2013. Networked Disruption: Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hactivism and the Business of Social Networking
This is the 2nd book by Tatiana Bazzichelli that I've made a Books webpage for. The 1st was "Networking - The Net as Artwork" (2006). As I wrote for the beginning of that page:
"I haven't read anything by Bazzichelli yet, except excerpts, but I'm taking it 'on faith' that she's a major thinker on the subject of Net Art & the Net as Art. Predictably, for those who know me, I'm less interested in either of those possibilities than I am in just the Net as Net. Nonetheless, I'm honored to be mentioned in this book."
The mentions of me are somewhat more extensive here than in that earlier book & they're more correct. I reckon our mutual friend Florian Cramer might've helped with that. Since I haven't read this yet, I'm not reviewing it, I'm just commenting on & showing 'my' parts. Keep in mind that I'm editing the excerpts I'm choosing & taking them out of context. That makes them unrepresentative of Bazzichelli's larger statement(s).
Strictly speaking, I got involved with Neoism in the fall of 1980. In my webpage for Bazzachelli's "Networking - The Net as Artwork" I commented on a similar quoting:
"Then the reader is told that "According to the Neoist tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, "Neoism is an international prefix more than a suffix, without anything in between. Neoism does not exist, and it is a pure invention of its enemies, of the anti-neoists."" There's an endnote but the endnote doesn't provide an attribution of a source for this 'quote' so I leave it out here.
"Now, that 'quote' is highly inaccurate. Given that this book was originally written in Italian & then translated into English & that I don't have the Italian version of it (which I wouldn't be able to read anyway) I don't know whether the original Italian quoting was so garbled, I don't know how much of the garbling to attribute to the translation.
"My actual original quote was during a ceremony/performance at a place called Des Refusés in New York City in March, 1982, as part of the 5th International Neoist Apartment Festival. I defined Neoism more along the lines of "Neoism is a prefix & a suffix with nothing in between." As I recall, that got a good laugh. The point was that I was analyzing the word as a word & finding it to be functioning as an open set in which the prefix & the suffix are like opening & closing brackets. The meaning is completely changed in Bazzichelli's 'quote'.
"As for the 2nd sentence of the 'quote', "Neoism does not exist, and is a pure invention of its enemies, of the anti-neoists" I never said that at all. The original quote is probably more along the lines of "Neoism does not exist, and is an invention of its enemies the anti-neoists." Close enough. That probably originated with a person calling themselves "Monty Cantsin" who may've also been John Berndt but may not've been."
In this new version of the quote the 2nd sentence is gone. Good. The 1st sentence has changed from "Neoism is an international prefix more than a suffix, without anything in between" to "Neoism is, above all, a prefix and a suffix without anything in between". Let's write a new definition of Neoism based on this, shall we?: Neoism is an inter-above all-national. That should keep 'em guessin'.
As for 'members' being "encouraged to spread fake stories and contradictory statements about the movement"?: Encouraged by whom? (Or is it "who"?) I think it's more that the type of person who decides that they're a Neoist is lively & has a lively imagination. They don't want to just say the same shit every time (except for the rare careerist). That gets boring. Imagine that every day people say to you: 'How are you?' If you're a dullard or a coward or just tired or apathetic you might give roughly the same answer every time, you might say: 'I'm fine. How are you?'
If you're a Neoist you might mumble something completely incomprehensible while spewing out the oatmeal you've been keeping in your nostrils all day for just such an occasion. OR you might say 'according to my parents, & they should know, the how of my existence involved the missionary position & several minutes of hard work on the part of my father' & then calling your mom on your cell phone & telling her that you have a friend who wants to know what position she were in when you were conceived & then handing the phone over to the interlocutor. Then again, you might just say 'I prefer to tell you WHAT I am because I think that's a much more interesting subject. What are you?' You get my drift.
I organized &/or coorganized 4 relevant festivals, 3 as of the writing of "Networked Disruption". You can experience all 4 in their glorious lo-fi (or sci-fi) quasi-documentation online:
013. a. "81 Apt" {version 1}
- shot by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (1/2" reel vaudeo), Lizard Media Systems (1/2" VHS cassette), & Mannette Letter (super 8) -> edited to 1/2" VHS cassette by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 2:00:00 [not "worth" presenting]
- may-june '81 (etc..)
b. "81 Apt" {version 2}
- 32:00
c. "81 Apt" {version 3}
- dramatically re-edited using audio tape & scans & titles & brightness & contrast adjustments, etc..
- broken into 9 parts, one for each day of the festival (except from Monday, June 1, when, as far as I can tell, 'nothing' happened) - w/ the 1st day abridged, for YouTube:
- edit finished february 3, 2010
- 1:06:31
034. a. "Apt 7" {version 1}
- shot by Lizard Media Systems &/or Craig Considine (color) & Laure Drogoul (B&W) w/ additional footage (super 8) from Laure Drogoul & Boris Wanowitch
- organized & edited by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 1/2" VHS cassette
- 2:00:00
- '83 (etc..)
b. "Apt 7" {version 2}
- 1:00:00
c. "Apt 7" {version 3}
- 31:20
d. "APT 7" {version 4}
- This is version 2 with scans, titles, & credits added. There were problems with digitizing the parts that were originally reel-to-reel so the last section with Monty is particularly funky. Note also that Monty's flier for the festival has the last day as the 28th instead of the 25th. I tried digitixing version 1 1st but there were too many technical problems so I settled for reworking version 2 instead. This means that footage from Laure Drogoul's "Drilling Nails" is missing but she complained about my using it so much in the 1st place that that's probably why it's not in version 2. Obviously, other things are missing too. Still, it's the best version yet (& likely to be the last one because I had so many technical problems with making it that I don't think I want to spend anymore time on it.
- 1:02:18
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/naU37TVUBRY
493. "1st Non-Existent International Neoist Apartment Festival in the Year 000"
- shot In Adelaide, Australia, from March 20, '000 to June 8, '000 by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE etta cetera using mainly a cheap VHS camcorder
- initial VHS edit finished in March, 2001; computer edit finished October 20, 2017
- 1:17:00
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/1stNonExistentInternationalNeoistApartmentFestivalInTheYear000
448. "Limpolysemia"
- attendees: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (Pittsburgh), Monty Cantsin (Rotterdam), Monty Cantsin (Minsk), Carrion Elited (Richmond), Yuli Ilyushchanka (Minsk), Carlin Christy (Pittsburgh), Katya (Minsk), Deanna? (Minsk), Sasha Krotovsky (translator) (Minsk), Egor (Minsk), Alexei (Minsk), Jury Urso (Minsk), Dmitry Veleskevich (Minsk), Anna Oldfield (translator) (South Carolina), Ben Grubb (Pittsburgh), Caleb Gamble (Pittsburgh)
- shot using screen recording (Ryan Broughman), mini-dv & iJones (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE) mostly on May 5, 8, & 9, 2016
- unedited 2:53:00 screen recording by Kareem EL E OT on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/DikIpJ_RX3E
- edited, titled, scanned, & otherwise labored over by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 3:05:09
- 1200 X 800 (Custom 3:2)
- edit finished June 16, 2016
- a coproduction of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & Lipovy Tsvet
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/Iimpolysemia
Also, not to be picky or anything, but it's "booed usic" not "booed music". I've written 13 books, you should read them all. You have nothing better to do. Here's the link to the index of the one referred to above:
"A Few Simple Statements about Neoism" can still be read here: http://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/tent_neoism.html . Get your Neoist playing cards! Sleep with all of them!
It seems to me that Bazzichelli has a deepened (or is deep-end?) appreciation for Neoism than she had 7 years before. I'm very glad that Bazzichelli has quoted both from "A Few Simple Statements about Neoism" & from "A Mere Outline for One Aspect of a Book on Mystery Catalysts, Guerrilla Playfare, neoism, booed usic, Mad Scientist Didactions, Acts of As-Beenism, So-Called Whatevers, Psychopathfinding, Uncerts, Air Dressing, Practicing Promotextuality, Imp Activism, CircumSubstantial Playing, etc.." because I think it's indicative of her getting more into the spirit of the thing & not just referring to the same old same old.
As for my participation
in the "rebel:art" thingie? I was invited to call at a certain
time. I was in Barcelona for the Influencers Festival, something
that was also reputed to be a hactivist event. As it turned out, it was
more of a conference of power-point presentations, & the main thing
I seem to've influenced was the heading of the audience for the exit. I
was asked to stop early by one of the organizers. Was it something I said?
At any rate, I didn't make my call, maybe I tried & it didn't work?
Maybe I didn't have access to a phone I could use? I don't remember. It
might be pseudo-clever of me to say that I was in the Festival of Non-rebel:art
Participation.
The point is that while all Neoists may be assholes not all assholes are Neoists, they have to be inspected on a case-by-case basis & I'm not about to do that, are you?
- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE note, April 1, 2018E.V.
idioideo at verizon dot net
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Anti-Neoism page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Audiography page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Bibliography page
to my "Blaster" Al Ackerman index
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE BYOC page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Censored or Rejected page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Collaborations page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (d) compositions page
to Amir-ul Kafirs' Facebook page
to the "FLICKER" home-page for the alternative cinematic experience
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's GoodReads profile
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Haircuts page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Home Tapers page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE index page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Instagram Poetry page
to a listing of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's manifestations on the Internet Archive
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Interviewee index
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Interviewer index
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE'S Linked-In profile
to the mm index
to see an underdeveloped site re the N.A.A.M.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Multi-Colored Peoples)
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Neoism page
to the DEFINITIVE Neoism/Anti-Neoism website
to the Philosopher's Union website
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE movie-making "Press: Criticism, Interviews, Reviews" home-page
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Score Movies
to SMILEs
to find out more about why the S.P.C.S.M.E.F. (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Sea Monkeys by Experimental Filmmakers) is so important
to the "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - Sprocket Scientist" home-page
to Psychic Weed's Twitter page
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Vimeo index
to Vine movies relevant to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE made by Ryan Broughman
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's presence in the Visual Music Village
for info on tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's tape/CD publishing label: WIdémoUTH
to a very small selection of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Writing