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| Spies
for voyeurs and Contributors of this magazine 1998 |
| The Undercover Girl: A Norwegian website maintains that artists on the
Internet turn into secret agents for their consumers.
Revolutionaries are usually only willing to change the world to the extent that they may keep their opinions intact. This is why American Communitarians even including Al Gore would rather see the global net of computers as a permanent common parliament, restricted to dealing with the proposals of its completely free and equal members. The avant garde of Art are usually a little less naïve, but they, too, would prefer to believe that technology finally has made it possible to satisfy the aesthetic needs of everything modern. Hardly any artistic credo is not represented on the Internet. Neo-realists, conceptualists, pop artists, minimalists, and post modern eclecticists have all suddenly become web artists, although doing the same as always, for better or for worse. The connection of many million computers is absolutely a revolution, but only a technical one. Whether Art stands to profit, remains to be seen. The new technology seems to be opening new avenues of working, but the means of production it offers are still pathetic. Nevertheless, computer networks have become so deeply ingrained in business life that they are changing private consumption. Therefor, the term is unavoidably available. To this, artists may only react, but they are unable to define this still nebulous term. Only through commercial use will the revolutionary technology be more precisely formulated. In Norway, on the fringes of the international scene, a group of artists reflect this process in a laid-back and even entertaining way. The result is the project The Undercover Girl, consisting of a website (www.powertech.no/tug), the plan for a printed magazine and – as the concept’s core – a mail address for works of art. The idea of collective art is of course anything but new. The undercover Girl, or TUG for short, is, however, no new variety of the politically motivated idea of a new People’s Art, as it is maintained on several other webservers. The most influential of these is cartoon artist Ed Stasny’s "SITO", which has grown over time into an insurmountable chaos of wildly excited testimonial artists, for whom nothing is too kitschy. TUG is something very different. The name itself forbids any democratic illusion. The Undercover Girl is a plot of agents serving a fictitious, nameless, evidently omnipotent government. This organisation brings no art from below. Instead, its members spy behind every curtain, its presumed arsenal to be read from a list connecting to military high-tech suppliers. Naturally, this is an ironic take-off of the Internet’s historic roots, coupled with motives of science-fiction, but within this mask lurks a surprisingly plausible idea. – Art will become only what people on the Net see, is the supposition. But that also means everything there is to see on the Net is only what people want to be seen. Thus The Undercover Girl spins its chain of thoughts on to its own art theory. The more you make visible, the better. Therefore, Art must become espionage on behalf of anonymous, but strictly individual consumers. At the home computer sit voyeurs, tolerating no secrets, from anybody. No coincidence, then, that the webcam in the bedroom of exhibitionist Jennifer Ringley has one of the greatest hit rates on the Net. Under the menu "Anonymous Agents" on the TUG website, the initial results of the theory can be inspected. The secret service is still accepting new members. Their lives will be fundamentally altered, the enlistment form promises. New realisations "beyond statistics" and a whole new way of viewing oneself is the promised reward. Every night, TUG’s high council will critically evaluate the agents’ reports. 25 of these reports have so far been found worthy of online presentation. The small exhibition is a preview of a new, online art marketplace. The criteria for formal quality as well as personal prestige have become irrelevant. The face of the agent must never be revealed. Everything else, a scene at the neighbouring table, a dream, a sentence or a chain of thoughts are all subject to espionage, the Central admonishes, and thus have the only by codename identified agents gone enthusiastically to work. "Ms Postmodernism" has, in a compete tract, published her own "Herstory". "The infectious agent" reports with detailed graphics from the world of immune research, "Isaethe" communicates his life and a poem, "Pieker Doer" reveals that "thinner is better" and writes in red, pulsating writing that "I like my body", "Lola" finds the picture of her pubic hairs on her clothes brush and swirling cut-outs of her skin on pictures of building sites, "A.V.G.S." has photographed a wrecked auto in a garage, "Arne" himself in the harbour, along with a black limousine – naturally, his eyes have been blacked out. The picture is miserable, but Arne, too, is a good agent, as good as the others, who pictureless toil with their existential texts, weighted down with meaning. Hardly any of this could hold its own in an exhibition, whether in the analogue or digital world. Here, it is rather reformulated than evaluated. These contributions are only works of art because they appear as assignments of a global secret service. As it reveals them, it reveals its own nature: The universal voyeur, able with the help of the Internet to transcend every border, also those governing intimacy and morality. Quite properly, TUG’s symbol on its website is the cross-hairs of a telescopic sight. For the consumers on the Internet, reality is only fragments, inspected through this aggressive focus. Art too, when it ventures out onto the Net, must submit to this by no means communicative, even radically democratic point of view. Niklaus Hablützel. Niklaus@taz.de(Editor’s note: Niklaus Hablützel is the responsible editor for the Internet pages of TAZ – Die Tageszeitung – in Berlin.) |
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| Contributors
to the one and only
Einar I. Andersen Skipper/harmonikal grunnforsker/sailor/Harmonical Fundamental Researcher, NorwayØyvind Arntsen - Journalist, NorwayAnna Brag «ARNE» - Billedkunstner/visual artist, SwedenMary-Ann Breeze «M[E]Z POSTMODEMISM» - Billedkunstner/skribent/visual artist/writer, AustraliaBergljot Børresen - Dr. med. vet., NorwayJulie Clarke «BODYZONE» - Billedkunstner/forfatter/visual artist/writer, AustraliaArnfinn Eide «ARIEL FRAME» - Tekstforfatter/copywriter, NorwayArild Eriksen - Kunsthistoriker/arthistorian, NorwayDagfinn Fjelddalen - Journalist, NorwaySofi Gamache «YZAÈTHE» - Skribent/writer, CanadaIngwill M. Gjelsvik «ChiefTUG» - Billedkunstner/visual artist, NorwayStefanie Jenssen - Mediaforsker/mediascientist, Norway/Luxembourg Maria-Therese Hoppe - Fremtidsforsker/Research executive, Denmark Åge Langhelle «LOLA» - Billedkunstner/skribent/visual artist/writer, Norway/ Germany Pia Lindmann - Billedkunstner/visual artist, Finland/USA Kjersti Myrehagen «STUPID WOMAN» - Billedkunstner/visual artist, Norway Jonas Qvale «Dr.X» «Dr.Y» - Billedkunstner/visual artist, Norway Heidi Rognskog - Billedkunstner/visual artist, Norway Melinda Racham «INFECTOUS AGENT» - Billedkunstner/webdesigner/visual artist, Australia Ingrid Rommetveit - Amanuensis i filmvitenskap/skribent/writer/Lecturer in film studies, Norway Magne Rudjord - Billedkunstner/visual artist, Norway Tiril Schrøder - Billedkunstner/skribent/visual artist/writer, Norway /Denmark Mark Soden «SCOW» - Musiker/musician, USA Rose Stasuk «ROSEFISH» - Billedkunstner/skribent/visual artist/writer, USA Anne Lise Stenseth - Billedkunstner/visual artist, Norway Mona Rudberg - Billedkunstner/visual artist, Norway Camilla Thelle - Hydroncolonterapeut/sykepleier/hydroncolontherapist/nurse, Norway Inger Marie Thorkildsen - Billedkunstner/visual artist, Norway Ted Warnell «NARI» - Billedkunstner/poet/visual artist , USA
Tranlators: Dagfinn Fjelddalen, Palmyre Pierroux, Per Qvale, Fransesca M. Nichols, Jonas Qvale, Thomas McQuillan.
ChiefTUG wishes to thank all the TUG agents and partecipants for their generous contributions. TUG, TUG
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