DUE TO THE MYSTERIOUS AND SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF THE WALKER ART CENTER’S FACEBOOK WALL AFTER AN OVERFLOW OF HUNDREDS OF POSTS ALL MADE BY ARTISTS LAST NIGHT, THE LOCATION FOR READY OR NOT IT’S 2010 HAS BEEN MOVED TO THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART. WE ARE SORRY FOR ANY CONFUSION AND ENCOURAGE THOSE WHO PREVIOUSLY POSTED TO RE-POST ON LACMA’S WALL. IN THE EVENT THAT THE WALKER’S WALL RE-APPEARS, READY OR NOT IT’S 2010 WILL BE A DUAL-SITE EXHIBITION. IT’S OK. WE CAN PROVE TO BE FLEXIBLE. THERE ARE PLENTY OF FISH IN THE SEA AND LACMA IS JUST AS BIG OF A TUNA. IF YOU CAN, PLEASE RE-ISSUE THESE NEW PLANS ON YOUR BLOG. THANK YOU. NOW LET’S HAVE FUN TODAY.
AN OPEN CALL FOR WORK TO BE INCLUDED IN THE EXHIBIT:
READY OR NOT IT’S 2010, Los Angeles Country Museum of Art.
Wednesday March 31 will mark the opening of a new group show on the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art’s Facebook wall (viewable at http://facebook.com/LACMA).
We encourage artists to use the image, video and link features available upon becoming a fan of the LACMA to post their own artworks and links.
There is practically no limit to the amount of work you can post if you spread it out over the course of a minute, so please feel free to use this opportunity to showcase as much of yourself (or someone else) as you want.
Because the majority of America’s art museums continue to ignore their potential to publicize and contextualize art online, digital artists should take the task of historicization into their own hands.
Even though art’s public institutions don’t want to include us in their conversation, we can still include them in ours- with or without their consent.
The manipulability of art museums’ Facebook walls allows artists the chance to wrest curatorial control back from institutions empowered by years of exclusionary practices.
We encourage artists to include participation in this exhibit on their resume under the ‘group show’ heading as:
READY OR NOT IT’S 2010, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. March 2010
This is the open source world of art on the internet; institutions that want to use it will have to start playing by the same lack of rules the rest of us do.
Ready or not, it’s 2010.
Are you ready or not, to be appropriated?
“Because the majority of America’s art museums continue to ignore their potential to publicize and contextualize art online, digital artists should take the task of historicization into their own hands”.
I like your emphasis, but why do you want museums to contextualise artists? Artists can choose the most suitable context for their work by themselves. There are already plenty of examples when heavy handed museums show work in completely the opposite way to which it was intended. I don’t like most galleries and museums for this reason: they will take your work and twist it to mean whatever they want the audience to understand.
I’m not sure why you want them in your ‘conversation’ because rest assured they will come looking to put you and your work in a neat little frame on their clean white wall as soon as they decide your work is useful to them. This is seen when graffiti artists are asked to put work in galleries or museums to give them some ‘street cred’ even though the context the artist chose was the street. Sadly most just sell out as soon as they are offered money, popularity and legitimacy anyway.
I also want ‘the chance to wrest curatorial control back from institutions empowered by years of exclusionary practices’ but what do you do when they appropriate any dissidence that you undertake?
Modern Art Oxford is doing something you might be interested in because their track record involves a lot of illusionary dissent; recently they had an artist make it ‘look’ like their gallery had been ‘attacked’. They invite ‘radical looking’ acts as a strategy to make their brand appear ‘edgy’, as in this www.flickr.com/groups/1323260@N24/ appropriation of visitors ‘illicit’ images taken at their gallery. It does not take a genius to realise that if you post an image on their page, then you are giving them control again of the art they originally displayed in the gallery. It’s win-win for them. It’s like someone stealing something and then handing it right back to the owner and the police are not even involved.
But they really don’t care about actual acts of artists taking back control; they just want cool looking stuff under their logo.
I would like to hear what you think. I’m on your side (I think) unless you work for a museum and this is another big stunt to get ‘cool’ art on your site?
Cheers
