and union contracts--found themselves cut out of the jobs. If you look at it one way, television has been "democratized" by the inclusion of reality TV, but it can also be seen as a cheap and easy way for the media corporations to avoid paying for content.

As I just created a del.icio.us account, I'm left wondering what kind of future database I'm creating--that i'm an unpaid, generally oblivious, happily working cog in a machine that will process my interests and make use of the connections I make online. I do not own this structure and I never will.

Chilling.

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Doppelganger politics

British artist and former Tate Prize winner Mark Wallinger's installation "State Britain" confounds the idea of reality and copy, as well as questions the place of political protest in an art context. In it, Wallinger meticulously recreates within the Tate Museum an actual protest display made by activist Brian Haw in London's Parliament Square. I presented his work to my grad students last week and we had a lively discussion on how it raised issues of the "effectiveness" of political messaging in an art context.

Sometime after Wallinger's version was installed, Haw's original display was dismantled and cut down to a smaller size after a new law was enacted by Parliament banning protest displays larger than 10 feet (Haw's was over 100 feet) within a certain distance from the government building. So in essence, Wallinger's work becomes a time capsule of the original, sealing it into a static piece that is ironically protected within the walls of the (government funded) museum under its status as an "art object."

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Otto von Busch is rad!

I posted a previous snippet months ago on the artist, activist, and fashion PhD candidate Otto von Busch, but only today stumbled on a fabulous interview article with him on the We Make Money Not Art website. I love his projects and in all disclosure I also have to say I'm taking part in a show he's organizing in Istanbul in the fall, which I feel extremely psyched and lucky about.

Here's to a true fashion hacker!

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009391.php

and also this awesome free PDF book he published, "Abstract Hacktivism," on activism, technology, and creative resistances: http://www.isk-gbg.org/99our68/AbstractHacktivism.pdf

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temporary store site is up and active!

whew! took me a while to figure it out, but I managed to put up a temporary Anti-Factory store site while my server bugs are being tended to. I've been out of commission from having a "real" web store for months now, and it's been making me feel rather out of sorts. SO!

will post new items soon, but in the meantime, there are four things for your perusal :) email me to purchase anything, but make sure you put the item name in the email body or subject line so i know which one you're talking about.

over n out...

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import/export

This stuff makes me so angry and sad... click below.

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FINALLY! Beijing photos!

agh, this took me forever to go through and after a week being back, they're all uploaded to my Flickr account. and even after culling, there's still several hundred of them. if ye are so inclined to wade thru them, check it:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49646846@N00/sets/72157600084208631/

otherwise, here's a short selection:

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back from beijing!

just got back from beijing! i tell you, the place is OUT OF CONTROL. let me re-emphasize: OUT OF CONTROL. it's like the go-go new york 80s art world: too much money, too little time. all the artists out there live like rockstars and have ginormous (that's gigantic + enormous) studios and party like there's no tomorrow. obviously, that makes for some interesting problematics (quality control? sustainability?) but will talk more on that later.

details to come. over and out! jetlag sucks but the world spins forwards :) i could totally see myself living in beijing for a month or so, just soaking it all in!


even the graffiti is cute...

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beijing recommendations?

yes, i know it's a shot in the dark to be asking the internet blogging world, but you never know: got any recommendations for things to do or see in bejing? i'm leaving on saturday for nine days (see the post below) and although i don't think i'll have tons of time outside of gallery stuff, need some "tips" on beijing culture or other funstuffs.

what should one do in beijing? what should one NOT do? do tell....!

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