Everything we always wanted to know? ... Really?

I want to know why we are still talking about Hans Ulrich Obrist. Could this book answer my question ... ?


This modest book contains a foreword by Tino Sehgal, an afterword by Yona Friedman and interviews by Jean-Max Colard, Robert Fleck, Jefferson Hack, Nav Haq, Noah Horowitz, Sophia Krzys Acord, Brendan McGetrick, Markus Miessen, Ingo Niermann, Paul O'Neill, Philippe Parreno & Alex Poots, Juri Steiner, Gavin Wade, Enrique Walker.

The press release says: "Everything you ever wanted to know about Hans Ulrich Obrist but were afraid to ask has been asked by the sixteen practitioners in this book."

Hmm, Hans, I actually don't want to know more about you, and I wouldn't be afraid to ask if I did.

I would like to know, however, why of sixteen 'practitioners' there is only one woman involved in 'knowing about' Obrist? Are women that much more 'afraid' to ask than men (93.75%)? (Also, what is a 'practitioner'?)

Haha, pompous men are funny! I don't know what Caroline Schneider was thinking (... well, perhaps I do ... don't forget, if you want to 'know' more about Obrist and/or curating you have to buy this book ... oh, so tempting, Caroline ... I really need yet another self-indulgent account from men talking about themselves and other men whilst being promoted by women ...)

Also, I want to know why I am still talking about Hans Ulrich Obrist?!

RISD arms Class

Taken from Art & Education e-newsletter. All bold and underline rendered so by me, italicised phrases correspond to Bifo.


RISD arms Class of 2011 with Artrepreneur Kits, Including Etsy Fellowship and Square

"For the second consecutive year, Rhode Island School of Design [RISD] is arming its graduates with "artrepreneur kits." This practical parting gift includes tools and resources to help these highly creative thinkers to maximize their potential for innovation and explore entrepreneurial possibilities."

Franco "Bifo" Berardi writes in The Soul At Work (Semiotext(e) 2009):
'Within Semiocapital, then, the production of value tends to coincide with semiotic production. Pressed by economic competition, the production of accelerated and proliferating signs ends up functioning like a pathogenic factor, congesting the collective psyche that is becoming the primary object of exploitation.' (p.134, trans. Francesca Cadel & Guiseppina Mecchia)

RISD continue, "Square, Inc. is again providing Squares and activation codes for graduating students, which enables credit card payments to be processed anywhere via a small square card reader that plugs directly into a mobile phone input jack. In 2010 RISD was the first college to distribute the newly-launched hardware/software combination."

Berardi writes:
'The non-hierarchical character of network communication becomes dominant in the entire cycle of social labour. This contributes to the representation of info-labor as an independent form of work. But this independence ... is in fact an ideological fiction, covering a new and growing form of dependency ... This new dependency is increasingly apparent in the automatic fluidity of the network: we have strict interdependence of subjective fragments, all distinct but objectively dependent from a fluid process, from a chain of automatisms both external and internal to the labour process which regulate every gesture, every productive parcel.

Both simple executing workers and entrepreneurial managers share the vivid perception that they depend on a constant flow that cannot be interrupted and from which they cannot step back save at the price of being marginalised... Cellular phones are probably the technological devices that best illustrate this kind of network dependency. The cellular phone is left on by the great majority of info-workers even when they are not working. It has a major function in the organisation of labor as self-enterprise that is formally autonomous but substantially dependent.' (pp. 88-9)

"Also," say RISD (there is always more!) "Behance, the world's leading platform for creative professionals, is giving graduates free six-month accounts to Prosite, its newly launched online portfolio site. This simple yet sophisticated platform offers unlimited hosting and unlimited project space, with no programming skills required, for 11 USD per month. Behance is also including an Action Journal for each grad."

'Grad'? Great! Rad! But remember, STUDENT DEBT IS IDEOLOGICALLY IMPOSED

RISD President (!) John Maeda is right on the money, he 'notes': "A new kind of art+design-led leadership is needed to innovate in the current global economy ... Artists and designers bring their intuitive, creative thinking to a broad array of fields, and with our Artrepreneur Kit, we are providing them with just a few of the tools and resources that can help launch their work into the public spectrum and help them make a living, in whatever way they choose."