{"id":1317,"date":"2018-04-08T13:20:41","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T20:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/?p=1317"},"modified":"2018-04-08T13:20:41","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T20:20:41","slug":"zach-blas-contra-internet-at-art-in-general","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/08\/zach-blas-contra-internet-at-art-in-general\/","title":{"rendered":"Zach Blas Contra-Internet at Art in General"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/252460386?color=ffffff&#038;title=0&#038;byline=0&#038;portrait=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/252460386\">Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 trailer<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/zachblas\">Zach Blas<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I had been looking forward to seeing Zach Blas&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zachblas.info\/works\/contra-internet\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Contra-Internet<\/a> exhibition at Art in General, unfortunately it was not as engaging as I had hoped.  The exhibition presents one single channel video installation that features the nearly 30 minute film &#8220;Jubilee 2033&#8221; and three other single-channel video works on monitors.  The three video works on monitors present ideas and research regarding the internet &#8211; the hegemonic network of today and for the foreseeable future &#8211; through computer screen recordings by Blas.  (I really hope that artists stop using screen-recordings of themselves clicking through files as a medium; it&#8217;s seldom interesting.)<\/p>\n<p>Although I was disappointed by the exhibition, the gravity dance performance by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cassils_(artist)\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cassils<\/a> as Nootropix, &#8220;a contra-sexual, contra internet prophet&#8221; is captivating an entirely worth the trip.  The premise of the film is funny as it opens with Ayn Rand discussing the future of her ideas with two of her followers &#8211; Alan Greenspan and a fictional character Joan Mitchell.  A young Greenspan proposes that the group take an acid trip.  I was turned off by the highly accented performance of Rand and her cult, so I was glad to see them drop liquid acid.  <\/p>\n<p>As the trip begins, an internet connected artificial intelligence in the form of a manga character appears and takes them in to the future.  The future is of course dystopian as the present reality burns and it&#8217;s certainly fun seeing the Google headquarters burning along with other tech companies in the not so distant future of 2033.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/images\/2018\/zachBlas0.jpg\" alt=\"Nootropix triumphant performance\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Along their travels, we encounter tech workers being taken hostage by &#8220;The Art Professor&#8221; wearing gray, paint-splattered coveralls and wielding a machine gun.  Later in a classroom, the Art Professor introduces Nootropix (Cassils) who in their monologue states that they will perform the creation of gravity.  The performance artist is powerful and their dance upon a purple matrix while dawning a large, erect, glowing CGI penis that is constantly spewing black liquid is awesome.  The dance is mesmerizing and triumphant.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/images\/2018\/zachBlas1.jpg\" alt=\"Nootropix triumphant performance\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In Nootropix, Blas presents one of his contra-internet exotic creatures &#8220;to discover or create a world of network difference.&#8221;  I could have entirely skipped the storyline, and merely be fantastically transported by Cassils&#8217;s character and performance as I think that it would have left me asking more questions and appreciating the mystery.  We know that a network of difference is not plausible, so why not create the fantastic and shed the tedious philosophizing.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/images\/2018\/zachBlas2.jpg\" alt=\"Nootropix triumphant performance\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 trailer from Zach Blas on Vimeo. I had been looking forward to seeing Zach Blas&#8217;s Contra-Internet exhibition at Art in General, unfortunately it was not as engaging as I had hoped. The exhibition presents one single channel video installation that features the nearly 30 minute film &#8220;Jubilee 2033&#8221; and three other single-channel [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[503,58,457,753,2,1060,749,3,4,853,305,652],"tags":[1065,1067,1066,1064],"class_list":["post-1317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aesthetics","category-art-and-activism","category-art-installation","category-contemporary-art","category-critical_perspectives","category-film","category-fine-art","category-fine_arts","category-net_art","category-new-york","category-performance-art","category-video-art-2","tag-art-in-general","tag-cassils","tag-contra-internet","tag-zach-blas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1318,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317\/revisions\/1318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ambriente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}