September 13, 1997
Saturday, 11:28 pm

Today was the start of Simon Watson's "Downtown Arts Festival" and Remo participated with an open house in the storefront. This was Remo's big day when his idea for artnetweb to concentrate on online classes that would bring in big money. It didn't, of course, but he did sign up enough people for HTML classes in the storefront to cover the cost of the ads he took out in the Village Voice and other papers. He worked hard all week printing out flyers and getting the web site in shape. The students who signed up were from the neighborhood and saw the sign out front. The ads were probably a waste of money but you never know. The cost may have been worth the name recognition and the effort gave Remo some focus.

The storefront looks more like a classroom but lacks evidence of art being created. That's always been a problem. How to make it an aesthetically "neutral" space for artists to work in yet a space that encourages creativity. It looks like we could be teaching how to do spreadsheets now. I suggested inviting people to do projects in the upper parts of the walls but I may think of something to do myself that would energize the space without overwhelming it. I'd even be in favor of bringing back the ants.

Jonathan Moberly and Tom Neville from Ellipsis Publishing are in town for the weekend. Jonathan sent me an email a few days ago asking if we could meet either in New York this weekend or in Chicago during ISEA as he had some ideas to pitch to me. I told him I'd be down at the storefront at some point and we could meet up there.

Jonathan is in New York for a Mekon's exhibit at Threadwaxing and is going to ISEA '97 in Chicago next week. He's meeeting with Adrianne tomorrow. She returns from Linz tonight and I noticed she's on the schedule for ISEA next week in Chicago. Wonder if she remembers.

Marek Walczak was in the storefront showing people his project for Ars Electronica. We chatted a bit and he'd met with Jonathan and Tom earlier in the day when I wasn't there. They knew quite a few people because Marek taught at the AA in London and Ellipsis has published books by some of his students.

Carmin Karasik came down from Boston for the weekend to help Remo and meet with FPU and Ricardo Dominguez about projects they're working on. I sent her to see the Chapman Brother's show at Gagosian and she was very impressed. It opened today and is one of the most oddly mesmerizing exhibitions in a long while. Perverse and smart with their now trademark little girls with misplaced genitalia. They were set atop eight foot ledges so that the viewer had the sensation of being dead in a grave watching the erotics of the living. The exhibit is called "Six Feet Under."

Ricardo was carrying around a heavy biography of Lacan and told me the story why -- he'd been reading it in a restaurant the day before and picked it up. He's going to review it and from his description it sounds fascinating what with all sex going on among Lacan and his friends. Who has time to be neurotic when there are orgies to arrange?

Aymon never showed up at the storefront but he was probably busy with Pauline. Wouldn't have been any use for him to be there anyway since I haven't gotten very far in the Purple Lion Theater and when I showed it to Remo and the others they lost interest because it loaded so slow.

Jess was leaving his second message of the day on my answering machine when I got back. I picked up and found out he'd been arrested. It had something to do with a bicycle tire and his neighbor but other than that I'm not sure. He'd had a few drinks but wasn't as drunk as the other night. Whatever happened he was released quickly and just called to complain about how terrible people are.

I worked on the Web site for a while then bought the Sunday Times and some Rum Raisin ice cream. What I'm doing with iola, hypomnemata and the journal is starting to come into focus as a multi-dimensional project. "iola" is the broad environment, "hypomnemata" is contained within as my "studio" and the journal is contained within that as a sort of "undergrowth." They form a relational database that I'll do something with eventually that is 2D+ rather than 3D.

Also saw the Lorna Simpson show at Sean Kelly, videos at Dietch Projects and some wonderful drawings of city maps by an English artist named Kathy Prendergast at the Drawing Center. There were about twenty or so pencil on 8 1/2 X 11" sheets, each city taking on its own identity from elegant small renderings of the street plans. She only draws maps of capital cities and some of them, evidently, don't even have streets.