New Media Artist Cory Arcangel has been very reserved about discussing his upcoming show this month at Team. Though he avoided answering any direct questions I had about the exhibition, he did voice some opinions on his galleries move to Soho, explaining to me that Team was one of the first to make the move into Chelsea, and has made a practice of drawing audiences to some of the more unhip locations around the city (my words not his.) This sounds like gallery PR to me, which I am quick to dismiss, but it has to be said that Team’s gallery space in Chelsea was awkward and generally did nothing to support the work they exhibited, so their move into a new space will almost by default be a good one.
Image copyright That’s Code-Blooded
Arcangel also revealed that it was possible to find out what he was working on if you scoured the net for his intern's blog which chronicles the development of the show. I had anticipated a weekend of searching to find such a jewel, but the guy is one of the first friends listed on Cory's (newly redesigned) myspace page, so it in fact took me all of two minutes to track down the blog. What juicy bits of preshow gossip are revealed you ask? Unfortunately not much you can sink your teeth into, as Arcangel has also monitered the content of his intern’s blog. That’s Code-Blooded, tells us that Arcangel is redubbing the movie Dazed and Confused, a story AFC had caught wind of a couple months ago but had said little about, because of course it is useless information unless you understand the nature of the redub. There is little in the way of specific information about what shape the piece will take, and the next two posts tell us a lot about intern Bennett's feelings about the tedious nature of the work he was doing on protools. Exciting, I know.
The most interesting post on the site has to be BTR Glockenspiel Addendum sessions, pt. 2, which reveals more about an album that will be included in the show and discusses the reaction a few people had to it. In particular I liked the following by Bennett.
The silkscreening guys all wanted a copy of the record once it gets pressed. Cory acted pretty cool about it, but I think it was probably reassuring to him that people get a good initial reaction to the project. One guy was like “man, this is totally one of those projects that you beat me to by like 3 weeks.” Totally a common reaction to Cory’s work, I can imagine. As Cory said to in response “yeah these projects are just kind of out there already, you just have to find them and actually do them, you know?”
I’ve heard Cory say this before, and what interests me about the original statement is how close “I wanted to do that” is to the sentiment “I could have done that”. In both cases the point that the ideas are out there already is often (though not always) true, and the answer to these concerns is that the skill lies in actually doing them. Leaders of countless movements in art were not necessarily the founders; they were simply the best at capitalizing on good ideas.
Update: Favorite Reader comment of the day
Cory Arcangel in response to the comment that it took all of two seconds to find his intern’s blog:
It’s 2006, everything is a click away.
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