I just had a wonderful three hour window from pain. And spent half of it transcribing a radio interview. Idiot.

Anyway, here it is. I typed it out because just before Christmas, Sull started a group called Artists in the Cloud, to discuss things related to online art, net cinema, etc. We’ve been talking about distribution models, Alternative Reality Games, live video streams of pre-recorded work – all sorts. I’ve been wondering how to triangulate the work we’re doing with trends and movements in the wider world (in art and society).

And tonight I heard something on BBC Radio 4’s art show Front Row, which I wanted to share with the group for that reason.

Since I’d done it for them, I thought I might as well also publish it here.

They were discussing the Tate Triennial 2009, which is called Altermodern – and were introducing the audience to the concept of Altermodernism.

You can read the Manifesto at the Tate’s Altermodern site. It’s a suggestion for defining art to follow postmodernism, postpostmodernism, to find a new direction. Its name seems to have been inspired by the way that Alterglobalization was coined as a middle way between Globalization and anti-Globalization. It’s a reflection of a globalized world with confused borders and cultural identities, movement of people and information and communication – both in subject matter and the disparate media the artists choose to combine.

The interview started with the curator of the Tate Triennial Altermodern show, Nicholas Bourriaud, who said,
“Altermodern started as a kind of term that designates and defines what’s next. The idea is to get out of Post – postcolonial, postfeminist, posthistory, post everything. I think we all feel spontaneously very fed up with it. Is it possible that a new modernity is emerging? Something which is positive and not in the suburbs of history?”

This was followed by a discussion of the Altermodern show between the host, Mark Lawson, and the London Times’s chief art critic, Rachel Campbell-Johnston.

Throughout, you could feel their suspicion that this was a passing trend – an Emperor’s New Clothes marketing gimmick (which in a way it probably is) – fuelled by her discomfort at not really understanding the curator’s definition of Altermodernism. I suspect that most cloud artists will find it quite easy to get a better grasp of it, as much of it is familiar.

Mark Lawson, host: “Having seen the show and heard the curator’s interview there, do you understand what Altermodern is?”

Rachel Campbell-Johnston, critic: “I think Altermodern is the most difficult term I have had to come to terms with, and I was just happy that postmodernism had gone. But before you cheer that Altermodernism is in, there’s one line where he (the curator) tries to explain it in the book:

“Altermodernism can be defined as that moment when it became possible for us to produce something that made sense starting from an assumed heterochrony – that is from a vision of human histories constituted of multiple temporalities, disdaining the nostalgia for the avant-garde and indeed for any era.”

She then continues, in an irritated tone, “That’s a typical sentence from an absolutely impossible explanation book. As far as I can tell, if postmodernism started as “Where Are We?”, Altermodernism suggests that we come from a global internet culture, where we don’t even need to ask where we are, we hop around all over the place – it samples and moves and wanders everywhere, it never alights anywhere – and how that is different from postmodernism, I’m not sure.”

Mark Lawson: “I couldn’t work it out either, because although I thought they’re trying to say that something new has begun here, there are very clear trends that have been going on for, in some cases, 10 years or more – with video installations, also random and interactive elements…”

[He then goes on to describe an ongoing piece in the show, which is constructed each Friday in response to a conversation with the curator each Monday – a “serious conversation” he says, with an amused laugh

At which point Rachel Campbell-Johnston came back in with, “It’s going to be responses to responses to the show – and that almost sums it up – there is no end in this. And if you’re looking for a finished piece, as far as I could tell, this show is not about an object – something to look at – it was about clusters of objects.”

And then she actually said something clear about it, which I liked:

“And actually, Nicholas Bourriaud uses the image of the *archipelago* fairly regularly – he sees these works as clusters of related ideas, but not one landmass, and actually that is one of the few helpful images I found, because the pieces are not A Video, they’re video, sound, photography, a bit of drawing, it’s everything thrown in together.”

I love the image of an archipelago. All the islands interconnected. Soft borders. Of course, “everything thrown in together” sounds more like her judgement of the messiness of these fragments – you’d hope that they’ve actually been chosen and placed and connected more carefully.

Lawson: “Couple of trends – Mark Leckey who won the Turner Prize last year, his big piece was a long lecture, and we have two lectures at least in these, so that also happens. Also, as at most exhibitions of modern art now, anyone going from the British Society for the Restoration of Painting will be disappointed – there’s a bit of wall painting from Franz Ackermann, BUT on the other hand, photography and printing are very strong – there’s much more of that than I expected – in Tacita Dean’s work and others”

Campbell-Johnston: “Well, painting is dead – having been told it was coming back again, it’s out – you’re absolutely right. There are a few drawings which are used as works in progress, but photography only as a means of capturing something in passing – either borrowing somebody else’s photograph… actually, one of the few beautiful things to look at in the show was photography, which was Darren Almond taking huge Chinese landscapes by moonlight, which is one the very few… beauty is also out, by the way (they laugh) as an aesthetic sense – and apart from that, photography just because it captures something very very quickly. I mean, I felt that after a while, the slideshow was back. I felt that all my thoughts moved to a sort of hiss-click-clack-drop of slides going round endlessly and there was never an endpoint.”

Lawson: “Just tell me very quickly, Rachel, will you be adopting the adjective altermodern or altermodernistic?”

Campbell-Johnston: “I certainly won’t, I mean the most optimistic thing about this show is that at least they are looking for somewhere to go, but I have to say they certainly haven’t found it.”

I also love the optimism of looking for somewhere to go, but even without having seen the show, I’m sceptical that “they certainly haven’t found it”. Maybe she just hasn’t seen it – she’s looking for something concrete, and seems appalled by the looseness, the softness, the fragmentation of it all. Art and media are moving towards a more fragmented, networked future, just as we are in our lives and communities. As cloud-based filmmakers, we’re so used to the idea of producing an expanding archipelago of separate but networked pieces, which form part of a larger ongoing work or body of work, that this all seems obvious and natural and exciting to us. Not to everybody. What the Altermodernism manifesto tries to do is tie this up with where we are economically, politically and culturally.

When you move away from single self-contained works – and works in one medium – you move away from traditional ideas of commercialization, productization and mass-production. But not away from reproduction and duplication. Philosophically, you’re moving towards the commons, towards open source and remixable art, artworks with softer edges, with complex networks between pieces – towards The Cloud. Selling and removing individual pieces, or individual components of larger works, affects all the other pieces in that network. I’d think that artists and collectors and galleries are going to find themselves facing a lot of new challenges, just as we do. Especially right now, it’s interesting to think of this in relation to the global economy, its boom and bust, and the mass economic migrations that have been caused by it and have supported it.

Will had some good thoughts in the Group about how this is all very well, but what Artists in the Cloud is about is based around small open networks, as opposed to an idea for a definition and a manifesto that comes top-down from a curator of a commercial show.

I wish I was in London to see the show – it starts tomorrow at Tate Britain and runs until April. (Hopefully Lize will go and tell me I’m talking bollocks and/or it’s all a joke)

Ouch – back to bed.

You can see what I look like here.

Shingles (tagline: This Time It’s War) is the sequel to the popular virus Chicken Pox. It turns out that after you thought you’d defeated the Chicken Pox in childhood, your body failed to blow it out the airlock. It crept into the ganglion of your spine, where it stayed, hiding, waiting, until (woken by an unknown force) it bursts back out of your skin and clamps down on your head and bleeds acid all over your face, eyes and nerves.

It looks bad, feels a lot worse, and can cause blindness. RA. (It hurts too much to RA louder than that). I’ve had two eye check-ups (including one from an eye doctor who feigned horror when he saw me and jumped back going “AAAHHH!”), and I think I’m clear on that front – but even without the cornea damage, the pain is bad enough.

The strangest effect has been on my brain. It’s attacking the nerves on the right side of my face and eye – which is controlled by the left side of my brain – and that’s how I feel: like my rational brain is in lock-down.

At its height, at the end of last week, I could answer basic Yes and No questions, but anything more taxing sent me into a panic. I couldn’t process simple tasks, or retain any information – even before they gave me drugs.

Anyway, the real reason for my post is not to whine about my bad luck. I’m now half Canadian, so my British whining is starting to be tempered by irritatingly cheery optimism.

Sometime in the middle of all this, I got a sudden hunger for downloading and watching beautiful old films. I’m shut down here in my darkened basement, and even with painkillers it hurts to read the screen for more than a few minutes even with painkillers, but it turns out that watching slow black and white movies is the only time I’m pain-free.

They’re all films that I’ve been meaning to watch for years – that I really should have seen already – but have never given myself time to. Tokyo Story, Ugetsu Monogatari, 8½, I Vitelloni, La Regle du Jeu, Rashomon, L’Atalante, L’Avventura.

It’s like a festival of all the best films *ever*, but with an invisible usherette sticking hot knives into your head in the interval.

And since my left brain is out to lunch, it’s not getting in the way with all its irrelevant analysis, so they’re washing over and through me. All these stories and relationships and exquisite black and white compositions.

They’re *exactly* what I need to see right now – my head is exploding with ideas and excitement about making films again. I’ve been feeling like I haven’t felt since university – like my brain is switching on and I’m shifting up a gear. I don’t regret that I hadn’t seen them earlier – right-brain/left-brain weirdness aside, I’m experiencing them at a much richer level that I would have a decade ago.

And the thing is: given all the things that are going on in my life, I probably never would have made the time to watch them, had I not been Aponed by the Shingles.

In one of Amy’s books, there’s an old Chinese story that I like, about a farmer:
- first his horse runs away, and his neighbours say “What Bad Luck!” – and he says, “We’ll see”
- then the horse returns, accompanied by a wild horse, and his neighbours say “What Good Luck!” – and he says, “We’ll see”
- then his son tries to ride the wild horse and breaks his leg, and the neighbours say “What Bad Luck!” – and he says, “We’ll see”
- then the army come through the village to take young men to fight a war, but they leave his son because his leg is broken, and the neighbours say “What Good Luck!” and he says, “We’ll see”.

But FUCK, it hurts.

i’ve been deliberately absent.

sometimes i want to post, and post ephemera. other times, i get busy.

last time i had a baby, i deleted my blogs.

this time, i got an attack of the privates.

i tweeted some of lila’s birth – but my twitter is set to private, now. i shared video of lila with family, but not here. no pictures on flickr.

i’m sure i’ll soon be cured.

i thought i’d post about moving to canada. i thought i’d post about our new town, our pregnancy, about having a home birth, about hypervideo and about my writing. this isn’t an apology for not doing that. it’s just a note to myself that i didn’t do any of it.

everything’s in flux. macro and micro. things are coming together here, i think. family, work, creative projects, plans for the apocalypse.

this became our family blog. kate sees this as our window on the world, where family and friends come to see what we’re doing out here. that must be why i feel self-conscious. like i can’t even use bad language. and i use bad language a lot.

documenting needs to be scrappy. videos need to be sketchy. writing needs to fail. posts need to be boring. i need another place. but you are all subscribed here.

is it ok, family & friends people, if this blog is not a family photo album, if it’s just an incomprehensible fucked up studio of RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?

all right, then.

But it never really got off the ground. I’ve spent the last six months posting apologies for being too busy.

And not finding the time to videoblog my move.

Anyway. Fuck all that. I’M BACK! And now I live in Canada, I’m going to have time to do all sorts of cool new things.

Like videoblogging my experience of moving to Canada, making films about the communities around me, sharing some of the other film & video stuff I’ve been doing, and reviewing & pimping the videomakers I like.

That’s the idea, anyway. We’ll see how it plays out. We’re having another baby in September, so there’ll probably be QUITE A BIG HIATUS around then.

But I’m going to give regular videoblogging another shot. And I’ve already started. There’s something uploading to Blip right now, as I type. A VIDEOBLOG POST. HOLY SHIT!

Thanks for sticking with me and for all your comments and emails. That’s what it’s all about – why I love it, why I keep doing it.

I’ve been teaching gypsy traveller kids to videoblog all around the country, and trying to keep up with my other regular client work in the meantime – and it’s been FULL ON. I know I videoblog with my phone, and I know I should just post stuff and be damned… but apart from the fact that I can barely manage to check my email most days, I’ve felt like I can’t blog about my experiences with these kids while the project is going on. It might cause problems. So. I’ll be back in action in a couple of weeks, maybe less.

Also, it’s quite good to have a little break every now and then. Recharge. Now I’m champing at the bit.

See you soon.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I’ve been playing with Seesmic for the first time today.

(I got an invite after emailing the guy in charge a few weeks ago)

In my intro to the NaVloPoMo group about how we’d cope with trying to post video every day in November, I said that I thought any online video counted, no matter how it was recorded or published… so I’m going to follow my own advice and just publish the video conversation I’ve had on Seesmic today.

I’ve linked to the public versions of the videos, below. i.e. You can still see them, even if you don’t have a Seesmic account. But if you don’t have a Seesmic account, you just can’t get involved, reply or go anywhere else in Seesmic from these links. So you have to click on each link in turn. Which is a drag, but I guess it’ll open out before long.

The thing is, you can see how a video conversation can develop easily with this tool.

These links open in new window/tabs:

This is my original post, called “My first proper Seesmic: get mobile, Seesmic”

And below are the following short replies, all within a short time of each other, which develop into a conversation of sorts, where people are referencing each other’s replies. They’re quite quick, and you can see how this could get a) addictive and b) interesting, particularly if these people can use video to talk and show things beyond the confines of their desk.

Christian’s reply

Clint’s reply

Deek’s reply

Mike’s reply

Mike’s follow up saying that half the above video was lost

My reply to all of them

Adam’s reply

My reply to Adam and Mike

Nik’s reply

My reply to Nik

If you can’t be bothered to watch them all, my point in my video is that they’ve limited it so that you pretty much HAVE to use your webcam to record – trying to use anything else is a pain. And yet it would be SO EASY (and free) for them to change this – so that you could film outside with your regular camera and then just upload the file direct to Seesmic. At the moment, if you film something with your camera, you have to convert it to a Flash flv file before uploading, which is silly. It seems obvious to me that conversations could be more interesting if they were inspired by and conducted in more varied and interesting environments than just people’s desks/offices.

Hardly rocket science. But quite fun. And there’s a shortage of good tools to create video conversations. Damn, I hate that word. Why can’t I stop using it?

Click To Play

–update–
Hi to everybody who’s stumbled here from Blip or Mefeedia homepages (or wherever) wanting to know about NaVloPoMo.

NaVloPoMo is (Inter)National Videoblog Posting Month – a lot of video bloggers and artists making and posting films every day in November.

The site is at http://nablopomo.ning.com/group/videobloggers – you can see people’s films there, and also find a list of their blog URLS and feeds.

Twittervlog.tv is my video blog, which I shoot, cut and post, all with my Nokia N93 cellphone.

—
This is a rather fast but long and probably quite inarticulate reply to an email I got from Josh Cohen at Tilzy.tv asking about NaVloPoMo. I just riffed on his questions. They’re quite good questions for getting you thinking about NaVloPoMo. If you want to answer any of the questions yourself, or if I’ve missed something, or you’ve just got something else to say about NaVloPoMo and about personal videoblogging, reply in the comments or (even better) in a video.

– How’d you come up with the idea? And how’d you initially share it with the community? Did it take long to catch on?
– About how many vlogs would you say there are involved? (I think there’s a list on the Ning site, but was wondering if that was extensive)
– Why do you participate? What type of people should participate? Is it for anyone?
– What’s the best part about it?
– How do your videos for NaVloPoMo differ than your regular fare?

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Two things:

Lauren’s “Video ideas for NaVloPoMo” is a great idea in itself.

You can see Valdez’s attic here. You have been warned. I am not responsible for any night terrors or low self-esteem.

For contrast, see David Howell’s attic, posted on Day 1 of NaVloPoMo. But although that’s comforting in its chaos, it’s disturbing for entirely different reasons.

More! More workspaces! Feed me!

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“Three weeks from now, I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be, and it will be so. Hold the line! Stay with me! If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you are already DEAD!
Brothers, what we do in life… ECHOES IN ETERNITY!”

“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” – Orson Scott Card

“To be a writer is to sit down at one’s desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone – just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over…” John Hersey

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” Jane Yolen

Join us – posting every day if you can – at http://nablopomo.ning.com/group/videobloggers

Click to Play

Finally, I think I’ve pushed through my period of panic and uncertainty and unhappiness with my work.

I wanted to find a way to balance money-earning work and uncommercial creative work better – and to make good money from my skills and talents without having to do the same thing week in, week out. I’m easily bored and am much happier working on new ideas and completing projects quickly.

So: stop the simple cheap websites for people – start making more online video for slightly larger companies doing good things who need video to tell their stories better.

Short, well-paid, achievable projects, and no guilt for spending time working on personal video projects (self-development).

It seems obvious, but JESUS it’s taken me a long time to work it out.

Thank you Katie for putting up with me through these recent Black Dog days and helping me see the light.

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

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“Andrew you’ve got to be number one! I won’t tolerate any losers in this family. Win. Win! WIN!!!”

Yeah, I know. It’s a day late. Which is kind of missing the point of Twittervlog. What a fat loser.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

Click to Play

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)