From left to right: Eduardo Navas, Seidel Brito, Mónica Mejia (CCE Program Coordinator), and Clara Astiasarán. Discussing the ongoing selections of Arte Joven.

I visited San Salvador in June.  This time I was invited again by Cultural Center of Spain to be a juror for their  Premio Arte Joven 2009 (Young Artist Award 2009).  The prize has been in place for ten years now, and has proven to be an important cultural element in supporting young artists in their early professional development.

From far left to right: Saidel Brito and Eduardo Navas, discussing the selection process with applicants. Clara Astiasarán participated via Skype.

I was in excellent company with fellow jurors Cuban artist Saidel Brito, and Cuban art critic Clara Astiasarán.  We spent several intensive hours going over 71 proposals, from which we chose eight by artists: Ernesto Bautista, Héctor Bermúdez, Boris Ciudad Real, Mauricio Esquivel, Melissa Guevara, José David Herrera, Mauricio Kabistan, and Hugo Rivas.  Their projects will be featured in an exhibition in October 2009.  From the selected artists three will be chosen by a different set of jurors for first, second, and third place awards that include cash prizes.  The October exhibition is complemented with a well produced catalogue.

Aside from meeting with the eight artists to discuss the possibilities of installation and development of their proposals, we, as jurors, also decided to meet with all applicants to explain the selection process and encourage artists to meet each other and converse. This was a way to support and expand the growing art community of El Salvador.  The turn out was great and we had an extensive and constructive exchange about art practice and professional development.

DJ A Todo Color, warming up the crowd for recording artists Ikah and Ari Puello on the International Day of Music, June 20, 2009.

Ikah keeps the crowd shaking during her set.

During my stay in San Salvador, on Saturday June 20, I was able to attend a concert also organized by the Cultural Center of Spain in collaboration with the Cultural French Alliance, featuring local rap artists, including Pescozada and Five o Three.  This was the second year in which the French initiated public event “International Day of Music” was extended to the streets of San Salvador.  The main feature of the night was Latina Urbana, a touring act consisting of Ikah, based in Madrid; and Arianna Puello, based in Barcelona. Both recording artists consistently tour throughout Latin America.  They were gracefully supported by the beats of DJ A Todo Color (DJ total color), also from Barcelona.

Ari Puello breaking it down from beginning to end.

The evening was well organized as Pescozada and Five o Three warmed up the crowd for Ikah, who with her R & B compositions kept the crowd going.  Ari Puello closed the evening with a strong set of some of her best hits.  Ikah has one album and Puello has four.  Puello is actually considered an important artist in Latin American rap. Many people in the audience sang along with her while waving their hands in acknowledgment of her well calculated rhyme and beat.

Image source: Solar Navigator

As I write this entry, the Internet is flowing with comments and information about Michael Jackson.  Here is my drop in the sea of data that will be archived in places people who adopt RSS as part of their daily life will never know exist.

As critical as I am about pop culture, I have to admit that Michael Jackson was ever-present in my growing years; the teenager in me mourns, while the critic cannot help but reflect on the implications of this unexpected and unfortunate death.  As sad as Jackson’s passing away is to millions of people, one cannot help but notice how media has changed in the way it handles celebrities and public figures. Just a few years ago there would have been some distance from the dark side of a person’s life.  This may still hold true for presidents of the United States as one hardly heard anything negative about Richard Nixon during his funeral.  Watergate had become so abstract that it could be cited as a historical moment with no major shame for the country or Nixon’s presidency.  This is the power of ahistoricity: people’s  lack of historical knowledge made possible by 24 hour news cycles.

But with Michael Jackson a different kind of mourning takes place. His accomplishments and setbacks are cited simultaneously.  Everywhere, from CNN to all major newspapers, like the NYTimes and El Pais in Spain, Michael Jackson is remembered for all his deeds–good and bad.  As he is remembered as the King of Pop, he is also remembered as a  person who was accused of child molestation (this was not proven in court).  He is subjected to the aesthetic of reality TV.

In a way this might be healthy for the way people perceive celebrities, as people may become more accepting of public figures’ shortcomings.  The sad thing is that scandals sell, and this is the last thing Michael Jackson is remembered for.  The King of Pop was planning a comeback, but this one was not to be.  He will be remembered as a  conflicted figure, who will inevitably be romanticized for his early production and his conflicted last years.

And now, it is time to settle for reissues of MJ’s music in whatever form networked culture will allow.  As I write these lines, files of Jackson’s songs are being swapped across the Internet–bootleg remixes made in bedrooms across the world to be shared in just minutes, while music executives figure out a way to cash in on MJ’s music legacy.    Such cash-in will be mixed and hard to control.  Michael Jackson dies in a time when things for the music industry are not so clear cut and no celebrity is perfect, and that imperfection in the end may mean more cash

He was a person who everyone knew through spectacular images.  He may have known himself through the same images as well.  As constant exposure rises with social networks, Michael Jackson, the most famous person vanishes.  Let this be a rupture in the era of networked media.  Michael Jackson is about to become an institution,  like Marilyn, like Presley, like Warhol.  He will live forever as a spectacular figure.  But let’s not forget that somewhere in there was a child who was trying to understand himself.  I may be accused of a bit of romanticism with this last statement.  Let it be. This is why I chose an early image of Michael Jackson to complement this short reflection on a celebrity I felt I knew, as I had no choice but to acknowledge him everywhere I turned as I grew up.  I accepted him as I was bombarded by his presence, just as I am now by the repetition of his spectacular absence.  I admit to have moonwalked.  RIP MJ.

Image source: The New Mexico Independent

Written for Interactiva Biennale 2009

The following text was written for Interactiva 09 Biennale, which takes place the month of May and June of 2009.  Other texts written for the biennale can be found at the Interactiva site.

NOTE: I have written a text in which I discuss Twitter in social activism, something which is not included in this text. Please see “After Iran’s Twitter Revolution: Egypt.”

In March of 2005 I wrote “The Blogger as Producer.”[1]  The essay proposed blogging as a potentially critical platform for the online writer.  It was written specifically with a focus on the well-known text, “The Author as Producer,” by Walter Benjamin, who viewed the critical writer active during the 1920’s and 30’s with a promising constructive position in culture. [2]

In 2005 blogging was increasing in popularity, and in my view, some of the elements entertained by Benjamin appeared to resonate in online culture.  During the first half of the twentieth century, Benjamin considered the newspaper an important cultural development that affected literature and writing because newspaper readers attained certain agency as consumers of an increasingly popular medium.  During this time period, the evaluation of letters to editors was important for newspapers to develop a consistent audience.  In 2005, it was the blogosphere that had the media’s attention.  In this time period, people who wrote their opinions on blogs could be evaluated with unprecedented efficiency. [3]
(more…)

Image source: Boing Boing

Just saw this shirt at a local Waffle shop in State College. We asked the guy wearing it where he got it, and he said, with a blank stare,  “from DC…”

“Ahh!” we said… “Of course!”

On the web, leave it to Boing Boing to have the tip:

“Photographer and Boing Boing pal Glen E Friedman, who shot many of the iconic photographs of the hiphop band Run DMC, shares this t-shirt with us — he’s seeing them everywhere in NYC, I understand they’re all over the place. But this was the first time I’d seen the design, so I LOLed and blogged. Larger view. Link to a few related shots.”

“The Warhol Che,” artist and year unknown, an example of the image’s ubiquity.

Image source: NYTimes

Che Guevara got some attention at the beginning of 2009 with Steven Soderberg’s film Che, starring Benicio del Toro. More recently, Che is the subject of a book titled, Che’s Afterlife, by Michael Casey. The book is reviewed by the New York Times as a detailed account of Che’s famous image taken by Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, known professionally as Korda. The story goes that Korda took the photograph during a funeral in Cuba. Korda’s creativity was not only in knowing when to take the photograph, which is for what most photographers are praised, but also in knowing how to crop it. To quote directly from the New York Times:

“By radically cropping the shot, snipping out a palm tree and the profile of another man, Korda gave the portrait an ageless quality, divorced from the specifics of time and place.”

This divorce is what Walter Benjamin noted in the first half of the twenty century in his well-known essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” An essay that many cultural critics have cited and will probably cite, because Benjamin foresaw many of the elements that today inform media culture in all areas of reproduction. (more…)

Massive Attack’s Grant Marshall and Robert Del Naja

Image source: The Guardian Music Blog

One of the anxieties often cited by those who guard intellectual property is how artists who sample ultimately steal from those who created the “original” material, therefore taking away potential revenue from the original source.  Another common argument is that the original source runs the danger of going unrecognized by those who enjoy the material composed of samples. Even if sampling artists may pay royalties, it is often argued by those who believe in creating things with their bare hands that artists who sample are simply unoriginal. Yet, as the article “What is your sampling Epiphany,” by Simon Reynolds entertains, at the moment, the republishing of material as a set of recordings sampled by well-known music studio artists has the potential of becoming a common trend–not to mention a major form of revenue for record companies.

We have reached a state in the consumption of post-production when those who have developed a career based on other artists’ samples have become the ones who support renewed sales of the originating sources in the form of reissues. This is the case with Massive Attack’s Protected Massive Samples. Now, it appears remix culture is coming full circle. The implications of this trend might further complicate copyright law in the near future. This trend is worth keeping in sight.

The article by Reynolds ends with a very compelling citation of Virilio, which was actually forwarded to me by my colleague, Greg Smith. It reads more like an aphorism that exposes that dialectics of culture:

The French philosopher Paul Virilio argued that every new technology comes complete with its own unique catastrophe; the invention of the aeroplane, for instance, was also the invention of the plane crash. The corollary of the sample epiphany is what I call the “sample stain.”

Walter Benjamin

Image source: Open Reflection

Critical Note: Janneke Adema recently wrote a long post on her blog Open Reflections about remix culture, titled “Schyzophonia. On Remix, Hybridization and Fluidity.” Aderna cites parts of my essay “Remix The Bond of Repetition and Representation” in order to extend her own views on remix culture. One thing that caught my attention is the concept of the “work in progress” which she entertains when citing an interview with Joe Farbrook. Farbrook’s propositions are parallel to my own views on constant updating, about which I wrote a couple of years ago in another essay titled “Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture.” Adema interestingly enough considers knowledge remixable, and she cites my own position on history to support her argument. While I don’t think knowledge itself is necessarily remixable in terms of Remix proper, I am compelled by Adema’s argument. On this regard, the following question recurs: When should one stop calling cultural hybridity a form of remix? On her part, I think Adema does a good job in entertaining this preoccupation, ending with a reference to none other than Walter Benjamin. The article is worth a careful read. Other great resources are mentioned as well.

———–
I read Lawrence Lessig’s Remix a few months ago, a great book with a stimulating positive approach to the whole piracy and copyright problema, focusing on finding solutions which cater to the increasingly prevailing remixed and remediated forms of digital art and culture, in which the hybrid has become common ground. Lessig discusses new musical ‘innovators’ like Girl Talk, who creates elaborate and eclectic remixes of current pop sounds and anthems, creating a new musical discourse which reflects, winks, ironizes and mocks, while still standing firmly on its own. These kind of adaptations, versionings or reinterpretations have been part of music since its beginnings, coming to the forefront mostly in dub, hiphop, turntablism and the use of samples in electronic music. Just think about all the beats, breaks, loops and glitches that have made a career for themselves and their derivative offspring in musical history.

Read the entire article at Open Reflections

Front of Cultural Center of Spain in El Salvador

Image source: Cultural Center of Spain

Cultural Center of Spain invited me to lecture in San Salvador, El Salvador from March 8 to the 13, 2009. During this period I also learned about the contemporary art scene as well as the art history of El Salvador.

I presented my research on Remix at the Cultural Center on March 10, and I lectured on art and new media in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of El Salvador (popularly known as La Nacional) on March 11. I met artists from different generations, some who are becoming more established, and some who are up and coming. I also visited the Museum of Art (Marte) which currently is exhibiting a thorough survey of Art in El Salvador since the 1800’s

(more…)

Image source: The Blemish

The above image is from a link that is no longer available. It was a mashup video of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Forest Gump. Friends who have seen Benjamin Button said that the film reminded them of Forest Gump. After viewing the movie, myself, and doing some research, I learned that the screenplay was written by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord. Eric Roth also wrote Forest Gump. And here is when things began to fall into place.

I realized that Roth was very much following his own Gump template to develop Benjamin Button. Both main characters in the films are different from average people. Forest is just a little bit off in his relation to the world (he is close to being mentally retarded), while Benjamin is aging backwards. Their “disabilities” make them special and allows both characters to turn ordinary moments into extraordinary events.

The similarities are numerous. For instance, both characters cannot walk in their early years, but eventually learn, and decide to go out and experience the world. Both characters have a love interest that somehow never is fully realized except for a brief moment in life. For Benjamin this is possible when he is able to live a somewhat normal life with the love of his life, but he has to leave her because he is aging backwards. For Forest the reason is move elusive. The film takes place in the sixties, and Forest’s love interest, while she was intimate with him, was not ready for a long term commitment. The list of similarities goes on.

When I received the link to the mashup of Forest Gump and Benjamin Button, titled “The Curious Case of Forest Gump and Time Wasters,” all of the similarities described above and many more were mentioned. The video mashup presented Forest Gump on the top half of the screen and Benjamin Button on the bottom. The editing made the remix feel as though, if one were to watch both films simultaneously, they would almost match frame by frame. This, of course, was a deliberate trick in the mashup editing, but nevertheless it showed the limited originality of Benjamin Button.

After viewing “The Curious Case of Forest Gump and Time Wasters” I quickly realized that it was Eric Roth who was in fact remixing himself. But then I realized that Benjamin Button does not even qualify as a remix because in a remix one must know that it is a remix. Roth blatantly presents Benjammin Button as something new, and thereby shortchanges his own merit as a content producer.

NOTE: The day after I wrote the above commentary, I found the site, gigglesugar, which links to the video under a different title: “The Curious Case of Forest Gump/Benjamin Button.”

Image source: NPR.org

Sources for commentary: NPR and NYTimes

The millions of people that viewed on TV and online Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration may be surprised to learn that Yo Yo Ma and his quartet did not play live. They performed to a pre-recorded track. The argument for this maneuver is that the moment had to be perfect. The performance had to live up to the occasion and mistakes could not take place:

The producers of the event (and the musicians themselves) wanted and even needed the moment to be transporting. And they also surely knew that they were set up to fail: The instruments in the quartet weren’t designed to be played outside, let alone in freezing temperatures. The musicians wouldn’t be able to hear each other well, and the open air offers none of the support of fine concert halls, where the acoustics can help lift a melody and let it soar. So, on this special occasion, they opted for control. (They weren’t the only ones with a recording lined up if needed; the U.S. Marine Band also had a backup tape in case temperatures got too low.)

NPR intereviewed Yo Yo Ma, who was indifferent about the fact that he did not play live. He was quite comfortable with make-believe. The NPR correspondent did not question Yo Yo Ma’s performance for its artistic delivery. The discussion was more about the necessity for this type of simulacrum.

I wonder how far we have come since the days of Milli Vanilli, when the pop-duo saw an end to their careers because they lip-synced to pre-recorded tracks. It must be pointed out that Milli Vanilli did not actually sing at all, so in this sense Yo Yo Ma’s situation is quite different because, as he explained during the radio interview, the quartet had performed the composition the day before the Inaugural Ceremony. Regardless, the fact that, both, the New York Times as well as NPR appear to discuss Ma’s simulacrum with some comfort and amusement does expose the awareness by people and the media that recordings may be acceptable to use in special occasions. In the past, prior to the pervasiveness of recordings, rituals were bound to the immediacy of the moment. Now, rituals are bound to the ever more important perfect recording for posterity. It was more important in the name of history for the Inaugural to have a perfect performance, than to have a real performance.