RICKROLL/OpenFile 3.3 1

At £23,010, the average starting salary in teaching is high compared to the average graduate starting salary. Experienced teachers can earn up to £64,000 in London and £56,000 outside London.

As notions of public space have RICKROLL Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, they get huge holidays and finish shifted with the advent of the internet, Spike Island, Bristol social codes have been separated from 19th April 2013 work in the mid afternoon. It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them their ‘real world’ counterparts. This pub- for what they do – babysit. Okay, so lets say they’ve got teaching qualifications lication coincides with an evening of and maybe master’s degrees, but they must want to do it. It’s a vocation, isn’t screenings and performances exploring PREVIOUS: forms of emerging online interaction, that what they say? Surely they should be prepared to do it for minimum wage, memes and virtual socialisation. LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH £6.19 an hour. It is the public sector after all and in this economic climate ICA, London we all have to tighten our belts. Also I think they should be reasonable and “And so something has really 12th January 2013 changed – and I think this is the real only charge for the hours they’ve worked; I don’t agree with this claiming for epiphany: the ways in which culture is HASHFAIL planning time and marking time. Everyone has to manage their work; make time to distributed have become profoundly Grand Union, Birmingham do it on the job if you have to, that’s what every other profession has to do. more intriguing than the cultural arti- 14th December 2012 1 Bait and switch fact itself.” 2 George Barber, Milk Bottle Village (2013) Kenneth Goldsmith 4 Thomas Yeomans, YO DAWG I HERD YOU LIKE So let’s say they work from 8.30 to 3.30 day, I don’t get a lunch break so why SO I RICKROLLED A RICKROLL WITH should they? I’m not paying for that, so that’s a six hour day. I wish I only The programme features con- YOUR RICKROLL (2013) tributions from George Barber, David 5 Marialaura Ghidini, On the ecology of the distributed worked six hours a day. Raymond Conroy, Hannah Perry, Jon Raf- work of art, and it’s inter-media narrative 6 hours at £6.19 is £37.14 a day. What’s the average class size, 30? Class sizes , Thomas Yeomans and Marialaura properties (2013) should be smaller I think, so let’s say 25 children at £37.19 each which means... Ghidini, and is the third in a series of 10 Jon Rafman, Kool Aid Man in search events that have previously taken place of the virtual sublime (2009) £929.75 at Grand Union, Birmingham and ICA, 12 Jon Rafman, Kool Aid Man in search London. of the virtual sublime (2009) Hang on, £929.75 a day! Well I’m definitely not going to pay for holidays, I mean 14 Tim Dixon, From A to /b/ and back again (2013) Designed by WRP 17 Hannah Perry, I should go (2013) they’re off half the year. Right, half of 365 is 182.5. Round it down to 180, we’re in a period of austerity remember. Open File III is kindly supported by the Arts Council England £929.75 for 180 days is £167,355.00

A hundred and sixty thousand pounds! That is ridiculous, I mean it isn’t like they’re devoted to my child for the entire day, there are dozens of children in a class.

What do we pay that teenager who walks the dog? £3.00 an hour. She isn’t just looking after our dog, she has others too, £3.00 an hour seems fair I think. Okay so let’s pay teachers £3 an hour. Right, so that’s £18.00 a day from the 25 parents of each child in the class, which is £450 a day for 180 days. Well £450 a day seems a bit expensive but 25 children from God knows where… I wouldn’t do it, and we’re only paying them for the half a year that they work I suppose. That means 180 days at £450 so… £81,000

Hang on a moment, something isn’t right here. 2 3

projected to help them and while they sang other people could throw milk on them, much to the amusement of all. The Tate Modern went on to copy Milk Bottle Village so professionally, visitors genuinely got mixed up sometimes in the Village. ‘Is this conceptual art?’ They might innocently ask a passing milkman, ‘No, it fucking isn’t!’ might come the reply of a small man struggling with a crate of 15 full cream and four Milk Bottle Village semi-skimmed. I’m delivering milk mate! What’s it look like?’ The cultural logic soon came to work the other way around too – for example this year’s Turner Prize:

An endearing facility funded by English Heritage for all devout milkmen who “The young artist Cattie Doyen has set up a whole secondary have been rejected and made to feel unwanted by a de-historicised population who like school in the turbine hall of the Tate Modern. This ‘school’, cleverly milk in square cardboard boxes. named St Christopher’s, for the purposes of her intervention has a At the centre’s large mock village, the retired men can whizz about on their perpetual Open Day. The Open Day, like Exam day in most schools, floats, sometimes depositing as many as 50 pints to a single address – such large de- is in fact being held in the school gym. As a gallery visitor you are liveries really please milk men. Each delivery is quickly smuggled back to the depot to think of yourself as a prospective parent with a child who is not in tunnels so as to make way for the next. Some addresses have been known to have doing too well at the school. You walk into the ‘school’ and as you accepted 700 bottles in a single day. That’s a lot of happy milkmen. Down in Milk do so one of the Tate’s attractive European volunteers gives you a Bottle Village a retired milkman could really feel special. list of staff and appointment times that you have and also the name ‘In a nice place.’ as Prince Charles said regaling the crowd with a glass of the of your fictitious child – who is doing quite badly - at the school. white stuff. Slowly, in the laborious queues within this cold but smelly The Village received high state funding as it had strong community relationship gym, the exhibit visitor realizes that just as in real life, none of the issues and the funders could track back and see evidence that its aims exactly met its teachers really know who you are, have minuscule affection for your objects and that it could therefore have permanent funder status. Like contemporary child and lastly, the appointment system is completely ruined by art galleries, the retired Milkmen could really play the ‘helping’ communities card; this parents going on and on about their lovely offspring when really wasn’t an initiative for an elite group but for the people. Everybody loves milkmen – as all they want to do is talk; venting their ‘feelings’ and anxiety about long as they are not coming to their house, of course. The scheme had reams of video little dear Da Vinci. So secretly everyone in the queues starts to promotion material in which milkman would sentimentally lay out their strategic plan resent each other and on the sly have very bad thoughts about other going forward for issues to be covered by the Milk Bottle Village in the future. There parent’s partners, choice of clothes, children, transport, implants, were plans (rather like Mormons’ neat trick of converting the dead after they’ve died) addresses and their profound inability to talk about anything in a to have plaques made of all the dead UK milkmen ever and lay them out in glorious less than earnest manner. Animosity spreads rapidly in the queues designs across the Milk Bottle Village Educational and Bereavement Centre. (Disabled at this exhibit and that is obviously the artist’s point. access; having trouble reading this?) Finally, when the open day at the school is finished – to fully Fur covered trucks patrolled the streets handing out free glasses of milk to enjoy Doyen’s piece you have to stay in the gym 2 hours, you leave visitors. Others flatbeds carried cows with clever theatrical scenery and visitors would the exhibition really exhausted and wondering – just like in real jump up and learn how to milk. It was all about people, friendships via milk; engage- life – if as a society we have really got it badly wrong somewhere in ment and inclusivity via milk. Widening participation and affirmative action via milk. Education. For one, you wouldn’t want to spend 5 minutes with any Like the Tate Modern – objects in a gallery weren’t enough anymore – you had to of the other parents so why on earth does your child want to spend patronise the public and make them wear hats, badges and preferably pick up a paint all day with their offspring?” brush and participate in some easy creative process. Send them down a slide or get them to volunteer to walk in circles. (Sad really but this is the fashion in modern arts This exciting exhibition at the Tate Modern represents the definitive way that support.) Creativity is not an exalted state done by an artist at the top of their game the Milk Bottle Village format came to dominate and influence all future arts policy. but more a process open to all; a ‘learning experience’ where the results mustn’t be judged. (In fact; it is the old ‘taking part’ sport routine transferred to culture.) Fancy banging on a drum in groups? Lonely? Fancy meeting people in an art gallery? Want to learn how to cook? Dance? Use the internet? The people and the public are to be valued way above anything that is finished, brilliant and of importance. There must be no barriers, all are welcome, and must feel equal. Anything, like being able to actu- ally draw, actually contribute to the canon, actually say something or actually be able to play a musical instrument is all to be side-lined. In this cultural formation Milk is no longer just Milk – it is a creative medium and meeting place for all our diverse community - and Milk Bottle Village is no longer an initiation for Milkmen but for all people on earth – in fact, especially for those who aren’t Milkmen. The people’s Milk Bottle Village was filled with people who had never even had a Milkman. Footfall and attendance is the goal. Milk Bottle Village slowly scratched an indelible mark on the international arts and visitor attraction scene. Like property developers using artists to make an area cool, Milk Bottle Village’s ‘people’ approach would soon come to be viewed as a global standard. People could sing in Milk Bottle Village, impromptu choirs with words 4 5

On the ecology of the distributed work of art, and it’s inter-media narrative properties

During a conversation about online distribution and popular culture someone said to me: “ owns ”, meaning that musician Rick Astley would have not made it into music history, or better still business, hadn’t his music video “” become an . Namely, hadn’t it come to really matter 1 Cloninger, C., 2009. as a hyperlink widely spread across websites via randomly being connected to other Commodify Your Consumption: Tactical online material with little apparent relevance to the content of the music itself, let Surfing/ Wakes of alone its author [image 1]. Resistance. Available We are here navigating through the realm of social phenomena on the Internet, online, http://lab404. com/articles/commodify_ for which – as we all know well – notions of originality and authorship are put into your_consumption.pdf question even as plausible concepts in themselves, along with historical givens pertaining to the science of classification, such as activities of categorisation and labelling which have been entrenched in the understanding of culture and creation of knowledge. At least, thus far. Within such online-induced social phenomena, it seems that a thing exist as an in-between other things, that cultural material is a sort of fluctuating whole in which its parts always exist as and in connection with something else, most likely the everything else. There is no chronological order, no beginning nor end, because sources and conclusions do not matter anymore in the same way they mattered before. In this in-between, subjects often turn into objects of and in transmission; they are virtual packages gone viral, such as the one introduced above, the meme which becomes a sort of content-means. This is the in-between for which receivers – our unaware users, the rick-rolled – turn into consumers and often active producers in themselves – see the theorisation of the figure of the “prosumer” by artist Curt Cloninger.1 Moving away from our metaphorical Astley, I wonder what sort of reverberations the scenario above has had and has in context of contemporary art production, in relation to its ecology. If we take forward the aforementioned workings, the cultural material that circulates in such manner seems likely to have an equal and simultaneous existence, impact and therefore significance both online and offline. It also exists not as a static form but as a form and content in movement, likely to be subjected to continuous transformations which disregard neat distinctions between that online and this offline. It is all part of our socio-cultural scenario, after all, a scenario which by being highly related to communication infrastructures sees an erasure of the that and the this. That said, how might we discuss the ontology of the contemporary art product in the wake of such Internet-induced phenomena, its condition of being? I am using the world product because what I have just sketched out dispute with the established and institutionalised system(s) of the contemporary art world, in connection to economic models and critical methodologies for example. A straightforward example of how this friction could emerge might go as follows: If a work of art exists as a web-based artwork encompassing textual elements, visuals and an appropriated video from YouTube, but it also exists as a limited-edition poster which stems from its online precedent as well as a looped video which reworks the other two versions, all while bearing the same title and author – to whom perhaps the creator of the appropriated video could be added –, where would its value lie? Would it be considered as one piece comprising all three, as a distributed artwork? Would one format, perhaps the most stable, be chosen amongst the other two? Moreover, how would a critic analyse and describe the work? Under what kind of category, or labelling, would this work enter, if at all, the history of contemporary art? Under the label of inter-media narrative work, perhaps? [image 2] 6

Reflecting on this unanswered set of questions, I cannot help recalling a more historical example of artistic practice. In 1968 Marcel Broodthaers founded the Musèe d’Art Moderne - Department des Aigles which over the course of 5 years presented 12 sections, all of which, despite taking up different formats of display and including material spanning various mediums and forms of arrangement, examined the symbol of the eagle in relation to ideas of power and supremacy - see the theorisation of “the eagle principle” by critic Rosalind Krauss.2 The Musèe d’Art Moderne - Department des Aigles, Section XIXem Siècle was the first iteration of the project, a fictitious museum which was installed in Broodthaers’ own house. This museum displayed empty crates upon which there were projections of images of 19th-century paintings, with no sign of eagles, were it not for the title. After other and different iterations, the Musèe went to the Städtische Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf as an installation in 1972, presenting various sections such as those des Figures and Publicitè, for which the 2 Krauss, R.E., 2000. A Image 1 Screenshot of Google artist included 300 objects – from brooches to stuffed animals – and images, many of Voyage on the North Image search for Never Sea. London: Thames & Gonna Give You Up which were taken from advertisements and comic strips, representing eagles. Such Hudson Ltd, London. material was on display along with plastic plaques with numbers – such as Fig. 1, 2, etc. – and the following sentence “This is not a work of art” [image 3]. The display chosen by Broodthaers was fictitious as it was the museum itself, it functioned as a parody of the classification and value systems which had developed within the institutionalised world of contemporary art, of the process of selection of artworks, their inclusion or exclusion. In a nutshell, the way in which the Musèe operated throughout time is – as Krauss aptly describes it – by “internalis[ing] the field of work, such as the mass media forms of production” of the artist’s times which predominantly lay in the photographic image spread across billboards and magazines, the new means of communication of the 60s. The fact that for Documenta V, in 1972, Broodthaers’ Musèe was included in the catalogue in the form of a full-page advertisement does not only symbolise the artist’s act of “internalisation” of communication systems but it also brings forward his attempt to disrupt notions of authorship and object-hood by moving the artistic product through different sites of display and experimenting with appropriation and what site-specificity might be in relation to processes of repetition and transmutation. To quote Krauss one last time, “the triumph of the eagle [Broodthaers chosen symbol for the Musèe, perhaps a sort of content-means in the context of this text] announces not the end of Art but the termination of the individual arts as medium-specific; and it does so by enacting the form that this loss of specificity will now take”; in some ways we could read this as an attempt to bypass dichotomies as well as a straightforward engagement of the receiver. Going back to the condition of being of the contemporary work of art in relation to Internet-induced social-phenomena, we might then catch some resemblances with the characteristics and workings of Broodthaers’ Musèe, at least for that which concerns the narrative of a distributed object, its mode of existence in and across multiple sites and the complications related to its contextualisation(s) as issues that have been brought about by social phenomena generated though the spread of new means of communication into the everyday. What unites these two scenarios, the Internet-induced one and the print- induced one, is the fact that they both aim at disrupting power structures, in relation to their economy and critical values, by appealing to mass mediatic communication infrastructures. But here is where we might also see a difference, or better still, a possibility; that is the possibility of moving from creating a conceptual disruption with such power structures to that of practically shifting the power structures in place. The ecologies that might arise from the in-between I briefly described above have still been little explored, while there is a growing number of practitioners, artists and critics who are attempting to creatively devise other models, other methods of classification and judgement, other ways of thinking about what value might be and mean nowadays, a time in which many previously established and stable systems have been falling apart. And this is because within this Internet-induced social phenomena, there are the potentials inherent to readily-available web-based tools, which, for their being simultaneously means of production, display and distribution, allow us to break with previous more recognised ecologies. Image 2 Damien Roach, Michigan parachute/Kitchen/ Arp 147, 2011-2013 Astley is a metaphor and its only value in our context lies in making transparent the movement, and the possibilities ingrained in this movement in-between the online and offline. But it still operates as a product, a distributed product that little has to offer to the creation and understanding of other narratives; narratives that are scattered through sites, that are overarching, that disregard stability in favour of erasing dichotomies and setting into place other ecologies.

Image 2.1 Web-based work on display at or-bits.com

Image 2.2 Digitally printed poster on Newsprint, 57.8 x 38 cm as part of On The Upgrade edition box set Image 3 Musèe d’Art Moderne - Department des Aigles, Section Publicitè; installation shot of display; Documenta V, 1972

Image 2.3 Digital video, 10 min 48 sec (looped) as part of (On) Accordance exhibition at Grand Union 11

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and new ways of interacting and socialising that originate here and spiral out across the web and into real life. A simple example is keystroke errors that are left in to facilitate speed at first and then getting imitated, and later taking on meanings of their own (‘an hero’) or simply becoming inflected or hyperbolised versions of the words first intended From A to /b/ and back again (‘pwned’, or ‘zOMG’). It is fairly common to see a randomly chosen image with an attached text pos- “The scale of the Internet is something not yet fully grasped by philosophy: ing a question or making a statement with a closing disclaimer: image unrelated. These websites like 4Chan are like the cities of the Internet.”1 images are often incongruous, inflammatory, or offensive and demonstrate a taste for non-sequiturs and uncanny humour. Text/image combinations (Image Mac- 4chan is a user-driven, image-sharing website, with an anything-goes policy and ros) are popular. Images are displayed as small thumbnails and so bold text overlaid a variety of themed boards. Launched in 2003, it was originally used for Manga and Anime 1 Harry Halpin, The straight person, a new fag, on an image is common to make it readable at a glance. Recognisable characters be- discussion, it’s founder Chris ‘moot’ Poole based the coding and the structure on Japanese Philosophy of , a , noob or new come shorthand as images are reworked and reused over and over with just the overlaid Radical Philosophy user. (http://www.urban- image boards he’d been trying to use despite speaking very little of the language. 176, Nov/Dec 2012 dictionary.com/define. text changing. 4chan is also a notoriously merciless place – the natural home of the You can go there and discuss more or less anything you wish. Categories include php?term=Straight%20 Internet Troll. It is here that the Internet meme – the imitated trope or repeated and Japanese Culture, Interests, Creative, Adult and Other. Within these you will find themed 2 There have been attempts fag&defid=5813890) reworked joke – originates, and where many specific memes individually originate.4 to archive it, particularly boards such as Anime & Manga, Video Games, Technology, Toys, Music, Fashion, when it gets good (when 4 See: http://know- While /b/ may be - and indeed frequently is - belligerent, obscene, vulgar, tasteless, Literature, Food & Cooking, Handsome Men, LGBT, Paranormal, Travel, the list goes a thread becomes an ‘Epic yourmeme.com/ puerile and disrespectful it also has a curious way of managing itself and a strange on. And then there is the miscellaneous section, here you find a board called ‘Random’ Thread’), see https:// ethics. Many things that may be beyond the pale for the regular net-user are fine encyclopediadramatica.se 5 Christopher “moot” Poole, better known as /b/. /b/ is the everything else board, the anything goes board, and it is The Case for on 4chan, and yet there are still boundaries or areas that will see the wrath of the the heart of what 4chan does and what it represents. 3 Note ‘On 4chan, EVERYONE Online (TED.com) Internet poured upon a user; the figure of may appear if a user seems to 4chan is structured to be free and open and, most importantly, it is anony- is a faggot (regardless http://blog.ted.com/2010/06/02/ be edging too close to paedophilic content for example, or there is the case of the of sexuality), and a need the_case_for_an/ 2 3 mous and unarchived. For the new user (or newfag ) the speed is dizzying and the rules, came up to differenti- Internet coming down upon the young man who posted a video of himself being cruel modes of interaction, and language can be confusing. ate between types of 6 IRL – In Real Life to his cat. 4chan users made it their mission to find out who he was and where he lived You must post an image. You can attach a little text to it. You cannot post faggotry. A homosexual and reported him to the police.5 would be a gay fag, and an image that you have already posted. That’s about it (aside from the local rules a fan of Japanese car- And here we begin these web-specific activities and agglomerations influ- governing some particular boards which are largely ignored anyway). These simple toons would be an anime encing behaviour IRL.6 protocols, coupled with the fact that people interact at incredible speed, lead to bizarre fag.’ A straight fag is a One of the ’net’s best known memes is the practice of Rickrolling – tricking someone into watching the video for Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up instead

San Francisco videogame of some promised impressive video content. Astley himself appeared unexpectedly on development company Kixeye uses a float during the 2009 Macy’s Day Parade and personally Rickrolled the whole crowd. the popular meme Insanity Wolf to And there are large-scale orchestrated pranks: Also in 2009, 4chan decided its founder advertise for new developers. should win Time Magazine’s Top 100 poll. They managed this easily, and followed it up by making an acrostic of the top 21 that spelled “marblecake also the game” – a in-joke refering to the IRC channel used by members of Anonymous. And it’s these slippages into with the real world that provide us with a chance to consider the wider implications of a web-place like 4chan. While the above may be funny instances, there is a more serious political side to all this and it seems to be that when the real world gets a bit too close to the virtual world, the virtual world bites back. Perhaps the best-known example of this is Anonymous, the so-called ‘hack- tivist’ collective, identifiable by their Alan Moore-inspired Guy Fawkes masks. Often acting in areas that involve web-freedom and censorship, or against what they view as of the Internet, Anonymous take threats from real-world entities imposing upon their territory - the virtual terrain of the web - very seriously, standing up against online practices that are likely to lead to further regulation or defending what made the Internet great in the first place: a right to remain anonymous. After several years of online activism Anonymous came to widespread public attention in 2008 when the Church of Scientology tried to get an embarrassing video of Tom Cruise that had leaked online removed. An obvious threat to freedom of speech and a dangerous precedent to set, this finally brought members of Anonymous away from their computer screens and onto the streets. Thousands of self-proclaimed members showed up outside Scientologist headquarters in cities across the world, carrying signs whose slogans ranged from ‘Scientology Kills’ and ‘Obviously A Cult’ to ‘Honk If You Are Driving A Car’ and ‘Don’t Worry We’re From The Internet’. This revel- ling in silliness alongside a head-on tackling of the issue at hand really captures the spirit of this type of activism, a refusal to take the issue seriously can be as subversive, if not more so, than a direct critique. 16 17

And how better to protect freedom of speech that to exercise it and find its limits? At the heart of all this is a desire to be allowed to remain anonymous and to have the freedom to say whatever one wants to say without fear of retribution. Anonymity on the web used to be a given; the idea that you could be whoever you wanted to be was touted as a fundamental building of its revolutionary potential. As journalist Gia Milinovich noted, in the early days of the Internet you could be a online and your body didn’t matter – your mind did, what you said mat- tered and it was disconnected from your real life identity. The Internet was anonymous and free and now that’s just not the case.7 Law suits against users abound, social networking pushes the notion of maintaining a persistent online identity, we’re obliged to trade our personal data in for ease of communication, and the Google empire expands linking your email account to your , to your YouTube account and so on. 7 ‘Which Way to Techno Perhaps in order to protect our own anonymity we need to protect the some- Utopia?’ Little Atoms, Resonance FM, May 2011 times-insane behaviour of those who wish to remain anonymous.

eye and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new for which we cannot find expression, or

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