movement-like signs. In 2007 we had our own
Lost Not Found: happening in the form of the Great Internet Sleepover,
held at New York s Eyebeam and organized by
The Circulation of Images
Double Happiness co-founder Bennett Williamson
to which surfers flocked from as far as California,
in Digital Visual Culture
Utah, Wisconsin, Texas, Georgia, Virginia, Rhode
Island, and elsewhere. Many pro surfer artists, on
MARISA OLSON their own or in their respective collectives, are being
curated into major museum exhibitions and film
There is a strain of net art referred to among its festivals. Despite such recognition, there have yet to
practitioners and those who follow it as pro surfer be many significant essays on the movement, and the
work. Characterized by a copy-and-paste aesthetic artists have debated the need for anything resembling
that revolves around the appropriation of web-based a manifesto, saying amongst themselves that they are
content in simultaneous celebration and critique of the waiting to hear interpretations from exterior critical
internet and contemporary digital visual culture, this voices. So I am making a first stab here, knowing full-
work heavy on animated gifs, YouTube remixes, well that I might wipe out.
and an embrace of old-school dirtstyle web design
aesthetics is beginning to find a place in the art If we are to consider pro surfer work in relationship
world. But it has yet to benefit from substantial to photographic media, we must begin with the
critical analysis. My aim here is to outline ways concept of circulation the ways in which the images
in which the work of pro surfers holds up to the are produced and exchanged, and their currency or
vocabulary given to us by studies of photography value. The images that get appropriated on these sites
and cinematic montage. I see this work as bearing a are at times cameraless (i.e. created by software or
surface resemblance to the use of found photography other lensless tools that nonetheless aspire to optical
while lending itself to close reading along the lines perspective, typically follow normative compositional
of film formalism. Ultimately, I will argue that rules, and tend to index realism), while others are
the work of pro surfers transcends the art of found created with some other being behind the aperture,
photography insofar as the act of finding is elevated only to be found and appropriated by a surfer. In
to a performance in its own right, and the ways in their re-presentation in a different context arguably
which the images are appropriated distinguishes this a different economy--the images are taken out of
practice from one of quotation by taking them out of circulation, often without attribution or a hint of
circulation and reinscribing them with new meaning origin, unless that is part of the story being told by the
and authority. artist. Two Nasty Nets members even programmed
a web-based tool called Pic-See that makes it easier
The phrase pro surfer originated with the founding for internet users to plunder images archived in open
in 2006 of Nasty Nets, an internet surfing club directories. When the images are reused, they are
whose members were internet artists, offline artists, positioned as quotations yet inscribed with authorial
and web enthusiasts who were invited by the group s status by the artist who posts them. Let s consider
co-founders (of which I was one) to join them in some examples.
posting to their website materials they had found
online, many of which were then remixed or arranged Justin Kemp s Pseudo Event is an assemblage of
into larger compositions or lists of images bearing photos taken at ribbon-cutting events, with each
commonality. Soon a number of group surf blogs picture lining up perfectly so as to form a continuous
appeared around the net, including Supercentral, red ribbon that stretches wide across the screen,
Double Happiness, Loshadka, and Spirit Surfers, each requiring quite a bit of horizontal scrolling. On a
of which share some number of common members, similar note, Guthrie Lonergan s Internet Group
social bonds, or stylistic affinities. There are also a Shot gathers group photos found online (of teams,
number of indie surfers making similar work, some coworkers, families, etc.) and collages them
of whom will be mentioned here. together into a larger portrait. In some sense this is
a group portrait of internet users. The image unfolds
While the artists in this movement have at times vertically, with the individual components rising
debated whether or not they are truly part of a up from the herd as they are moused-over. John
movement, or whether their posts (most of which Michael Boling s Four Weddings and a Funeral culls
take the form of blog entries) are truly art or just YouTube videos of just that series of events. The five
something else, there have been a number of videos attest to the popularity of this content on the
1
video-sharing website and stack up to a rather clever senses is also a record of his ongoing response to
evaluation of the nature of web-based forms a working online and experiencing the internet. These
common trope in this genre of net art. Consider Oliver meta-commentaries continue the practice of critiquing
Laric s 50 50, which pieces together fifty YouTube the internet and greater network culture through its
clips of different people singing the music of hip hop own lenses. And while pro surfers like Michael Bell-
artist Fifty Cent, or Seecoy s matrYOshki, which nests Smith are better known for works like his Chapters
within itself the same YouTube clip of Russian nesting 1 12 of R. Kelly s Trapped in the Closet Synced and
dolls. At times, these works are simultaneously Played Simultaneously, in which he overlapped the
celebrations of net culture, critiques of it, commentary web-based episodes of R. Kelly s show to reveal
on the experience of web surfing, and a flexing of the its formal qualities (a significantly offline project
artist s geek-muscles. While not all pro surfers are directly influenced by the content and experience
extreme hackers in fact many rely on WYSIWYG of the internet), they are also engaged in a distinctly
tools and Web 2.0 devices that make DIY code social practice, as was the case in Bell-Smith s Nasty
tricks easy others cleverly exploit html, javascript, Nets post, entitled The post where we share awesome
css, and other programming languages (often those gradients. In the post, members of the collective and
dating to the early days of the internet that have since other readers posted their favorite gradient images
waned in popularity). One such example is Boling s usually meant to linger as background information on
Marquee Mark, which makes internet-derived images a webpage but scraped, collected, and re-presented in
of pop star cum actor Marky Mark Wahlberg scroll celebration of their often overlooked beauty. It is no
in a marquee fashion. These practices resemble the wonder, in this genre, that the playlist is the formal
art historical use of found photography, but verge on model par excellence (see first Lonergan s playlist
constituting some other kind of practice something, of MySpace users diaristic YouTube-based intro
dare I say, more original. videos ); but in this case the artists are frequently
playing with other people s property. In this sense,
It should be noted that other artists in this milieu are they are not unlike some of our most beloved
making images that verge on the sublime; images contemporary photographers.--Queue the obligatory
of which one would never question the originality. art historical references: The Surrealists, the Dada
These pictures also employ found material whether guys, The Pictures Generation, Andy Warhol, Barbara
it is extant photography or images that were always/ Kruger, Thomas Ruff, and even Richard Prince,
already fake, i.e. cameraless digital images created Cindy Sherman, Gerhard Richter, Christian Marclay,
to index reality without ever having an analogous or Tacita Dean, if you want to consider found tropes
relationship to it. These include video game graphics, or photo-based painting, etc. The list is long.
low-pixel sprites, bitmap illustrations, and other
digital renderings. Artists Travess Smalley and Borna Found photography has enjoyed a particularly
Sammak both make collages out of such materials dubious legacy. Scraped from the dustbins of
that resemble Jackson Pollock s drip paintings or Kurt history, the worlds these images encapsulate already
Schwitters more than anything as mimetic as even represent a universe other than the one occupied
Robert Rauschenberg or Richard Hamilton, to whom by the discoverer. Whether hailing from a different
they clearly owe some sort of creative debt. Petra time or place or both, there tends to be a discrepancy
Cortright s landscape images are deceptively realist, between the intention of the eye of the photo-taking
while constructing epic janky-edged, behemoth artist and the later viewer. The discrepancy draws on
mountain ranges that could never truly exist in nature. the voyeuristic curiosity of the latter eyes for which
James Whipple s work often begins with real images the image may or may not have been intended. The
of existing spaces and then forces a harmony with the ways in which these eyes might interpret the images
so-called organic shapes of power icons and female recalls film theorist Christian Metz s distinction
body armor found in online multiplayer video games. between a viewer s primary identification with the
camera and secondary identification with characters,
Charles Broskoski s Cube copies and pastes together while problematizing the third term of a viewer s
the scroll bars usually interpreted as outside of relationship to the artist, particularly when the viewer
the internet the frame and uses them to create steps in to appropriate the image.
one of the most pervasive art historical forms: the
grid, thus slamming social context back into the These relationships are distinctly marked by the
domain of modern aesthetics. Paul Slocum s Time question of the photo s content, which is in turn
Lapse Homepage is a sort of video soundtrack to the overdetermined by the circulatory patterns of found
evolution of his personal webpage, which in some photos. The earliest images we have of this nature
2
are those eerie images with which many of us are like Ffffound comprise the backbone of contemporary
now familiar: studies from mental institutions that digital visual culture. They are the vertebrae of a
sought to link physiognomy and psyche; mug shots body we otherwise seek to theorize as amorphous,
that presaged racial profiling in their linking of a overlooking this proliferation of images as somehow
suspect s silhouette and a predisposition toward anomalous, not yet part of the master narrative of
deviance. Whether we re talking about Ishi or network conditions.
Salpetriere patients or those forever interned at the
Mütter Museum, these indices of abnormality spliced Rosalind Krauss argues that while there are many
vérité and constructed horror in their archiving of spaces and contexts in which photographs live, the
impending disaster, perhaps kicked off by the snap wall of the gallery is the primary discursive space
of the aperture. These bodies were taken out of of the photo. But the leap to digital form indeed,
circulation in the economy of signs to which they how many of the world s photos are even printed
belonged taxonomized like a beloved stuffed anymore? prompts us to consider not only the
pet in order to be preserved. The same can be said vertical plane of the webpage as the new home
of the family photos that now populate the found of photographic media, but also to consider the
genre, which in some sense most immediately signify relationship between taxonomy a la the stuffed-pet
death. Ironically, these images circulate in excess. metaphor and taxonomy a la the digital archive. In
Their value may be the inverse of one predicated on so many ways, the archive has become the dominant
scarcity, but they stand in a position of contrast to mode of not only presentation, but even production.
proper Art Photography. This was true of August Sander and Walker Evans,
picked up and modified by Ed Ruscha and John
Despite existing mostly as unique prints, their Baldessari, and in the work of pro surfers continues
distribution is far less controlled than editioned to indulge our impetuses toward narrative order,
photos which tend, for whatever reason, to be just as whether images are produced from the get-go as one
controlled with regard to form and content as they are of a series, remixed according to database aesthetics
with regard to reproduction. The application of free (to exploit an early net art catch phrase), or folded
market metaphors here becomes complicated. The into a list presented as a sort of precontextualized
copywritten image acquires more cultural currency readymade. The history of photography makes clear
in correlation to its increased monetary value, yet that this is a common practice, but what we must
the priceless snapshot is the one that floats freely. ask ourselves now is whether these are, in fact, still
The author s right to control the image, to claim readymades or whether the degree to which they are
ownership of it as an object or a product of their mind prepared makes them something else.
or labor, is theoretically ceded when it s tossed into
the bin, whether at a garage sale or a fancy photo fair. Montage theory argues in favor of something else.
The famous Kuleshov Effect, named for film
This is where we can begin drawing analogies to theorist Lev Kuleshov, is one in which linked shots
the internet. When an image is uploaded, it can add up to something greater than the sum of their
presumably be accessed by any person with any parts, dialectically constructing a narrative by way
intent. We know this because, in these days of of association. These same words can clearly be used
increasingly perpetuated political paranoia, a new to describe the representational strategies at play in
form of technophobia related to identity theft skews the aforementioned pro surfer work samples. But
most cultural commentary related to the posting of the resemblances also extend to the social life of this
photos on social networks and other public sites. creative community. In The Principles of Montage,
Nonetheless, the correlation between vérité and free Kuleshov discusses the period, in the nascent stages
circulation persists: the photos that truly represent of Soviet cinema, in which he and his comrades
mainstream life (for all its absurdities), that truly attempted to discern whether film was an art form
reflect those spectacles about which we fantasize or not. Kuleshov argues that, in principle, every
producing and witnessing, are the ones left out there art form has two technological elements: material
to be found, floating sans watermark. This accounts itself and the methods of organizing that material.
for their popularity among artists and non-artists Kuleshov and his peers felt that many aspects of
alike. Make no mistake, found photos are enjoying filmmaking from set design and acting to the very
celebrity on the internet among surfers pro, indie, act of photography were not specific to the medium.
and amateur. Those split-second bloopers, acts of Nevertheless, he argues, the cinema is much more
conspicuous consumption, and diaristic elevations of complicated than other forms of art, because the
otherwise banal moments found on sites with names method of organization of its material and the material
3
itself are especially interdependent . In specific derivative becomes a blockade, denying artists
opposition to his examples of sculpture and painting, entrée to a shared discourse, or denying the radical
Kuleshov is describing a medium in which the very potential of these montage-based practices.
structure, indeed the very structuring context (its
machines and process in short, its apparatuses), is A few years ago, respected new media curator and
responsible for not only the production of signifiers self-described former photo boy Steve Dietz wrote
but also the signification itself. This insistence on the an essay entitled Why Have There Been No Great
complicated role of apparatuses foreshadows later Net Artists? The essay was inspired by the semi-
critical insistence on the interdependence between rhetorical question asked by Linda Nochlin in her
the content and the hardware and software organizing legendary essay Why Have There Been No Great
the content of a work of new media art, and certainly Women Artists? Dietz summarizes the quandary
in the art hack, by virtue of the work s signification posed by Nochlin s essay and the same paradox is
through resequencing. invoked in his own. The immediate answer is that of
course there have been great female/internet artists.
When we apply this logic to the practices and The second response is to say that the question is
products of pro surfers, we see that they are engaged incorrectly framed. Not all female artists are the same
in an enterprise distinct from the mere appropriation (we are not a category!), and the same can be said of
of found photography. They present us with internet artists whose work now takes on a variety of
constellations of uncannily decisive moments, images forms and contents just like photography! But the
made perfect by their imperfections, images that add deeper issue here is art history s compulsion toward
up to portraits of the web, diaristic photo essays on the recursion. The history that repeats itself is one written
part of the surfer, and images that certainly add up to by archetypically old white dudes (as Paris Hilton
something greater than the sum of their parts. Taken so poignantly described John McCain in a recent
out of circulation and repurposed, they are ascribed web video) who tend to leave the ladies out of the
with new value, like the shiny bars locked up in Fort yearbooks of their self-perpetuated old boys club. The
Knox same could very easily happen with net art.
It was once argued that collage was the most powerful There are artists I respect whose work couldn t be
tool of the avant-garde; that it was a literalization adequately described within my assigned word count,
of the drive to reorganize meaning. Now that it has artists who might take issue with my interpretation of
become a mainstream practice, its authority has their work, and artists who may see the field moving
become virtually endangered. New media often in entirely different directions. But if we are to be
suffers the fate of receiving inadequate criticism, taken seriously, we must take a considered look at our
and this is particularly true of internet-based work. playlists, to think about our favorite artists favorite
Because these artists are practicing within a copy-and- artists to learn and assert our own art history, so
paste culture in which images, sound files, videos, and that in the near future, we will be found in those
even source code are lifted and repurposed, the work yearbooks.
is often dismissed, full stock, as derivative. (A fact my
Rhizome colleague Lauren Cornell and I attempted
to address when we co-curated the New Museum WORDS WITHOUT PICTURES
exhibition, Montage. ) Despite the implied claim 18 SEPTEMBER 2008
that anything derivative is incapable of signifying
on its own, the representational practice upon which
this work hinges montage is by definition an
act of bringing meaning to something. It borrows
the techniques of collage namely piecing together
fragments, objects, and ideas in what Roland Barthes
might call a tissue of quotations to create new
valences. This is not so much derivative as dialectical.
Each lifted piece is put in conversation with each
other, so that the combination creates a third (or fourth
or fifth...) term.
As if the art world has not already flourished after
decades of pop art and other recitations, the label
4
Notes
1. http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/06/art/chuck-close-with-
phong-bui
2. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. James
Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1961), p. 19.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce
Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House,
1967), pp. 273 4.
4. Quoted in Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1950), p. 318.
5. Quoted in Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York:
Random House, 1970), p. xv.
6. Gilles Deleuze, Difference & Repetition, trans. Paul Patton
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 76.
7. Quoted in Deleuze, p. 70.
5
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