Thanks for the Add

One such image that you find when you type

"thanks for the add" into Google Images

It's been almost 6 months since The Artswipe began. In that time, Artswipe has been super busy keeping up appearances, because after all, appearance is the one tool of an artist's trade that gets used the most. Woodwork was never my thing. Instead, I was too busy reading Cultural Theory for Dummies while all the butch kids at school were making wineracks for Fathers' Day.

But back to appearances. As you might notice, Artswipe has taken the lead of Skanky Jane and moved to Blogger Beta. Why they'd call such cutting edge technology after a redundant form of video I'll never know. But such are the mysteries of life in the cybernetic fold.

And with change comes the desire to rebrand. So I called the offices of (RED) as they're this week's hot dollar brand for Artswipe readers. I figured (RED) could redesign Artswipe and in return I would promise to sign up for Adsense and donate what ever spare change dribbled in, should Adsense actually work. So I looked up (RED) in the White Pages (thinking for a minute that perhaps whiteness was just a little too pervasive). Dialling the long international number, it rang for three times before a woman who announced herself as Sandy answered the phone. I asked if I could speak to Bono.

"Who's speaking, puurleease?"
"Artswipe from Sydney."
There was a pause... It was like Sandy had put her hand on the receiver so I couldn't hear her chatting to a superior.
"Hello, Sandy... Hello (RED)?"
After a minute she returned and in a rather gruff voice told me Bono called me an talentless shit-for-brains Aussie twat and that I was never to call again. "NEVER!"

Now that I have just finished selling my U2 CDs on eBay - Zooropa didn't sell - I have decided to just pick another template because after I finished Cultural Theory for Dummies, I could never get through Visual Communication for Cultural Theorists. It just didn't take. But admittedly, I feel really uncomfortable using a premade template. I feel like David Byrne might see right through me and know that I have been guilty of using PowerPoint presentations; or that I once made a birthday card using clip art; or that I have forwarded spam emails (the kind that ask you to read some unfunny story, make a wish, choose a number and send it to people equaling the number you chose times 500); or that I have been secretly yearning to start a MySpace page.

You may remember in one of my early posts (again Bono themed) I wrote about resisting the lure of cultivating "friends" in MySpace. From what I could tell at the time, MySpace users usually had a vocabulary of four words, and when put in a sequence they would read:

Thanks for the Add.

If you have a MySpace page you can "Add" friends. Really, it's all about redefining what friendship is. If having "friends" in the 90s meant courting Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston, having "friends" today means digging Lily Allen (because she is like, so MySpace, man!) and - ummm - knowing that you can stalk that 14-year-old kid next door who I think I saw masturbating through the venentians, but I can't be too sure... There was a YouTube or a MySpace logo involved, that's all I can remember. Since then I have had to reacquaint myself with my therapist. You see, the last time I visited my shrink it was because Sarah Cottier Gallery was not having opening night events for her exhibitions. Well, Sarah emailed recently to say that's all changed and that she added me to her mailing list. Thanks for the add, Sarah!

So now I only visit my therapist when I have MySpace cravings. The voyeuristic kind. The kind that make me want to look up all those mofos who I hated at school to see if they have a MySpace profile and then hire that 14-year-old from next door (who is an Internet hacker, by the way) to corrupt their code. But before then I look at how they've let themselves go; how they're miserable fat alcoholics who still work at Wendys or Lone Star (in management of course). But that rarely happens because most of us have pseudonyms these days, and can be hard to track down.

Artswipe shudders at the thought of being so hard to track down, so if we don't connect here, "friendship" comes free at Artswipe's MySpace page: www.myspace.com/artswipe

Be my MySpace "friend" and I promise to stamp you with this homespun handmade treat:

Reading (RED)

In today's Sun-Herald – Artswipe's favourite weekend Bible – Bono defends Madonna's decision to adopt David Banda: "I'm very happy that Madonna should offer succour and more than that to a young boy," Bono said. "He's got a great opportunity now." The article goes on to reveal that Bono was once offered an African child by a desperate father, but was unable to take him home. Apparently the boy's face "haunts him to this day" and is the reason Bono started campaigning for African poverty relief. Surely Bono could have taken the boy on as staff? He does employ a whole fleet of people to attend to his family's every need.

Earlier this year Bono and Bobby Shriver, Chairman of Data, created a product line called (RED), which aimed to raise awareness and money for a global fund to help women and children with HIV/AIDS in Africa. (BLOG) RED documents the journey, which in recent months has seen Gap, Apple, Motorola, Converse, Emporio Armani and American Express release products associated with the (RED) brand. If you buy (RED) you are helping the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Why "red"? Well, in my last post, I suggested – quite crudely I admit – that red and black work quite well together. Red string works on black skin. Even Coca-Cola know they're onto a good thing with their black and red visual identity. The tension the (RED) campaign raises is the way it purports to be about politics, when really it's about aesthetics. Writing about fascism in the epilogue of the famous essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin argues: "All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war." Bono is certainly not alone today in his attempts to "render politics aesthetic." Much art and popular culture thrives on this instinct, and certainly, Artswipe believes that aesthetics sparkle brighter than ever when charged by the frisson of political engagement – but only when the machinery of propaganda isn't facilitating such processes.


Buy (RED) and we can feel like we're fighting dire social problems like the spread of HIV/AIDS in poverty stricken corners of the globe. Our rampant desire to shop can now feel justified as charity. We're saving the world when we buy a Motorola phone. Can the receipt for a purchase of a (RED) iPod Nano be claimed as a charitable tax deduction? When we spend big on (RED) American Express and get into monstrous debt, does the exorbitant interest charges also go to help Africans with HIV/AIDS? Even Oprah – Artswipe's favourite philosopher (after Walter Benjamin) – champions (RED), taking the time and photo-op to spend big with Bono. Of course she supports it! Oprah obviously has a major shopping addiction. If "EVERYBODY GETS A CAR!" (as her entire studio audience did in one infamous 2004 episode of her talk show) it's only because she feels compelled to momentarily alleviate her own conspicuous consumption.

Charity begins at home and homes always look better when decked out in a wealth of commodities. Consumed with fervour in the western world such commodities become tokens of cultural, social and even intellectual capital, even if their origins derive from non-western sweat shop labour. (RED) labours under the weight of such good intentions to conflate the frenzy of consumer culture with social responsibility.

Why is it branded "red"? Simply because the issue is not as political as it is aesthetic. As aesthetic as blackness is for a white western culture bred on a Benetton "united colours" mentality. Perhaps signifying blood, which with or without the stigma of HIV/AIDS is still coloured red, the (RED) brand reveals its shallow aestheticisation of race as if it's a Dulux colour chart in its revealing manufacturing of blackness.

For celebrities endorsing the (RED) campaign, blackness is a commodity that can be purchased symbolically. Through cash register empathy, blackness can be bought to ensure the privilege of whiteness is momentarily used for good. Kate Moss appeared on the cover of the UK magazine The Independent in blackface with the headline, "Not a Fashion Statement." Touted as "The Africa Issue," this September 2006 edition of The Independent was designed as an eye catching tie-in with Bono's (RED) campaign. In her opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, Emily Maguire writes:

"The stereotypes in these campaigns range from the banal (African equals beads and face paint) to the offensive (Africa equals AIDS). Both contribute to the biggest Western misconception of all: that Africa is a monocultural mess waiting for Westerners to come and clean it up. Africa is a continent, not an issue. AIDS is a disease, not a cause. And while celebrities may believe they are helping by raising awareness, they are, in fact, telling us what we know and creating a false sense that the problem is being addressed."

Maybe The Independent is right: maybe this whole campaign is a worthy cause and "not a fashion statement." Perhaps Madonna had simply purchased everything in the (RED) catalogue to match her red Kaballah accessories, and after a Sunday afternoon bout of consumer fatigue, simply decided babies over brands.

Whatever the case, white bread has never been so (RED).

Blogdrome

I couldn't sleep last night for thinking of how I now have a blog of my very own. I am so an author. All night my blog was calling to me, pleading and begging me to add another post: "Tell the world how superflycool you are, Artswipe. Everyone is listening because they crave your special homespun brand of propaganda." When I did finally fall into a dream-filled sleep, Debbie Harry's lips appeared on the plasma screen of my unconscious, saying, "Artswipe, now you have a blog, it is your responsibility to tell things not as they are, but how you think they should be." I came closer to her lips, rimming the screen with my tounge, trying to push my head through her candy-coloured mouth.

Upon waking I consulted my Dream Dictionary and it said that the dream of Debbie Harry's on-screen mouth represents either, "the need to speak in cyberspace (or television, if your dream is set in the early 80s)" or "a latent desire to return to the womb." I accepted the former explanation because the latter won't happen (unless as postulated in my last post that Bono could replace me in my mother's womb via time-travel-body-swap-meet if he wants). Thinking about my dream, I realised Debbie (AKA Deborah) was the mouthpiece, and I the muse. Or maybe it was the other way around - who can tell. All I know is Debbie called me, I did not call her. I didn't even leave her hanging on the telephone because the line was busy blogging.

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.