<videovortex> Rhizome News: Play This

[Geert Lovink]

> From: "Rhizome News" <netartnews at rhizome.org>
> Date: 28 January 2008 10:00:04 AM
> To: netartnewslist at rhizome.org
> Subject: Play This
>
> January 28, 2008
>  Play This
> In an institutional context the term "curated" often implies a clear 
> division between the curator, the artist and the audience. 
> Historically, internet art and online exhibitions have radically 
> altered this traditional dynamic and now, with the widespread 
> emergence of blogs and mass media-sharing platforms, the blurring of 
> these roles is commonplace. Recently, a number of artists have 
> employed the playlist feature, a function through which viewers can 
> curate their own collections of uploaded materials, not as a 
> curatorial platform per se but as discrete works of art. (See, for 
> example, Guthrie Lonergan's Myspace Intro Playlist, 2006). The French 
> weekly Ecrans  (a supplement of the Paris newspaper Liberation) has, 
> for the past year, been publishing playlists by a selection of French 
> artists, animators, critics, musicians and game designers. French net! 
>  artist Agnes de Cayeux  uses her playlist  to reframe the travails of 
> video blogger justagurl23–a young woman who "struggles with 
> anxiety/trauma, depression, and the long recovery process from 
> anorexia, self-injury, and more." Through her selections, de Cayeux 
> actively curates the emotionally fraught life of justagurl123, 
> creating a narrative that is both touching and deeply intrusive. For 
> his playlist, artist and activist Benjamin Gaulon tackles the concepts 
> of "planned obsolescence" and "detournement" (a Situationist term that 
> refers to the subversion of dominant media images) in the context of 
> global waste. His selection of Apple's iconic 1984 commercial  
> transforms it from an image of ! home computing liberation into a 
> condemnation of the company's!  constan  t hardware and software 
> upgrades. The most recent playlist , created by Matthieu Clainchard of 
> Bad Beuys Entertainment, focuses on the vibrant genre known as the 
> "demo", in which a director instructively showcases his or her 
> expertise. Clainchard's selection illuminates talent in such areas as 
> dangerous scooter tricks, sensational dance routines, and elaborate 
> homemade Transformer costumes. The unique approach of each playlist on 
> Ecrans represents the range of creative possibilities opened up by 
> platforms such as YouTube. - Caitlin Jones
>
> http://www.ecrans.fr/-espace-createurs-.html