News log 2002
2002-10-25 / A review of Psrf 49 (including an incidental comment about the Tape-beatles’ 1999 CD, Good Times) has appeared in the print publication 10th Muse Magazine no. 12. Quoted in toto it follows:
Using anti-art techniques to strip away any feeling of domesticity about cultural products, Static Output makes de-commodified products. If that sounds like a sales pitch, consider the content of issue 49. The language of psrf 49 (which might also be issue 10) is semi-intuitively based on English. Some words you can read once you get into it, for some you need to go to the ÆLFABET or the Key. "Δ er frst prodject was rūmrd tū hæv bēn a læņguidj rēform."
As I type I'm listening to the Tape-Beatles CD, Good Times (Synthety no.5). The Tape-beatles are Lloyd Dunn, John Heck and Ralph Johnson. By way of a recommendation, Rolling Stone has dismissed Good Times as “…a compendium of misguided social and economic disaffections … possibly the most ideologically wrong-minded American-made recording of the past year.” The CD is emphatically anti-work. My only criticism is that it is hard work listening to it, which rather defeats the purpose. You can visit without any obligation to buy at http://pwp.detritus.net/ or you can try a sample at http://pwp.detritus.net/shop/. Email the rep who will be happy to visit you at home at psrf@detritus.net. This art may help you to stop working.
Review by Andy Jordan. 10th Muse Magazine is “…is a nonist publication, being spherical in form and made of paper, ink and cardboard.” Their street address is: 33 Hartington Road, Southampton, SO14 OEW, UK.
2002-10-16 / The Verbal Image has been excerpted and linked, along with a one of Tom Hibbard’s graphics, at Quadrum, an avant-garde gallery site based in Lisbon.
… visit <http://www.galeriaquadrum.com/> scroll down.
2002-09-20 / PhotoStatic on Nettime. Two contributors to this project have posted an article that appeared in our last upload (Retrofuturism 13) to the Nettime list, with the following introduction. In it Florian Cramer and Matthew Fuller recognize the contributions made by William Bowles, author of the article ‘The Macintosh Computer: Archetypal Capitalist Machine?’, and this publication, which was among the first to bring this text to light. They write:
The following text, written in 1987 and published by the small press magazine ‘PhotoStatic/Retrofuturism’ in 1990, appears to be the first cultural critique of computer software. It has been republished lately by former PS/RF editor and Tape-beatle Lloyd Dunn within an electronic reprint of Retrofuturism No. 13. (The reprint is part of the PS/RF ‘retrograde archive’, Lloyd’s ongoing effort to reconstruct all PS/RF back issues as well-crafted, scrupulously re-typeset PDF files.)
For pre-digital net cultures in the late 1980s and early 1990s, PhotoStatic/Retrofuturism had a function similar to that of ‘Nettime’ for digital net cultures since the mid-1990s. Drawing on situationism and copy art, its major focus was anti-copyright cultural activism and criticism in various media, including Plunderphonics, Mail Art, and the Plagiarism/Art Strike campaigns. Among PS/RF’s contributors were several people who later became involved in Net.art and digital net cultures (including ourselves).
While the following text may be somewhat bothersome in retrospect with its heavy Marxist jargon and commonplaces, we find its core approach and insights still useful. It also happened to be an early source of I/O/D’s historical trigger for a cultural critique of computer software.
— Florian Cramer/Matthew Fuller
2002-08-30 / An American Avant-Garde: Second Wave was an exhibition of poetry and printed works hosted by the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at the Ohio State University Libraries. It is primarily of interest here because it provides pictures of many people who contributed to PhotoStatic’s pages, and who are generally very active in the underground and concrete poetry scenes in recent decades.
The artists and poets depicted include: John M. Bennett, Bob Grumman, Miekal And, Luigi-Bob Drake, Joel Lipman, Fagagaga, (contributors all) among many, many others (who weren’t).
Thanks to Tom Hibbard for the link.
<http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/rarweb/avant/>
2002-07-31 / PhotoStatic on Typographica. This blog, specializing in all things typographical, has some nice things to say about PhotoStatic in their current post.
Photostatic Notes from the Underground
While stumbling around the Internet looking for information on Xerography, I stumbled upon Photostatic, a magazine that focused on photocopy as a creative medium. The magazine hasn't been published since 1998 (it was founded in 1983 and went through several name changes), but the editor, Lloyd Dunn, has been archiving all the issues -- albeit sporadically -- in PDF form.
The issues that are posted, however, are fascinating enough to merit a quick look. At times it's a bit too esoteric for some tastes (okay, mine), but in its last issue Dunn created a reformed spelling of English that's compelling alphabetology.
What I am curious about, though, is the blackout of issues from 1990-1993 --- Photostatic ceased publication during those years in honor of the Art Strike. In its place, an anonymous publication called Yawn was created to devote coverage to the strike. So my question -- since I'm a little too young to remember anything socially about 1990-1993 -- I'm curious whether anyone knows anything about the Art Strike-slash-Photostatic and how they were regarded in the art-world-at-large. Thanks.
Posted by Jenny Pfafflin | July 31, 2002
<http://typographica.org/000252.php>
2002-06-02 / Copyleft in Art and Copyright in Pop Culture is a site that includes references to PhotoStatic, The Tape-beatles, and other related projects. (The site is in German.)
<http://www.hgb-leipzig.de/~francis/txt/copyright/>
2002-04-03 / Several people (Steev Hise, Ralph Johnson) have written to inform us of a San Francisco exhibition at New Langton Arts calling itself ‘Retrofuturist’.
Retrofuturist creates a tomorrowland of videos, paintings, and sculptures through which artists recycle and reinvent twentieth century notions of the future. From Russell Nachman's recreations of Philip K. Dick and Jack Vance book covers to Leona Christie's dreamy new animation of buxom female workers and eroticized machinery, the artists pastiche different tropes from sci-fi imagings throughout the last century. Yorgo Alexopoulos' videos submerge the viewer in a 2001-esque world of blinking numbers, glowing grids, and twinkling star clusters. William Swanson and Adam Ross create graphic utopias and wastelands of streamlined forms and tentacled towers. The fantasies embedded within Luisa Kazanas' fetus-like figure and David Huffman's part-amine, part-minstrel Trauma Smiles figurines illustrate the social malaise of the artists' contemporary day and couple them with apprehensions and expectations for the future. Retrofuturist brings together seven artists who re-envision the future by melding science fiction and artistic styles of the past with the social concerns of today. ...
... it’s at < http://www.newlangtonarts.org/ ) click ‘Gallery’
Our ideas are on everyone’s lips. At Logophilia’s ‘The Word Spy’ we get credit for having coined the term — as if it really mattered:
This word was almost certainly coined by a group calling themselves the "Tape-beatles," who began a "Hypermedia Magazine" called "Retrofuturism" in 1987.
... read entry at <http://www.logophilia.com/WordSpy/retrofuturism.asp>
2002-03-19 / Tom Hibbard, a frequent PhotoStatic contributor, has written a review of the current work of Luc Fierens (also a Ps contributor) for the website Milk Magazine. It begins thus:
The 1980s deified the manual typewriter. Early versions of the Xerox copy machine proved a convenient black-and-white ‘instant print’ tool for projecting the unfocused speed vision of the elapsed lead-em image. These two factors augmented the onset of two art movements — Mail Art and Intense Disbody-Zine. The altered result resembled photographic reproductions of pornography — processes of innovation promising to solidify stark contrasts that searched the mythos of irreducible building blocks of minimalist Structurism. The massive postal network classified nostalgic, shadowy crannies for lost souls of the American Dream. Coincidentally, a lightning florescent blast momentarily freed from justification in the nocturnal glass-covered chamber to show relativity to be absolute form. ...
... more at <http://www.milkmag.org/lucfierens.htm>
2002-03-08 / Alessandro Ludovico writes to inform that this project has been reviewed for the Italian site Neural Online. Today and for the next few days (until it gets pushed off by newer content), the article is featured their home page, as well. In any event, the permanent link to their notice is at the URL below. The text is in Italian. A ‘gist’ translation (courtesy SDL International) follows.
PhotoStatic Retrograde Archive. It is available for the download another number of the historical one fanzine of photocopy art (xerox art), PhotoStatic Retrograde, an operation making appear the entire collection of this magazine of avant-garde that was published from 1983 until today, changing the name of the masthead to PhotoStatic Magazine, Retrofuturism and Psrf. The file they are available in developed pdf and the numbers are appearing in reverse chronological order (from the most recent one to the most ancient one).
<http://www.neural.it/nnews/photostaticretrogradearchiv.htm>
2002-01-20 / The initial announcement of the Photostatic Magazine Retrograde Archive, as it appeared on the mailing lists Nettime, Spectre, and others, can be read at the URL below.
<http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0201/msg00401.html>
