<nettime> Selected Memories of The Warhol Hijack - Peppermint Remix

[mint77 <mint77@restlessculture.net>]

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Selected Memories of The Warhol Hijack

11 Artists responding to 72 Hours in the online and physical spaces of
weliveinpublic.com

Cary Peppermint
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RE-BOOT
My experiences on the second day of the Hijack began with M. River and Twhid
using blue industrial tape to scribe banal messages on the floor e.g,
"HIJACK" in an apparent effort to reclaim physical space alongside their
acquisitions of virtual territory through uploading of each participating
artist's reactionary soundbytes onto the internet.  G.H. Hovagimyan paced
across the living room shouting loud anti-performative mantras.  Ricardo
Dominguez conspired with Jen McCoy in converting a large, electric sign that
inhabits the space to read "WE LIVE IN SHOCK".  The "We Live In Public"
website was then altered by Yael Kanerak to reflect this same message.  In a
precedent set forth by MTAA, I began to assist Dominguez in re-arranging the
furniture.  We were "breaking rules" issued by Tanya the female co-star of
weliveinpublic.com just before she went skiing for the weekend and gave over
her loft-space to 11 artists from Verbal group for our "Warhol Hijack".  It
may be worhwhile to note that Tanya lives at weliveinpublic.com and plays
out the dramas of "real life" alongside her boyfriend, venture capitalist of
the project Josh.

THE ARTIST'S PERFORMANCE MODEL AMIDST
ACCELERATED CAPITAL/BENEATH THE REAL-TIME GAZE
It is my opinion that attempts toward scheduled works and narrative-type
performances were rendered as "high-profile" sacrifices to the real-time
gaze and could not escape a deadening "over-exposure".  The over-exposure is
an "idea-freeze" and is the cost of the real-time reduction in space and
accompanying acceleration of time.  As I detailed in a previous release of
notes from the first day, these reductions resulted in a binaristic and
seemingly inescapable over-construction and produced an environment of
instant non-consideration where remote participants subjected us to a series
of harsh, accelerated judgements i.e., good/bad, yes/no.  With regards to
Warhol's now over-exposed statement detailing the fifteen minutes of future
fame I now think it should be revised to simply read: "In the future
everyone will disappear".

After some of the "disappearing acts" on the first day many artists then
reconsidered or otherwise fell somewhat intuitively into a continuation and
update of their working methods.  Possibly the most successful responses
employed restless strategies to evade the real-time gaze by continued
movement, refusal to acknowledge the possibility of "real" exchange and a
disregard for the "idea" altogether.  Artists insistence on dancing, house
music, and the jamming of control room channels resulted in the welcome
intoxication of creative play.  Even the re-arrangement of the furniture
later proved to be an effective strategy denying the real-time gaze of the
living room cameras optimum vantage points for their ordinary
over-exposures.  

THE INTERMITTENT EXPOSURE?
Saturday evening began with an alternate camera feed as the McCoys denied
voyeurs the real-time anesthesia of the site and replaced it with their own
re-combinate video streams.  A scheduling success was Tina LaPorta's
"Cybersex" which functioned as an "information-seduction".  LaPorta's work
hyped the expectations of remote participants and gave decadent momentum to
the merging of Diane Ludin and crew's "Empire of the Senseless" with the
exhibition of an edible, psycho-active work called "Soy Love".  These events
culminated in what I refer to loosely as a largely collaborative and highly
improvisational "Simulated Cocaine Party" where artists conjoined energies
alongside two random human elements of my own work in progress who became
known as "The Versace Girls".  Around the Versace Girls or "undecidables" a
de-centered and highly non-locatable series of actions began to reveal
CONDUCTOR NUMBER-ZERO:  a performance installation or "base camp" for human
over-exposure in light and sound consisting of an NCI 1000 watt industrial
work-light tower, a Sony mini-digital video camera, electric blue
astro-turf, a Apple Tangerine I-book, a Fender portable PA system and a
Chrome Aiwa 15 inch video monitor.  CN-ZERO began via the improvisational
use by multiple entities.  The Versace Girls fully embraced the CN-ZERO
idea-freeze through hardcore, non-reflective and self-indulgent use of the
piece.  The Girls enjoyed lip-syncing, dancing, DJing and through an
apparent acceleration of desire gave themselves over to spectacle in close
proximity to the 1000 watt light of the commodity fetish.  Their sacrifice
climaxed in what I consider a critical inversion of the over-exposure.

It was near this point a remote participant to the event suggested to me
that some of the most interesting moments "appeared" as those which were
least detectable by the real-time gaze.  This follows well with artist Kevin
McCoy's response (as best I can remember it having been committed at the
time to my own self proclaimed "rigor of the non-idea") that for a brief
moment the binaristic stronghold of the real-time gaze was broken as remote
participants tried in vain (as reflected via chat) to follow many of the
artists increasingly restless abandon of the real-time cameras and mediated
interactions.  Chatters, voyeurs, participants were momentarily exposed all
at once as lonely, distant without the agency or complexity of the
non-mediated response.  At that moment some may have wished for their own
thin spectral representations or better yet became restless at the forecast
of their own eminent disappearance.


CONDUCTOR NUMBER ZERO @ THE WARHOL HIJACK
http://www.zing.com/album/pictures.html?id=4293026041


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