Artistic Control 2

I hope Tom Beckett doesn't mind bringing his comment on yesterday's post forward into this post. (The advantage a listserv has over a blog is that all comments appear on the same level, without heirarchy; a blog, hierarchical in design/structure, makes them available but only beneath the surface.) Anyway, Tom's comment:

I thought this a very interesting post. I wonder though about the As/Is group blog as an example of surrendering control. It's one of my favorite blogs but, by and large, people are soloing with minimal interaction. During my several weeks of time there I tried to make every post an incitement of some kind and had fun doing it. My sense is that there are a lot of interesting individuals at As/Is but not so much of a group, per se, yet.

What I was thinking about control in terms of As/Is is that each blogger (I typed blooger. How's that for a sticky slip?) has no control over what follows each post, has no control over the context in which each post is read, or what another blogger can do to the material posted (hopefully do something, follow up the riff with one of your own in the same key or improvising the same theme As/ it /Is a collaboration in process). I suppose this is the same "surrender" when one's work is published in a magazine, or one's posts to a listserv, yet there's something about As/Is that seems like such sweet surrender. That it's unmoderated (I would argue everyone who posts to it is a kind of mediator, willingly or willy-nilly) is both its bane and boon.

Comments

[harry k stammer]

ya, it's not about collaboration... although i do sometimes see reactions/riffs off the previous material. i thought about posting a message calling for a weekly collaboration/reaction on a particular day... and then realized, who has the time. i look at as/is (at least in this moment) as shit dropping in the toilet, one little turd, then one big one, then another, some related to the previous one (meal by meal), some just released for the pleasure of it. the metaphor is not meant to reference the content, please. ah, the pleasure of it (ofit), hks