Sat Feb 13, 2010
The Art of Storàge
by Mark Bloch
Reprinted from
Panmag 53 International Magazine
ISSN 0738 4777
PO Box 1500
NYC 10009
USA
panman <a> panmodern.com
July 12, 2006
Some thoughts on the Art of Storàge
Storàge
is a new art form for our times in which artists will prevent at all
costs, their work from seeing the light of day. Artists must conceal
what they do, make sure no one finds out that they are brilliant. If an
artist must show someone something they have created, they should show
another artist so as not to upset the art markets. Other artists do not
really count as human beings so there really is no harm in telling them.
That is how art continues to thrive. Artists are sequestered from the
rest of humanity. But one should proceed with caution because
occasionally artists know actual people and the news of what kind of
work the artists are producing must not spread to civilians.
Storàge
is an art form like many others: collàge, assemblàge, frottàge. The
accent is on the second syllable. The emphasis is on the storing of
important information and objects--preferably one of a kind objects,
although the storing of multiples is also encouraged--until a great deal
of time has passed and the ideas and images contained therein, hidden
from public view, have been discovered and explored by other, less
talented individuals. This is bound to happen while the work is rotting
under lock and key, no matter how advanced the work. Even the most
vanguard artist will be unable to stave off the advancing future which
will soon provide the unique conditions necessary for the artist’s work
to be removed from Storàge without consequence.
Once a work of
art has been rendered culturally feckless, Storàge is no longer
necessary. The work can now be trotted out into the marketplace where it
will no doubt have to endure other types of packaging, wrapping and
covering which are part of the Storàge process when enacted by a
Storàgist but in these new contexts the accent in Storàge is removed and
it becomes simply storage in which excessive packaging and hygienic
germ free protection is always considered good for business. Of course
any work of art or other consumer item, no matter how processed and
“valuable,” always remains in danger of being placed on dusty shelves in
the forgotten back rooms of galleries or museums by art professionals.
This is where the nuances of Storàge and storage are revealed--for it is
these very art professionals who are uniquely qualified to determine
whether or not an artist’s work is any good. During the interim period
when the artists are left trying to make this crucial decision for
themselves, their work must be safely hidden from view while these art
professionals are courted at the artist’s expense without causing too
much of a fuss, for it is the artist’s passion that must also remain in
the limbo of Storàge, not just their output.
Sometimes fear of
the art professionals will cause an insecure artist, one prone to
alarmism and in constant dread of being accused of being labeled an
exhibitionist, to send works into hiding early, thus risking beginning
their career as a Storàge Artist prematurely. But there is nothing to be
alarmed about here. Fears about these types of fear are only a waste of
time. Any uncertainty at all must always be acted on immediately. To
err on the side of invisibility is never a mistake. If an artist has any
doubts at all about the worthiness of what has been created, they
should simply place the work in a secure area, free from intellectually
curious intruders where no one can see it. In fact experience has shown
that no work is too ripe to entertain misgivings about its readiness for
public consumption. Any suspicions at all should be indulged
whole-heartedly and enthusiastically by the Storàge Artist.
Boxes within Boxes
The
proper answer to any question about the techniques of Storàge is always
containment. Place the object in a container and place that container
inside another container whenever possible. Eventually you will want to
put the container on a shelf or drawer, which is another container, or
into a box that contains other boxes. Those containers could eventually
end up in a commercial Storàge unit which is the ultimate in
containment. It resembles a prison in its completeness of the containing
process. Commercial Storàge also has the additional attraction of
costing money which is far superior to a closet, attic, garage or even a
friend’s basement; the latter being ideal for creating guilt and
confusion, essential tools in the Containment Arts. But of all the
Storàge Artist’s allies, none are ever as effective as the outlaying of
cold hard cash.
Remember: money is the reason for Storàge in the
first place. Without money, there would be no way for the unimaginative
civilians of the marketplace to determine whether artwork has value.
Luckily we live in a society where the surefire way to determine the
effectiveness of any creative act is try and sell it. If it can’t be
sold, it is probably time to find some place to store it and simply wait
until the coast is clear. When feelings of ambivalence arise, the power
of waiting cannot be underestimated. After all, there is always a rainy
day just around the corner when all unfinished tasks will magically
disappear from one’s To Do list.
The To Do list
The “to
do” list is an easy-to-use device that civilians can utilize to create
the anxieties previously reserved for Storàge Artists. In fact, the to
do list is a perfect substitute for what was previously known as The
American Dream. By reducing entire lives to lists of unfinished tasks,
process has been elevated to its proper place--superior to finished
product. Consumer items can continue to exist in a post-Storàge world
but only as props to accommodate the endless illusion known as “crossing
things off the list.”
Multi-tasking
Multi-tasking is the
very important oft-heard battle cry of today’s moms, dads, movers,
shakers, poseurs and fakers. It has been elevated to the highest good.
Everywhere and anywhere, anxious overachievers can be heard speaking
gleefully of the fast pace of contemporary life. In a world without
quality, doing as many things as possible, badly, is of the utmost
importance. If a person is ever in doubt about whether or not they are
operating at maximum capacity, picking up a cell phone and reporting
ones exact location to another multi-tasker can be a very effective way
to create an additional mutual illusion of accomplishment. The
maintenance of such distractions is the key to busyness and busyness is
the key to business. Business is the goal of all art. If art is
incapable of generating money or putting asses in seats, it should be
locked up and hidden away until further notice.
Sortàge
Sortàge
is something one can do when they are at the end of their rope because
everything they own is in Storàge. One goes to the Storàge unit and
sorts through the things found there. These notes are an example of
Sortàge in action.
July 13, 2006
Precursors to the Art of Storàge
If
you are reading this it may be because I couldn’t bear to keep the
secrets of Storàge under my hat any longer. So I am letting this
information leak out. Leaks are one of the few ways out of the otherwise
ironclad security system that is Storàge. The current masters of the
leak are the “evil-doers” in the Bush-Cheney Administration. They have
constructed elaborate hierarchies to reveal important furtive
information as it suits them only to feign outrage when they pretend to
discover that leaking occurs. Artists interested in disingenuous career
jockeying should take a few hints from their fine example. These bozos
are not technically Storàge Artists but rather part of another movement
known as “Bullshit Artists.”
This brings us to the history of Storàge.
There
have been many precursors to Storàge but the most notable is Marcel
Duchamp who created With Hidden Noise in 1916. Like the object inside
this work, Duchamp himself used to be a secret. When Walter Hopps gave
him his first retrospective in Pasadena in the 1960s, Duchamp was
virtually unknown except for a small cadre of LA hipnoscenti. Duchamp
famously and accurately predicted that the “artist of the future” would
go “underground.” As you may have suspected, I was once the artist of
the future. Duchamp also provided himself as a self-fulfilling artist of
the future when he told the world he had given up art and then
privately worked on a highly contained secret project for the next two
decades.
Another who did a variation on that
working-secretly-only-to-revealed-upon-death theme and also one of
Storàge’s important forerunners was Ray Johnson who stuffed his art into
envelopes and saved the envelopes he received from others in cardboard
boxes stacked neatly in his mysterious home. Few were allowed to enter.
Johnson also was known to drop off his full cardboard boxes on the front
steps of museums and other locales when the timing was right. Johnson
has still not completely emerged from hiding and probably never will.
Finally,
the most obvious choices as a precursor to Storàge are Christo and his
partner Jean Claude. According to Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Early Works
1958-1969 by David Bourdon (2001, Taschen: Koln, New York, pgs. 8,
40-43) In 1958, Christo “bought used oil barrels...” and “cleaned and
wrapped them... ” “He stored them in a cellar that been put at his
disposal by Jeanne Claude’s parents. Over the months the cellar
accumulated stacks of... barrels... boxes... bottles... that Christo
called Inventory. Later he moved everything to a garage... that he
rented for storage and working space. When he was unable to pay rent for
the garage, he was forced to abandon the work that was stored there and
much of it was subsequently destroyed.”
And later in that same book, this seems relevant:
“Metal
cans were patented in 1810, and folding cartons were invented in 1879.
The packaging we take for granted today scarcely existed before 1900.”
“It
was not until this century that efficient storing and handling and
informative labeling became important attributes of packaging. The three
basic services that packaging performs for the consumer—pre-unitizing,
protection and communication—have attained such a level of
sophistication that the wrapping, as we are so frequently reminded, is
what makes us buy the contents.”
February 6, 2002
Ambivalent Secretism
Earlier thoughts on the Art of Storàge
The
principal of Ambivalent Secretism is a mode of working similar to
Dali’s Paranoiac-Critical method. It is a one-man, dual-hinged
triangulation: First, it is an ambivalent dichotomy between purposeful
and accidental secretism. Is my work unknown on purpose so that I could
“go underground,” as Marcel Duchamp suggested the “artist of the future”
should do, or did I create an air of secrecy around my work due to my
own neurotic phobias? Secondly, any neurotic phobia would have to be an
ambivalent dichotomy between purposeful secretism due to inside forces
reacting to outside ones, that is to say, withholding when faced with
victimization (by what?) vs. self-generated victimization (i.e.
volunteerism- due to what?) In other words, secretism as withholding,
without being faced with obstacles. Thirdly, it is an ambivalent
dichotomy between a closed system that works and an open system that
requires justification (such as this text). The closed system is a
self-contained information loop and exists in an eternal, timeless
Utopian state until it is “leaked” to the outside world, at which point
it enters into the “art coefficient” stage that Duchamp described. At
that point there is no determining what will happen to the work.
However, due to the limited life span of a human being, (Tao Te Ching:
Without a body, how could there be misfortune?) this stage is
inevitable. The Utopian stage is, thus, always only temporary (and thus
not Utopian at all).
A subset of Ambivalent Secretism is the art
of storáge (as opposed to collàge, decollàge, frottàge, and assemblàge).
It is the necessary offshoot of Ambivalent Secretism and precedes the
entry into the art coefficient phase. Information theory is useful in
understanding both the art of storáge and ambivalent secretism. Concepts
like Dispersal of Innovation (reconceived by me as Panmodernism, the
sine wave theory of life, for lack of a better term) and the study of
gift economies (my own concept of thax as the name of any activities and
their by-products that are not done for money) can be useful in
charting the necessary course of events inherent in any flawed,
time-based system of Secretism. So can pop-psychological constructs such
as the ambivalent dichotomy between victims and volunteers.
Furthermore,
art historical concepts such as Self-Historification by G.A. Cavellini
(1914-2014) come into play as do two important and largely unappreciated
death works: Duchamp’s leaving of Étant Donnés as a final checkmate he
delivered to the Art World via William Copley and the Cassandra
Foundation; and Ray Johnson’s suicide performance (named by me a
Rayocide) that one-upped Duchamp by creating a work that not only fused
art and life but also art and life and death. (By creating my own
Museums, I commit acts of self-historification. By creating this text, I
create a context for my death, which, God-willing, unlike Johnson, will
not be at my own hand.) When this text is read, my work moves from one
state of Eternity to another. It is the addition of the concept of
ambivalence that returns, in my case, the secrecy to its proper state of
unflawed perfection and therefore beauty. By identifying but not
choosing the causes for the secrecy up to and including the moment of
revelation to the world outside the closed system, a Duchampian hinge
creates a mythical context in which all my activities retain a sense of
mystery that can never be conclusively uncovered. This should be
sufficient to earn me a place in Art History and position my work in
immortality. If not, the system remains closed and therefore also
unflawed and eternal.
November 25, 2003
Announcing 2004- The Year of Decompression
After
decades of hoarding, being too small, too large, too dull and too
invisible and after taking the advice of Duchamp and going/being
underground, both intentionally and unintentionally, and after
boycotting both the World-Wide Decentralized Networker Congress Year
1992 and the Incongruous Meetings Year 1998 because I felt they were
redundant, irrelevant, unnecessary and redundant, and most reverently,
in honor of 2004 the Year of Obscure Actions, I declare that I, Mark
Bloch, also known as Panman, the Post Art Network, Panscan and other
mismonikers, will enthusiastically perform one major act of creative
decompression during every month of 2004 to repay my gratitude to all
the people who have been so kind to me all over the planet. Because
surprising and generous acts of kindness have come to me from all over
the world, I will attempt to humbly spread it back, reaching out as far
as I can, from as deep within my soul as I am able to muster. I will do
so abundantly and lovingly, to be of service to anyone and everyone I
can, but in particular for those wonderful people, living and dead, real
and imagined, who have directly, indirectly and anonymously enriched my
life with their own generous, abundant loving acts of kindness. I
promise to decompress, to spread, to share, to disperse, to disseminate,
to explode at least 12 times throughout the calendar year of 2004, with
creative, loving and healing energy.
FOR PIERMARIO CIANI (1951-2006) and other late art friends.
Panmag
International Magazine ISSN 0738 4777 PO Box 1500 NYC 10009 USA panman
<a> panmodern.com. Panmag 53: The Art of Storàge- Copyright ©Mark
Bloch, 2006. All rights reserved, all wrongs reversed.
First Printed July 13, 2006
