perspektive 43/44

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perspektive 43 // avantgarde_under_net_conditions //

TPdada

enter avant garde in infoseek box
interview – deutsch (auszug)

[question 1 - perspektive] peter lunenfeld stated at bienale in tirana this year that we don't need manifesto anymore for the 21th century. we need utilities. TPdada wants art without manifestos. but made manifestos  too. is it still possible and usefull to make manifestos or are we on the point of a no return manifesto with no access and no audience left? is this the main reason why you comment your manifestos?

[TPdada - smieszny]

Making manifestos and speaking about ones are not quite
contradictory things. On a certain level of abstraction, making
manifestos becomes an art by itself. Our manifestos were not meant to
be presented in public. They were written as an act of personal
liberation, as an individual catharsis of a tightly secluded mind.
Thus, no real audience was taken into account at the time of creation.
Rather, we wrote them for ourselves. And we didn't seek for support at
that time. As for commenting our manifestos: it was just a logic
continuation of the idea - the act of making the word-play take a
little longer. Making those abstract and unnecessary comments was...
fun? Eventually all of these works made their way to our web-page and
only then did they gain any interest from anyone outside our small and
quite hermetic team.

[TPdada - caveman]

Making manifestos and speaking about art without them is a
little bit contradictory (it would be more, if the 'art without
manifestos' statement would be included in manifesto by itself and not
in commentary to it). And I think that making contradictory things,
trying to visualize the life's paradoxes, was one of the things that
made TPDada what it used to be - at least in its first stage. I
wouldn't consider it a 'salvation through absurd' (like Discordianism or
Japanese sect of Absolute Freedom), but rather 'showing the life's
absurd to ourselves and maybe to the rest of the world'.

Still, they (our works) haven't been placed on the site as 'showing
them to the public', but as 'showing them to ourselves'. That was the
idea of the site - the drawer, that (mostly by accident) can be also
reached by others.

[TPdada - nulek]

Instead of answering, I've decided to write a non-manifesto,
it's attached to the mail (see also source, s.e.).

[question 2 - perspektive] magrittes hopes belonged to birds - doves. picasso painted himself into a bird cage. TPdadas hopes lie on the wings of the dada bird. sets flying perception against the static monuments of state and society. wants to spread enthropy and chaos. hakim beys "chaos lingustics" defines a linguistic area besides the hegemonial ordering systems and meanings. what does chaos mean for TPdada and how could this disrupt the code/system?

[TPdada - smieszny]

Chaos is everything untamed and out-of-control - everything
Random but loosely following the usual rules of probability.
Enthropy, on the other hand, is a measure of diversity in energy
distribution in a given system (if we stick to a strict physical
definition, of course). Translating it to the language of arts - it is a measure
of the diversity in artist's creative work. Enthropy is helpful for an
artist - it might lead to significant improvement in expressing
one's thoughts and emotions.

[TPdada - caveman]

Well, I wouldn't consider enthropy as "measure of the
diversity in artist's creative work". I may be wrong, but that
definition doesn't seem right to me. That's rather 'unstereotyping of
the artist', as (in most cases at least) the artist's works have
something in common, however different form each other they may be.
Enthropy would there be, if any of artist's works would have nothing
in common with any other. Most of the artists have several periods of
their creating, but still - inside one period the works are the same,
and even more - some of the topics, methods or views do not differ
between periods. If every work would be done not considering any previously
done work, this would be enthropy. As far, I (not too humble) state that
we are the ones that may be consider the artists (or wannabe artists)
with quite high level of 'enthropy' - but that may be a side effect of
the fact, that we are still quite young and still haven't worked out
our own style.

[TPdada - smieszny]

Speaking again about chaos - a chaotic behaviour is
unpredictable. This is anti-social; society is very predictable. Thus,
chaos is a strike at the very heart of the society, at the
order/predictability of it. And by chaos we do not necessarily mean
anarchy. We are not anarchists, antiglobalists or of any other social
movements. We are (or we thought we are) wannabe artists. We take
chaos as a personal tool for destroying the ties that bind us with our
society. We do not mean any revolution, except a deeply personal one.
Chaos is an individual virtue - you either follow it or not. Yet
again, you never know where this could lead to - the chaos is so
unpredictable.

[TPdada - caveman]

Not true. Society isn't too predictable. Order and system
wants society to be predictable. Enthropy and chaos, that cannot be
omitted, make it unpredictable. Which of course usually results in
more laws and more power of the system, once more to make society
predictable. Which of course doesn't succeed once more, and the circle
closes. I agree that whatever revolution we did, we did it on personal level.
But still I think that we haven't destroyed the ties binding us with
society. Moreover, I think that lately we have allow even more ties
bind us. But now we just don't care as much as several years ago.
We've learnt to accept it. And although we accept chaos, we do not
'follow it'. We've just accepted it and sometimes allowed it to
overwhelm us for a while, but we do not follow it in everyday life. At
least that's my humble opinion.

[TPdada - nulek]

What can I say? Now it can clearly be seen that "By the term
'spreading enthropy and chaos' we mean exactly 'spreading enthropy and
chaos' and that means that everyone means something different."
Personally I don't think I mean disrupting code/system, I use them all
the time anyway. It's just a childish play with its elements,
connection and structure. That's what "chaos and enthropy" means to me
- ability to be a small, not-so-neat child once again and turn
everything upside down. Of course, I sometimes have to clean up -
that's where feedback starts.

[question 3 - perspektive] "dada birds are like dodo birds". dodo birds are died out. you name your bird society dadaistic. but you state that your are not dada. cause today dada only sounds cool. maybe dada is more designer-like nowadays. but the frontiers in society are much the same. what is TPdadas position in polish avant garde and why do you release dada into designer heaven?

Smieszny is rolling on the floor, laughing, so he can't answer right
now. If you excuse him...

[TPdada - caveman]

I wouldn't consider ourselves as 'avant garde', which means
'front guard'. We're just going our own way, not thinking about the
potential followers and their way.

[TPdada - nulek]

The term 'avant garde' causes a little puzzlement. Is there
really need for avant garde under net conditions? As Anke Finger wrote
(perspektive 37) - enter avant garde in infoseek box and all you get
is history. Now anyone can write anything - and everyone can read it -
that's what net is to me - the millionfold diversity. The frontiers
are intermingled here. Now its not a problem to be heard, but to be
listened to - and that depends on those who listen. There are people
and groups that give us inspiration - they may not know about each
other, or even hate each other - it's our task to integrate them in
our own subjective, personal outlook. I wouldn't call them avant garde
- they're just freelance discoverers, who happen to go in more or less
the same direction (multi-dimensionally speaking) as we are going, at
least for a time.
Now, if you ask about particular polish groups, there are two that
come to my mind, (both have written manifestos) - first is Dada von
Bzdulow theatre
http://www.republika.pl/wolnastrefa/serwis/teatry/dada/dada.htm
Their means of expression are dance, music and words - not renderable
to net conditions right now. They hope nobody calls them avant garde.
Another group is Club der polnischen Versager in Berlin, which I've
come across quite recently.
http://www.polnischeversager.de
I like the name. We are all polnische Versager anyway.

[question 4 - perspektive] the role of artist today changes into a mixture between designer. programmer and content management provider. TPdadaists make a lot of "crossover" art. music and paintings. what is the role of artist for TPdada in the future and will dada meet crossover or stay in a kind of faradays cage.

[TPdada - smieszny]

Crossover is really the artistic language of the Web. The
majority of Web-only projects (and this is what we are now) are
crossover by definition. If the impact of the Internet would maintain
its position in the future, then crossover could become a major
language of artistic expression. The flexibility of the medium
encourages such behaviour. And the starting point for an artist is a
secondary issue in this case: this could apply to neo-dadaists,
post-modernists or followers of any other genre.
So, yes, we suggest that dada and crossover do mix well, especially
here and now, if we have the Web handy.
Although a second case could happen - the fear of a digital medium or
the fear of becoming too egalitaric might bother some artists - they
would drop in a faradays cage then - with no new ideas coming from the
world outside.
This two scenarios could overlap - and we do not know at the time
which alternative prevails. What we do know is that we have already
chosen our way.

[TPdada - caveman]

Maybe 'dada' is in a kind of Faradays cage, I don't know. But
I state, that for sure we are locked in one. Nowadays we're still
accepting the Net and learning to use it. And that's why still many of
Web projects are simply the Web versions of old-fashioned projects. But
for sure, that will change. And then certainly most (in not all) of
Web-only projects will be crossover. I'd rather suggest that dada and
crossover could mix well, as far as I do not have any sign of dada and
crossover 'here and now' (we're not dada).
Of course there will be groups of artists that will ignore the Net,
but that doesn't mean that they'll be locked in Faradays cage then -
still, the Net isn't the whole world. And knowing the power of media
I'm almost sure, that their works will be published in the Net,
independently of their fears. And that will only apply to artists of our
and older generations. Artists of the future, born right now, or even
several years ago, will consider the Net the same medium as the
newspaper, the radio or the TV, and will have no fears of using it.
Moreover, we are probably one of the last generations who even think
about the other alternative as possible to happen...
Most of our works are typical works, that could easily be produced and
published without computer use - poems, stories, plays, paintings. We
only publish in the Net. We still haven't any work (or am I wrong?) 
that could be produced only thanks to and in the Net. We still haven't 
used any possibilities offered by the Web. I think that we are still 
looking for our way - but we know, that we are not afraid of using 
the Web and are looking forward to use more of its offers...

[TPdada - nulek]

As Brian Eno put it, "An artist is now a curator. An artist is
now much more seen as a connector of things, a person who scans the
enormous field of possible places for artistic attention, and says,
What I am going to do is draw your attention to this sequence of
things." Now we have the internet which provides us with tremendous
amount of places for attention, and crossover is an obvious way of
expression as everything here is just series of digits, no matter if
it turns to be linguistic, visual or aural in our brains. Net is not
only a great tool, vast source of inspiration, but also a huge stage,
where millions speak at once and everyone can be heard. The problem is
that the amount of stimuli is just too big to be comprehended,
integrated or digested. That's why dada comes in handy - it just makes
possible to put it all together, and - yes - design with refreshing,
spontaneous "whoopee!" attitude.
And yes, we did have a project, or maybe rather proposition of
net-based dada works - it was nettage, kind of digital collage using
scraps of web-pages found in internet cache. It seems that we are a
little bit dada after all...

impressum

43/44/2002							ISSN 1021-9242

-	avantgarde_under_net_conditions (43)
-	zentral_einheit_come_together (44)
-	
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