on helping the bad boy

One of Art F City's commenters had a bee in his smock that I was defending Ryder Ripps, who "doesn't need my help" because the recent controversy over Craiglist sensual masseuses helped Ripps "cement his bad-boy brand." My reply:

There might be reasons other than defending Ryder or "contrarianism" for objecting to two NY non-profits lowering the ban hammer on an artist. It sets a bad precedent. Saying you're not going to review a future show because of someone's previous art, or using a phrase like "ethically unsound" (which has a vaguely Soviet ring to it) ought to be addressed, so I did it. I've mentioned other artists who might also be provocateurs, yet haven't been dissed by the art authorities. Andrew Norman Wilson's takedown of the Google badge system was pure click magic, and see my questions regarding Antonellis' "Poland Spring" piece on AFC today. This is not an issue related to one particular attention-hungry artist, but you seem to have fixated on that. Also, "contrarianism" as I understand the term means opposing popular opinion for its own sake, or to stir up trouble, rather than having actual beliefs and principles.

Found art of the day

godzillaFW

Here's a homemade clip of the end credits of Godzilla: Final Wars.
This could be Jean-Luc Godard doing Leni Riefenstahl, as interpreted by Junior in his mom's basement, using a phone to film a laptop. As the camera shakes and struggles to stay centered (difficult when filming widescreen in "extreme portrait" mode), Mom can be heard off camera yelling at Junior to pay attention to her.
The credits are a series of "money shot" clips of monsters flying, fighting, and screaming in rage, close-ups of anxious human faces (that you saw earlier in the movie), people fighting in space suits, and choreographed explosions.
This exciting montage (rolled over by credit-text) is accompanied by a rather haunting symphonic synthesizer score by prog rock titan Keith Emerson. (He said in an interview that only a portion of the music he wrote for the film was used, but this is intact, apparently.) The scale-climbing classical crescendos, in an earlier era, might be written with the same intensity by a composer such as Tchaikovsky to commemorate a major battle. The sound quality on Junior's phone is good enough to pick up most of the musical bravado while the action mayhem is being savored.

Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) is an almost note-perfect continuation of the '60s Japanese monster tradition of Destroy All Monsters. There's almost nothing in it to tell you it wasn't made in 1968.

we made you and we can unmake you, mr. ripps

Regarding that Ryder Ripps art piece where he hired Craiglist sensual masseuses to make drawings on paper in a NY hotel that was underpaying him to be an artist-in-residence. It's certainly not any more "offensive" than the Andrew Norman Wilson piece where he collaborated remotely with a mechanical turk-style worker in Bangalore to make an artwork. Both involve A-list white dude artists exposing civilians-just-trying-to-get-by to the glories of conceptual art. The Ripps work had more of a sleazy sexual dimension, but then, so do hotels.
Wilson got away with it -- as far as I know, his reputation is untouched. Ripps didn't, at least with his erstwhile promoters Art F City and Rhizome. Both repudiated him and hoisted him onto the pillory of politically correct sanctimony. The righteousness of these dismissals was off the charts. Real Cotton Mather stuff, except Mather didn't use mealy-mouthed phrases like "ethically unsound." This is an artist, not a politician, he's not held to the same standards of public trust and you don't talk about his work in the same disgraced tones you would if a Congressman sent dick pics to a girlfriend.
It's especially ripe that the two organizations in question "made" Ripps with fawning coverage, in happier times. Rhizome flattered him by offering his Facebook downloads as an "art" giveaway to subscribers and nominated him for a "Prix Net Art", while AFC's Paddy Johnson praised his honesty and candor in an adoring profile, among other plugs.
Message to artists: "One work of art that slightly embarrasses us and you're a dead person."

afc blogroll update

Art F City surveys the wreckage of the former art blogosphere to see who's working, who quit, and who became a magazine.

The lists are useful. Similar surveys should now be done for the music blogosphere, the film blogosphere, the tech blogosphere, and the science fiction blogosphere.

The RSS list I'm always going on about (my personal feed list, not the list of readers) includes very little in the way of "art" stuff. It's more a collection of trustworthy sources for politics, finance, and science -- an alternative to something less trustworthy such as the New York Times front page.

In an earlier post, Art F City lamented the decline of self-published voices to (i) clickbait, pseudo-news sources heavily regurgitating press releases and (ii) various chat and messaging services.
Less a matter of decline, perhaps, than getting lost in the noise and having reader attention diverted elsewhere. My take on it:

In the '00s we had the "blogosphere" and there was a fair amount of mutual support among early adopters who were attempting something different than the "mainstream media." That support has fractured as authors have either joined social media platforms, with their readymade communities of friends and followers, or returned to the old path of building a brand by writing for better-promoted media outlets. I think of the blogger Digby, who is now writing regularly for Salon as "Heather Digby Parton."

Digby still has her own blog but obviously doesn't feel it's "enough." You could say this is a matter of economics but to me the point of blogosphere was (i) labors of love and/or (ii) people who were sick of the propaganda. It wasn't about making a living. It costs almost nothing to publish on the internet.