nonsite

As artists we deal with dual stresses of privacy and publicity constantly. My impulse is towards privacy. I’m a private person, but as an artist I need the attention that publicity affords in order to get my research seen and my artwork exhibited. This tension has always been there.

As I read about and come to understand how sophisticated search engines have become in mining data with their search algorithms and as I recognize increasingly how exclusively we rely on these search engines to find out about whatever we’re interested in, I understand how impossible privacy has become.

In 1995 the architectural historian Beatriz Colomina wrote Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media and reflected on the difference between Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier and their attitudes towards the archive, and their impulse for destruction and preservation. As artists, I think we’re taught from early on to respect this impulse to save what we do, to preserve and to self-archive our work- with the subtext of preserving what we do until our genius is recognized!

We create projects as places for the reader to find themselves; place to help make sense of the world. Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about a project- a website that is complex enough to function like a novel. It would need enough breadth, depth and scope for anyone who wants to take the time to read it, to be able to find enough room to relax in. It would need to grow, develop and resonate with a reader. I’m wondering if this can that happen if it is written in the first person without different characters and without dialogue. It would be a  monologue, but is it possible to do this and not get hung up on a cult of personality?