The Net Art Interviewee

[furtherfield]

      Sleazy Art Meetings (7)

      The Net Art Interviewee


      I have just moved to a new city and I needed an art job badly. I left
my old small town simply because it was just too hard running into my old
artist friends all of the time. They could not believe that I had dropped
them because my Style, philosophy and approach to art had moved into the
challenging and exciting realm of Radical Net Art. They thought that I
should still respect them. Get real, they are just dinosaurs, and they still
show their work in galleries even. Sheesh, it's just too embarrassing to
talk with these Neanderthals, it's like talking to old monkeys who have lost
their way home. Anyone who does not appreciate how technology networks are
the future for art must be pretty dumb. Poor dears, they just haven't got a
clue what is happening in the real art world. So I have had to move out
before I get dragged down into a backward spiral of entropian,
pre-post-humanist non-existence.

      I've got myself a nice apartment, a new Net connection and have
settled in over the course of a couple of days before I mustered up the
nerve to go job hunting. I decided to look for a receptionist position in
the Net Arts field, using my looks as a door opener, a cool cyber-fem chic
look, it always seems to work. I went on a few interviews, and found that
most places wanted to hire me so I felt it would be a worthwhile venture to
do a few more and then pick the best one. This one place really sticks out
in my mind though and it was such an incredible experience.

      The office was called the 'Experimental Net Art Escort Agency'. I
didn't care what they did really, just as long as I got paid and they didn't
have any sad painters to bore me. The guy doing the interview was really
nice, and we got along great. I told him almost immediately that I wouldn't
take the job due to the low wages, and that ended the pressure and we just
chatted a bit about me being an up and coming net artist from a small town
and now I am an ambitious loner in the big city and ready to further my
inevitable brilliant career.

      Seems he was also from a small town originally and he told me to try
this 'Net Art Friend Finder service' on the Internet if I ever felt I needed
to spend some time with those who are knowledgeable about current techniques
on how to get ahead in the net art business. He also gave me few tips, I
actually already new a lot of them but I thought it nice to let him feel
comfortable whilst he enacted the traditional role of mentor. When you are a
young Internet artist, it is always good to pretend that you are interested
in whatever the elder is saying, it can earn you plus points and it is sure
a way into the industry, it cuts all those unnecessary rough edged corners.

      I quizzed him more about the 'Net Art Friend Finder service', as I was
thinking about joining. He told me in a second though, that it wasn't for
me. This only made me more curious and he said that I would be too afraid to
use it. I firmly told him I wasn't afraid of going on a blind art date. He
smiled, and said it wasn't the date that would scare me. Now I really wanted
to know what this was about, so I told him that whatever it was I wouldn't
be afraid and that I would probably be more confidant than him about it. He
just chuckled. I told him again whatever it was that he thought I was afraid
of I wasn't and that I would try this service just to prove him wrong.

      I was about to leave and he stopped me and said that it was a meeting
place for the most well known Net Art administrators and Net Art artists in
the world, primarily a secret network. And the way that it works is that you
satisfy their needs, whatever they are, and they supply you with important
information, if you are really good at it, you can step up the Net Art of
fame ladder in no time, via the most respected Net institutions. Deals are
made all of the time, and it would further my career immediately but ethics
would fly out of the window. I said that I was once a vegetarian and an
anarcho-syndicalist but I am all right now, I'd eat any kind of meat these
days.

      He also mentioned that who ever I met through the system would expect
to experience intimate favors almost immediately after meeting me. I looked
him straight in the eye and said ' oh, is that all, no problem'. He laughed.
I didn't like that, so I told him to stand up so I could prove it to him. He
stood up, I moved over to him, dropped his didactic supposition and had a
good chew on his endorphin stick right there. Then I hiked up my dress and
had him explore my substructure for the next 20 minutes, till he expounded
some pretty amazing verbalizations about how we are all going through a
process of 'self-historicising' then his consignment exploded all over my
face. After he was done I left in a huff, went home and put up an ad on the
online 'Net Art Friend Finder service'. Hopefully I'll get a response soon.

      http://www.furtherfield.org/mgarrett/mgw/docs/playful_art_text.htm