NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Contribute to the Art Wikimarathon !

via MTAA, 1/22/08:

posted at 16:40 GMT by T.Whid in /news/twhid

The Art Wikimarathon sounds like a good idea:

There's a lack of art/artist info on Wikipedia, and we're often too busy to find the time to contribute. So, we're setting aside one day where a crew of people collectively drop serious knowledge into wikipedia about art.

Not sure I'll be able to make it, but if someone wants to beef up the MTAA entry perhaps we can wash your back too :-)

(Is quid pro quo against Wikipedia policies?)

Found Bird, Susan Silas

Artist Susan Silas has a piece up on the literary journal, Podium; via email:

Czech War of the Worlds: Traditional Tomfoolery

Just kidding: An art collective hacked into a weather report on Czech TV to broadcast this footage of a fake atomic explosion.

via NYTimes:

Abroad
That Mushroom Cloud? They're Just Svejking Around
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: January 24, 2008

PRAGUE — One Sunday, several months ago, early risers gazing at Czech Television's CT2 channel saw picturesque panoramas of the Czech countryside, broadcast to the wordless accompaniment of elevator music. It was the usual narcoleptic morning weather show.

   

A link to the video of the prank on YouTube.com

   

Michal Novotny for The New York Times

This "atomic explosion" seen on Czech television was a prank by the art collective Ztohoven. Above, three Ztohovenites.

Then came the nuclear blast.

Across the Krkonose Mountains, or so it appeared, a white flash was followed by the spectacle of a rising mushroom cloud. A Web address at the bottom of the screen said Ztohoven.com.

Ztohoven, to no one's great surprise, turned out to be a collective of young artists and friends who had previously tinkered with a giant neon sculpture of a heart high atop Prague Castle, and managed (during a single night, no less) to insert announcements for an art opening inside all 750 lighted advertising boxes in the city's subway system.

Now half a dozen members of the group face up to three years in jail or a fine or both, charged with scaremongering and attempted scaremongering. The trial is set for March. Some Czechs expressed outrage over Ztohoven's action, naturally, but in general it drew a mild, tolerant, even amused public response, in contrast to how terrorism-related pranks, or what might seem like them, have been widely greeted elsewhere. The incident instead has highlighted an old Czech tradition of tomfoolery that is a particular matter of national cultural pride.

Not long ago a film that became a local hit, "Czech Dream," documented a boondoggle by two young Czech filmmakers, who enlisted advertisers and publicists to devise a marketing scheme for a nonexistent supermarket. The movie’s goal, like Ztohoven's, was to wag the dog: lampoon media manipulation and public gullibility. In the trailer hundreds of shoppers swarm a weedy field, rushing toward what they believe to be the store, which turns out to be a painted backdrop. The mushroom cloud, in a sense, upped the ante on the supermarket.

To hack into the CT2 broadcast, Ztohoven simply switched cables on an unmanned, remote camera at a limestone quarry in the mountains, which the artists had scouted three years earlier. Then they piped in their video. The name Ztohoven makes a pun in Czech that means both "out of it" and an obscenity. Rightly, the group presumed this would tip off viewers that the explosion was fake, in case they hadn't already guessed it from the cheesy special effects.

Contrary to what the British press reported, no "War of the Worlds" panic ensued. So far as anyone can tell, not a single sleepy-eyed Czech viewer was frightened by the stunt, their lack of fear, the state attorney said, not being the explanation for the curious charge of "attempted" scaremongering. (The charge is a Czech legal fine point.)

As for exactly who the group's members are, that remains something of a mystery, which Ztohoven theatrically guards. Even the state prosecutor said over the phone the other day it was private information until the trial. Nevertheless three members of the group -- two amiable ringleaders and a quiet, sweet-faced 26-year-old who looked as if he were 12 -- agreed to meet at an empty cafe over coffee and Coke. They declined to give their names.

But they brought a film crew.

Turns out, Ztohoven includes no women. "That’s the problem of radicalism," sighed the threesome's 33-year-old elder statesman, who called himself Roman Tyc. (The pun works in English.) "To get together for pranks is also more difficult now that we're getting into our 30s."

His associate, in a pastel crewneck sweater, who gave his name as Zdenek Dostal, and whom the highly voluble Roman had a tendency to talk over, said the action on Czech Television, which Ztohoven titled "Media Reality," was “not meant to be threatening but to land softly on the public consciousness so that people won’t let themselves be brainwashed."

The artists just wanted to startle viewers "from their lethargy," piped in the quietest member of the trio, Mira Slava (punningly, "peace and fame"). All three Ztohovenites recoiled at a description of an art project some years back entailing fake bombs left in a New York subway station, which briefly shut part of the city down.

Nothing really happened at all here, initially, anyway. Ladislav Sticha, the tall spokesman for Czech Television, told me that the show's audience was "miniature" — presumably he meant small in number. Only a few people, among them perplexed hikers checking the weather before setting out for a Sunday stroll, called or sent e-mail messages to inquire.

But then Czech Television broadcast Ztohoven's handiwork hour after hour on its numerous news programs, and the video soon landed on YouTube. By the next day all Europe knew about it.

"It's not that we would not have supported this kind of art, if they had come to us," Mr. Sticha added, somewhat abashed that, because Czech Television filed a complaint for breach of property, the affair ended up in court.

Hardly anyone here seems to want Ztohoven to receive more than a legal slap on the wrist, if that. Neither have fellow artists protested the trial in the streets, nor made a freedom of speech issue out of it. A literary weekly even mildly took Ztohoven to task for being a little too hungry for media attention.

On the other hand, the National Gallery in Prague last month awarded the group a prize. Milan Knizak, the National Gallery's white-haired, pony-tailed director, himself an artist and one-time Czech Actionist, explained that the award was not a statement about the court case but given for the "directness" of "Media Reality." [read on...]

Best-selling Author Pirates Own Books

via TorrentFreak; originally via P2P-Blog

Alchemist Author Pirates His Own Books
Written by Smaran on January 24, 2008

Paulo Coelho, the best-selling author of "The Alchemist", is using BitTorrent and other filesharing networks as a way to promote his books. His publishers weren't too keen on giving away free copies of his books, so he's taken matters into his own hands.

Coelho's view is that letting people swap digital copies of his books for free increases sales. In a keynote speech (embedded below) at the Digital, Life, Design conference in Munich he talked about how uploading the Russian translation of "The Alchemist" made his sales in Russia go from around 1,000 per year to 100,000, then a million and more. He said:

In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And everyone was puzzled. We came from zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the next year we were over 100,000. […]

I thought that this is fantastic. You give to the reader the possibility of reading your books and choosing whether to buy it or not. […]

So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editions… And I created a site called The Pirate Coelho.

He's convinced — and rightly so — that letting people download free copies of his books helps sales. For him the problem is getting around copyright laws that require him to get the permission of his translators if he wants to share copies of his books in other languages.

So is Coelho just seeding torrents of his books? That's just the beginning. He took it one step further and, as quoted above, set up a Wordpress blog, Pirate Coelho, where he posts links to free copies of his books on filesharing networks, FTP sites, and so on. He says it had a direct impact on sales:

Believe it or not, the sales of the book increased a lot thanks to the Pirate Coelho site…

In his speech he talks about how the Internet is changing language and books, and how online "piracy" and BitTorrent have helped him not only be more widely read, but also sell more books! It's a must watch.

[watch his complete keynote speech here.]

Chelsea Art Museum Faces Foreclosure

via Artinfo, 1/22/08 :

  NEW YORK—The Chelsea Art Museum is facing foreclosure after a failed attempt to sell its "air rights" (rights to use and develop the empty space above the property), the New York Post reports. In 2006, museum founder Dorothea Keeser made a deal with developer Alf Naman to sell Naman 40,000 square feet of air rights for $8.5 million. Keeser planned to use the proceeds to pay off a $5.8 million mortgage due for the museum and minor renovations. As part of the deal, the museum was to keep 5,000 square feet of air rights, which it planned to use to create a roof garden, cafe, and apartments for an artist-in-residence program. A closing was scheduled for April 30, 2006, but Naman, who paid an $800,000 deposit, backed out of the deal. Since then, the museum and Naman have been locked in a court battle that includes a $20 million lawsuit from Naman claiming Keeser never came to the closing. In the meantime, Keeser said that she has not been able to repay the mortgage, the loan is in default, and she has paid $2.4 million extra in added interest, fees, and expenses. The bank launched a foreclosure proceeding in October. Lawyers were in court last week trying to sort out the mess."We are in an extended crisis," Keeser told the Post.