If you missed General Idea's exhibit at MoMA like I did, you can still
see and download the AIDS screensaver from the web site put up jointly
by Adaweb and MoMA. The screen saver is a cutesy pie blinking GIF
animation grid that replaces Robert Indiana's famous LOVE poster from
the sixties with the letters AIDS. General Idea is or was (most of the
members have died from AIDS) a Canadian art collaborative that surfaced
in the late sixties/ early seventies. Their first media exposure was in
the core underground art magazine Avalanche, which was put out by
Willoughy Sharp and Liza Bear. General Ideas' roots seem to harken back
to the Surrealist performance balls of the twenties. More importantly
General Idea marked the beginning of a gay discourse/ critique of art
iconography, interpretation etc.. Subsequent post-conceptual groups such
as ACT - UP, Gran Fury and so on, owe their starting point to G.I..
This ongoing discourse on gender interpretation and politics is a key
issue in most Graduate level art programs. The title of various posters/
actions, art works done by General Idea for the past few years is Image
Virus. The allusion is pithy, ambiguous and up to date. A virus
overwhelms and consumes it's host system as in computer virus, as in the
AIDS virus. Mediated information, re-interpreted perhaps mutated,
becomes virulent as it is released back into the non-stop info-soup of
global media.
A popular TV program in the US called the Burning Zone explores the
virus metaphor albeit from a pop- pysche vantage POV. Moving onto the
Web and away from the TV entertainment matrix one gets to the
rhizomatic root of the matter. A visit to
ZeroTolerance extends the matrix. Next to the clinical
horrors of the plague and the discussions of body as metaphor Troeger's
chilling revelations of vivisections done on world war II pow's by
Germans and Japanese revise and extend the ontological bracket. The
website project unit 731 by Troeger, presents the various documents and
photos of the experiments conducted. Troeger's Zero Tolerance site is
taking shape as a major information art work, media virus for our 21st
century world.
The World Wide Web is barely four years old. What seems to be forming
is a new informational paradigm, a TAZ or Temporary Autonomous Zone. A
visit to the Hakim Bey web site helps one to get a handle on the
particulars. Scrolling down to the section titled the Net and the Web we
have an excellent starting point for a new definition of cultural
production. "Culture is our Nature--and we are the thieving magpies,
or the hunter gatherers of the world of Comm Tech." This is the action
starting with General Idea, seize the image, present the new
interpretation. With Troeger, take the information out of political
World War II discourse, present it as an information art virus on the
web. From a general infection to a world wide burning zone.
G.H. Hovagimyan
General Idea-Zero Tolerance-TAZ
Viral Thoughts on the WEB
by
G.H. Hovagimyan