Trebor Scholz said this was an announcement and rejected it from the iDC list. I say it was my polite response to Julian Bleecker's insulting post. Isn't it odd that THE THING is willing to do the work of academia then gets shot down for it?

In essence Bleecker was giving the old Andrea Fraser excuse for working in what he calls "the blob", which is the military/education/entertainment complex -- that it's everywhere and all of us.

I say bullshit to that. It's the same excuse for why Douglas Crimp was thrown out of October because he wanted to include those outside the "blob" in the discussion. Academics. Bleh!

You can find the discussion here:
iDC List Archive

On Oct 31, 2005, at 11:55 AM, Julian Bleecker wrote:

Hi Thing,

I wrote back:

Well, this isn't THE THING but, OK, I admit, we host iDC but that's run by some mysterious guy named Trebor.

Julian Bleecker wrote:
I tried being outside of the power blob — it's cold, there's no money, and it's dogmatic to a fault. It's more fun, creative, and intellectually challenging to be inside of the blob.

I wrote back: 

It's hotter than hell here in the Death Star but there's still no money. Dogmatism and ideology I can deal with (the advantage of having been around) but not knowing contemporary art discourse I won't accept. Just call me a grumpy old art fart.

Here's what  THING.blob is doing in the Death Star for the next three months (and Michael Naimark is welcome to join us):

Since its inception in 1991, THE THING has provided a flexible and supportive venue for developing, supporting, and presenting innovative media art and cultural criticism concerned with exploring the possibilities of digital aesthetics. THE THING has played a seminal role not just in fostering a generation of network-oriented artists, critics, and curators, but also - and equally important - searching out ways to interconnect their diverse interests and activities. It is no exaggeration to say that the list of people and projects THE THING has supported comprises a “who's who” of contemporary electronic culture.

THE THING has expanded its mission by creating THING.Residency, an international residency program providing a roster of artists from the US and abroad with access to New York's culturally diverse audiences. THE THING residencies for Fall and Winter 2005 are:

Jan Gerber from bootlab in Berlin (http://bootlab.org) a non-profit organization founded in 2000 to provide studio, production and office space for groups and individuals (activists, artists, curators, engineers, filmmakers, programmers, publishers, writers etc.) working with old and/or new media technology;

Luka Frelih from Ljudmila in Ljubliana, Slovenia (http://www.ljudmila.org/), a digital media lab best known as the home of such net.art projects as "7-11" and Vuk Cosic's "appropriation" of the Documenta X web site;

Swiss media artist Daniel Pflumm (http://danielpflumm.com), who strips media art of its last residues of fragmentary statements and transforms it into something that can be placed within the art as well as the club context; and

0100101110101101.org (http://www.0100101110101101.org), an art duo who use nonconventional communication tactics to obtain the largest visibility with the minimum of effort. Their latest project was "nikeplatz", a hoax perpetrated on the city of Vienna.

Robbin Murphy
c/o Death Star
New York, NY
murphy@thing.net
http://post.thing.net