[Nettime-bold] Re: RHIZOME_RAW: the.dead.flag.blues

[Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com>]

Hey Max,

I'll go on record as saying you're alright.  

Here's a McLuhan excerpt:
"For Beckett, the integral being is not the acrobat but the clown.  The acrobat acts as a specialist, using only a limited segment of his faculties.  The clown is the integral man who mimes the acrobat in an elaborate drama of incompetence.  Beckett sees the bicycle as the sign and symbol of specialist futility in the present electric age, wen we must all interact and react, using all of our faculties at once."

Your best online "work" to me is simply your rhizome raw presence.  Unlike others, you didn't have to invent your own syntax.  You didn't have to make up some pseudonymous/post-human persona behind which to hide.  (Of course, you didn't have to be so belligerent either, or maybe you did.)

Whose internet is it?  Who are our "net.authorities?"  Those who got here first (oooh, grandma, tell me the story)?  Those who are smart (may i borrow your decoder ring)?  Those who are famous (may i link u)? Or those who live on the internet, having made it as a "real" part of their "real" lives?  At my church, your attendance is your membership.

On rhizome, I wanted to meet people passionate about art and not too cynical to admit it.  Instead I encountered some people into the art business (icky, you don't have to put on the red light); some people into bullshit art criticism (more of your conversation would infect my brain); and some other vre!ndl! volkz.  So what's there to preserve, really?

Max, you are earnest (even when you're off), and I don't see you trying to spin or parlay your list presence into some next-level play.  You're not building a career or anything.  Please continue to not care about what I think about you.  I need you to not care.  There needs to be someone making art who literally, honestly doesn't care what anybody thinks about them.  You might as well be the one.

peace,
curt 



At 8:00 PM -0500 11/24/01, Nmherman@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 11/24/2001 5:45:38 PM Central Standard Time, curt@lab404.com writes:
>
>
> > we woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
> > for sure it's the valley of death
> >
> > i open up my wallet
> > and it's full of blood
> >
> >
> > - godspeed you black emperor, 1998
>
>
>
> Dear Curt:
>
> I know there are many people on this list who dislike you, your opinions, and your art. 
> Porculus calls you "kurtz," a reference to the psychotic imperialist of Apocalypse Now and Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  (Is Porculus a Calibanian persona?)  I sense that some people think you are "conservative" in a pejorative sense.  Judson likes you, supports you, maybe even admires you, but he won't tell his famous animator friends the truth.  Brad Brace has left the list.
>
> "Despite or Perhaps Because Of" the situation, I'm curious whether you associate Genius 2000 in general more with the Black Emperor than with the ancient concept of Messiah.  My curiosity is sincere, and I ask for your thoughts without pride or prejudice.  My intent is not to offend or attack you, but to listen.
>
> As it happens, your feedback may well help me cut off some of my "dead limbs," as someone (was it Judson?) just wrote.  By answering freely you will be making the genius-pool here richer and more diverse, in the best sense of a ZKM distributed proscenium, so do have at 'er.  Don't hide your light under a bushel when evil walks.
>
> In particular, since I have not sent you a videotape yet, feel free to comment on my online material taken alone if you prefer.  http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/Archive2000.html is my best site-as-such, but I recant nothing so judge me by anything "out there".
>
>
> Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead are driven,
>
> Max Herman
>
> ++