Selected Press
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i donT know Brad Troemel in conversation with Haley mellin a lot of money, that’s a good way to go. The only way you can get them to come into the real world is to print them up. HM: At times I feel like we live in a constant dot-jump. BT: We figured if we were making sculptures for the sole purpose Supposedly, humans nowadays have 60,000 thoughts a day, most of them different in nature from the previous one. of making installation images, why not just cut out the middleman BT: In an attention economy, there is more value in being and get rid of the objects? This gave us the freedom to work even ubiquitous than in being scarce, especially when there is no THE more quickly. That’s when we started compositing Google Image- added cost in publicizing more works and no depletion of searched products, scenes, and textures together. This meant that the works’ aura, given that digital content exists permanently images made on a laptop using Photoshop would be called sculp- only as a copy. The waiting period between releases that once tures, installations, or paintings, just like the things we made phys- structured the market and assigned a price to each work does ically. Some of the images reveal themselves to be obviously Jogging not suit online content. There is now simply not enough time digitally edited, while others are passable as real. for a single assessor to explore an aesthlete’s full catalog, or for the market to price it all. The aesthlete is outrunning them. Brad Troemel HM: I think this reflects the more intimate reliance we have these wha in conversation with MellIn days on “poor images” – like the pics we swap around that Haley believe T To HM: Outrunning is a good way to escape but not disappear. articulate the atmosphere of a moment, but are maybe 2 inches Normally I run ideas and images by a group of people. Here in size. You’ve sent some good grainy ones with that old cell an image would enter an open-sourced vetting process? phone. How does the blog act as a vehicle for speed, exposure, anymore, 2013 BT: Time spent on anything is time worth being redeemed in trying out ideas? attention by sharing it. A private process of refinement is simply BT: Speed became a priority for us. It was a way of changing The Jogging is a Tumblr lost time. The studio as a site of self-reflection and craft is originated by the artists Brad TROEMEL both our content and our work flow. We made videos featuring going public; no middle ground or time lapse between produc brief, deliberately flippant actions made in a style that later tion and publicity is necessary. For the audience, what’s missing and Lauren CHRISTIANSEN: became associated with Vine. Leftover scraps from exhibitions in production quality is supposedly recouped in honesty and an art project for the masses, at Scott Projects were reconfigured as sculptures, set up in the personal connection with creators, whose every image, poem, gallery space, photographed as an installation image, uploaded song, video, or status update becomes a chance for direct to the blog, and then the objects were thrown away or recon it is a collaborative endeavor with interaction. an open submission policy. figured for a new set of photos. HM: And the critic becomes an anachronism? HM: The images simultaneously take up so much space and so Its popularity is such that the rapper BT: This dynamic of the audience reposting their favorite little space. They respond well to their technical circumstances. GuccI Mane used a Jogging content makes the risks associated with releasing undesirable Everyone and anyone can be a part of the blog. It has an inclusive content fairly low, while enhancing the potential rewards of post as his album art. Many of the feeling. How many people are in the actual collaborative? releasing beloved content. The opportunity costs of not releasing BT: In 2012, we added a dozen other people to the project. This images posted to The Jogging work quickly rise as audiences become less discriminatory helped boost the number of posts we released, and expanded and more participatory. Notes, Likes, and reblogs serve as are reposted on non-art sites and our audience greatly. Then we opened up the blog portion of 4:18 pm • 12 December 2013 • 40 noTes the quantitative basis for influence in an art world where the The Jogging to moderated submissions, which is what comprises many receive thousands of reposts, critic’s written word has been stripped of power. Haley Mellin: Emily Dickinson wrote something that feels about the majority of what you see on http://thejogging.tumblr.com so that a popular Jogging image today. The thing that excites me most about the open submissions right – “Nature is a haunted house, but art is a house that tries porTraiT of a lonely may reach 20 million viewers to be haunted.” Something about The Jogging reminds me of this, to The Jogging is that the image posts have become conversa tional – every submission is in some way a response to a submis- (as compared with the 200,000 visitors for the blog as a place for trying things out and seeing what works, what falls flat. Let’s begin with how The Jogging started. sion that came before it. a popular museum show). Brad Troemel: Lauren Christiansen and I began the project in The Jogging is in the top 1 % of Tumblrs viewed, Chicago in 2009. In 2008 I ran a gallery in Chicago called HM: I like the term you coined – “athletic aestheticism”. Like the Scott Projects. This led me to start thinking about online audiences term “jogging”, it references continuous motion, constant making. and was named #3 in its section of Tumblrs and how cultural capital could be most effectively organized. BT: “Athletic aesthetics” is a term I use to describe artists who nylon/spandex blend ( to Follow by Time in 2013. The collaborative also are releasing more and more work online for free at an increasingly HM: Did starting a blog come from a curiosity, like a question fast rate. Artists using social media have transformed a series does physical exhibitions, including shows to try out answering, or from something else? of isolated shows or artworks into a constant broadcast of one’s at sTill house and Art Basel Miami in 2013, BT: I had a growing dissatisfaction with longterm, conceptual art artistic identity as a recognizable, unique brand. What the artist projects that revolved around collecting or working with large once accomplished by making commodities that could stand inde- and is creating a MocA LA YouTube series, pendently is now accomplished through ongoing self-commodi- amounts of materials. I would put all of this work into making an li installation or sculpture, release an image of it on Facebook, fication. The notion of the masterpiece has reached its antithesis Ve. coming out this spring. laugh and it would be steamrollered in image streams by other people’s with the “aesthlete” – a cultural producer who trumps craft and T of comforT and The perfecT selfies, lunch decisions, baby photos, and all else. It seemed contemplative brooding with immediacy and rapid production. pursui lulu like a certain kind of precious, belabored art was, in effect, Troemel and the artist Haley ) rejected by the internet, which led Lauren and me to start thinking HM: How does this change the role of an audience? MELLIN discuss how, in The Jogging, of ways to make art that would flow well with social media. BT: It has reversed the traditional recipe that you need to create artists are outrunning the art world art to have an audience. Today’s artist on the internet needs HM: So the materiality became less important? Kelley Walker an audience in order to create art. An online audience, once assem- made some of the first immaterial art when he started selling bled, becomes part of the medium. With the constant broadcast digital files in 1999. When you’re starting out and you don’t have as goal, editing oneself becomes a waste of resources. 4:18 pm • 12 December 2013 • 40 noTes 113 114 Brad Troemel in conversation with Haley mellin P.H.I.S.H: PInk HydrograPHIc Integrated FIsH swImS HorIzontally, 2013 piranhas, hydrographic film, screws 4:18 pm • 12 December 2013 • 40 noTes 4:18 pm • 12 December pm • 12 4:18 • 40 noTes 2013 4:18 pm • 12 December 2013 • 40 noTes 4:18 pm • 12 December 2013 • 40 noTes 4:18 pm • 12 December 2013 • 40 noTes 116 115 4:18 pm • 12 December 2013 • 40 noTes Brad Troemel in conversation with Haley mellin CeramIc PItcer Pours Water Onto extremely rare m extremely GenetIcally HM: I respond on a gut level to how many people can see some- thing so quickly. What is the math? BT: I wish Tumblr had more complete statistics for viewership. My fuzzy math is as follows – a post called Pizza Table received 365,000 notes, and around half of those are Likes and half ariable are reflags. Maybe even 60% Likes and 40% reflags. If the average user has 100–300 followers, then to calculate the total poten- od tial viewership you’d multiply the number of reposts by the IFI ed tr number of eyes those reblogs reach – 146,000 � 150 = 21,900,000 potential viewers. IP let Watermelon let HM: Yes, I like that the strategies of these forms of media are still so young.