Chelsea Walk: How to Succeed in Art Criticism Without
Really Trying.
asstrOnOmnical affected
autOmata,
2011
Joseph NechvatalÕs nOise
anusmOs, at
Gallery Richard 514 W. 24th Street is one of those exhibitions you
wonÕt be able to forget.
What are viruses? Viruses
live. Maybe. To biologists and the like, they are totally confusing. They donÕt
fit into the Three Domains or the Six Kingdoms. Where did they come from? They
require host cells to replicate. We fear them. The HIV virus causes AIDS. 25
million dead! Although deadly, viruses are also metaphors. We dread
computer viruses, but everyone hopes their YouTube clips go viral. The
artist/writer/composer Nechvatal has even proposed that humans may be viruses,
living off the earth.
Nechvatal, once associated
with the now-historical Colab and ABC No Rio venues, is the virus guy and has
been for quite awhile. He has figured out how to use algorithms to act as ÒvirusesÓ
on images and sounds, in effect programming artworks that make themselves.
Always anti-postmodernist,
his new exhibition is strangely alluring. What I like more than their mode of
construction is the de-stabilization they cause. The end-products of his
algorithms and robotic paint machines look attractive indeed. But then: Aha!
They are close-ups of anuses. I think we all have them Ðmales and females Ð but
they are taboo.
Nechvatal, the virus guy,
risks becoming the anus guy. Good for him. He posits an anus cosmos, without
even quoting Artaud.
Wide awake and a bit of an
activist during the denial stage of the AIDS/HIV crisis, he knew what he was
doing when he began using ÒvirusÓ programs on his own art to produce
robot-paintings. And we always liked the mysterious surfaces of his
layered Òdrawings.Ó
He is a thinker too. Visit
his website for such essays as Emergence of
the New
Paradigm: Viractuality.
Chew on this:
ÒAfter a long period of
temporal disjunctions following the demise of the modernist project and the
excessive abuses of the post-modernist non-project; I wish to now suggest that
a new clarifying paradigm has emerged based not, however, on the ideals of the
raw, the pure or the reduced Ð but rather on the internal tic-tic-tic bomb time
of the embedded and patient viral attack.
So I am suggesting here
a seething project of critique within critique that re-energizes the broken
gaps of temporal displacement that followed the demise of modernism and the
appearance of now listless Ð super fragmented Ð irresponsible Ð glut of
post-modern de-construction.Ó
You can also get a taste of
his Viral Symphony
on YouTube.
From