Spalding Gray, humorist, actor, ragingly manic troubadour. Your critical wit is needed now in these glib-tongued times of endless fear mongering. Although they found you in the East River, I will always imagine you're still swimming to Cambodia. Thanks for endlessly monologuing.
Buckminster Fuller, "Don't fight forces, use them." A pragmatic utopianist - from geodesic domes, to automobiles, to globes, a universal talent embodied in quirky mind. Thanks for observing that life requires attention to design, even if we want to live it simply.
Lygia Clark, soft, air, stone, hands embrace that space in between. Thanks for highlighting the intensity of the senses, and all that's beyond words.
Kurt Schwitters, Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery, domestic viral construction, first built in Hanover, later re-invented in Norway and then in Britain. None of the originals exist today, it's now a project of old blurry images and hearsay. It's an interior skin filled with public and private obsessions. Thanks for bringing together the epic and provisional.
Nettime mailing list, a space generating moments of insight. Its exact genealogy and "forefather's" are highly contested, however its value as a list like no other is not up for grabs. Thanks for teaching me both the generosity and ferocity of online communities.
Harmony Hammond, artist, writer, curator, feminist, archivist of lesbian art, co-editor of Heresies and my mentor in graduate school. She conducted her own art history sessions as a reclamation project and opened every painting lesson with Tai Chi. Thanks for exposing me the politics of difference while resisting all forms of dogmatism.
Plato, The Collected Dialogues, conversation as a means of speculation. If Socrates had lived in the now, no doubt he would have been a blogger and on loads of emailing lists too. Thanks for showing the civic necessity of public fora and open discussion.
Aby Warburg, poet as taxonomist, his Mnemosyne-Atlas is an attempt to grasp the world through variable image constellations. For archivists, there are two great dilemmas. The first is where to make the incision, marking this thing from that, and the second is categorization. Thanks for showing the power of complexity, and highlighting the splendor and peril of tagging.
David Hammons, artist as social critic and political humorist: Too many good works to list them all...but one, especially deserving of mention is: Higher Goals, done in 1982. Next to a row of housing blocks in Harlem, there's an empty field with pole extending high into the sky, at the very top, a basketball hoop. Your punctuation of form speaks with such clarity, it's enviable. Thanks for showing the power of simplicity.
Laurie Anderson, jack of all trades, hacker, pioneer and techno-shaman: "Big Science. Yodellayheehoo. Hey Professor! Could you turn out the lights? Let's roll the film." That was the tour, and I was humbled to witness it. Thanks for being an unconventional storyteller and embodying new media and transliteracy before either existed.
Testing the Surface of the Real, my one and only venture at book publishing: Translated into Dutch and English, it took over two years to complete. Next to endless unpaid editorial work, I wrote the introduction to the book which had contributions from different artists and writers on the elastic borders of "the real". Sadly, when it came back from the printer, there was an unspeakably glaring error. In the end, a professional paper shredder was hired to destroy the book, and there was no more funding for a re-print. Thanks for teaching me the virtues of web-publishing, where it's thankfully possible to tweak and tune without much cost. I will never initiate anything in print again.
Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, first published in 1852 and still going strong. Thanks for understanding language as an interconnected web* and documenting that there's more than one way to say just about anything.
* web: complexity, filament, network, textile, weaving, texture, trap...
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, a classic which is highly addictive and can be consumed in one sitting: For most, to take a point to its extreme would simply be pedantic, but
for her, it's a riveting art, an act of radical resistance. Thanks for vibrantly illustrating the power of a good old rant.
Wikipedia discussion page, "The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page." One nations freedom fighter is another's terrorist. Thanks Wikipedia for acknowledging that facts are always subject to perception. It's the substance on which history builds and re-invents itself for future generations.
J.G. Ballard, Project for a Glossary of the Twentieth Century, published in Incorporations: In it, he define the zipper as: "This small but astute machine has found an elegant way of restraining and rediscovering all the lost enchantments of the flesh." A statement proving that words are not just words, and zippers are much more than a technical innovation. Thanks for being an eternal lateralist.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a small museum in LA that turns all perception upside down. David Wilson, its curator, director, collections keeper and inventor, seamlessly blends fact and fiction through the language of museology. His persistence in keeping The Museum of Jurassic Technology open through trying times is nothing but admirable. Thanks for bringing the Muse back to the Museum.
Valie Export, 1968 performance and film entitled, Tap and Touch Cinema (Vienna, Austria): Thanks for showing that an interface (no matter how simple) is far from neutral and can catalyze social exchange.
Andre Malraux, The Museum Without Walls, a simple collection of photographs arranged this way
or that way to liberate an infinite range of narratives. Thanks for being a DJ of the image and understanding how meaning is produced through context and a simple reshuffling of the cards.
Bruce Sterling, The Dead Media Project, Thanks for reminding me that our castaways might be just as revealing as our keepers.
Magpie, a bird that often sits outside my window. One is for sorrow, two for mirth, Three for a wedding, four for a birth. Silver wrappers, shiney plastic, twigs and
string, you're an opportunist and true alchemist. Thanks for extoling the virtues of relentless scavenging and believing that there are treasures to be found amongst the detritus.
