Welcome to 'The Artswipe'

Blogging, hey... Never thought I'd join in, but here I am. Frankly, I am not blogging because I need it, rather it needs me. Having read so many blogs over the last year I realised I am far more narcissistic than everyone else in the world, so I too should publish my everyday musings. Come to think of it, I nearly called my blog "An Ethnography of the Everyday" but it wasn't pretentious enough, not even for me. I decided on The Artswipe because it rhymes with "asswipe" and it alludes to The Art Life - a now famous blog documenting the fabulous hi-fi lows and low-fi highs of the artscene in Sydney.

Where else would you go than The Art Life to form an opinion on Australian contemporary art? Because folks, the once legendary journal Art+Text died c.1989 and now a tepid zombie artrag masquerading as Art&Text lived in its place for awhile before that died in the ass as well. And then there are other art publications, but I can't mention them right now because I am probably a subscriber, contributor, editor, typesetter, distributor, reader, or all of the above. If you haven't heard of The Art Life, then maybe it is only famous for a bunch of Australian artists who need a blog to make sense of and validate their "everyday." Come to think of it, I promise never to refer to the "everyday" again as long as I keep this blog alive. Instead, this blog is about "mostdays" or "somedays" or "whenever I fucken feel like it."

To be frank, The Art Life rocks in a salacious Woman's Day kind of way. And I decided to blog not just to provide my own minority counterpart to The Art Life phenomena. Rather, I decided to blog because my voice is the voice of a generation. Which generation? I have yet to decide. Which voice? Well I prefer to lipsync as it is my favourite medium right now.

But as to which generation I might speak for? Well, if I had lived in Dublin at just the right time -- 1960 to be precise -- I may have actually been Bono. AKA Bono Vox. I think "vox" is how you say voice in an Irish accent. And Bono? Well, he would have been me if he didn't mind waiting 15 years to be born. Because it was 15 years after Bono that a pre-internet, pre-aids, pre-teen, pre-fab sprout incarnation of The Artswipe was born.

The Artswipe is really my shot at being totally indulgent, and wondering how many people look at my blog and wonder if I am a, like, human artwork attached to a $50 per-month broadband plan. Lately, I have been fascinated by artists who believe they are living, breathing, art. I tried to fuck a few of them because I thought it might rub off, and that I too would be a living masterpiece. (I won't mention names, you know who you are). But art, like language, is a virus: it is better transmitted through jazzy corporate templates found on free blogware than body fluids. And no, this is not a U2 fan forum, so don't squabble over your favourite song, political statement, or rumoured date for their long-postponed Australian tour. The Artswipe is a place where metaphors come to graze and audio commentaries come in written form.