“A table, 12 glasses of water and the Internet.
For 24 hours I will repeat, into a webcam, whatever you tell me to.
I will be present in repeating your words. I will be your puppet, your sounding board, your refuge. Otherwise, I will be silent.
If you cannot make it to the opening, video will be streamed here for you to watch.
If you don’t have a Twitter account, you should get one. This will be the method you’ll use to tell me what to say (by tagging your post #24hEcho).
There will be an opening reception for Man’s performance tomorrow night at P.P.O.W. Gallery (Saturday May 22nd 7-9pm) as part of THE HOSTESS PROJECT, “a new entity designed to serve as a starting point and platform to enable artists within all fields to present their work and increase their audience through one night events.”
Man Bartlett represents the best of what is happening now in contemporary art. No boundaries, no walls, no lines, no boxes. He is post-everything and therefore gives us a glimpse of the future. I had a nice chat with him a couple of weeks ago in his studio where he showed me elegant circle drawings, point pieces and line drawings. Some see repetition in his work. There is a recurring aspect, but it is totally void of sameness. If it is circular, it goes around and up like a spiral stair or outward like an echo.
These elements are consistent in Bartlett’s practice whether released on paper or in performance – the performances being another manifestation of tightly compressed energy seeking expression in controlled iterations. Most lovely of all is that this artist uses technology to amplify the reach and resonance of the work. He has nearly 1,000 followers on Twitter, regularly sets up a live video web stream as he works in his studio and is cooking up who-knows-what with fellow Flux Factory artists.
Bartlett’s performance last weekend, #cleandream, took place in this Activation Chamber. He writes that, “The performance, and creation of a sculptural work of art, aims to draw attention to the differences between our virtual and physical experiences of an event. In this instance, the event is the desire to create a cleaner space for visitors to view art in.”
In response to a Twitter message I sent, I found out that “Not announced in the description was that I was ‘cleaning’ people too.”
What to make of all this? Hard to fully explain or know, but it certainly reflects the kind of democratic access to art that Location One’s Abramovic Studio Curator, Jovana Stokic, talked about at the ISCP roundtable I attended two weeks ago.
I’m starting to get interested in an idea I decided to call “New Contemporary Currency.” It is loosely defined as social media “cred” or awareness accumulated remotely through technology that boosts the value (price) of an art object or value (significance) of having in-person access to the artist. As I’m writing this post, Zach Adam Cohen suggests that the concept of bartering is important to this idea. Yes, absolutely.
Follow @manbartlett, @zacharycohen, @kiangaells and #NewContemporaryCurrency to see where this conversation goes…
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