Animal Rights Community Online

[panthera]

yes, and I prefer it to making brand new threads on the same thing, if it's not too old. that way you can scroll back to reference earlier thoughts...

[Relentless]

[Ante Bozanich]

Hi, Relentless. I've just read your story with great interest.

Besides this forum, I have actually spent a lot of time on the Animal Concerns Forum of EnvoroLink, which is dominated by hunters and anti-animal rights element although there are some animal rights people who show up there sometimes. Indeed, I agree that by debating these issues on forums, one expands her/his horizon and becomes educated.

What anti-animal rights forum has done for me is to make me become more passionate and convinced in my animal rights believes while at the same time during the confrontation with the opposition I was able to grasp their point of view and the way they tick. On the other hand, what this and other animal rights forums have done for me is in a way have helped me to look in a mirror and do the reality check. By listening to other animal rights people I have realized that things are not always black and white or simple and that not everything every animal rights advocate is saying is right and also that there are different ways of looking at things. So my own ideas have slowly evolved, shaped and became more specific. In short, while anti-AR forum has made me more of an idealist, AR forum has made me more of a realist, pragmatist.

All in all, I am very intrigued by the phenomenon of Internet forums.

About 35 years ago as a graduate student at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) working on my MFA degree in the area of art and film, I had discovered something called video and portapak. I was fascinated by it because unlike film it was able to produce immediate results. The image was black and white and of poor quality but what was new about it was that it worked like a mirror; you were seeing what you were recording right there and then. It was about here and now.

Now video is an everyday thing but in a similar way today I find internet forums technology as a possibility for a new expression in a media where each poster is in a way an artist-character-actor living while directing themselves and writing their own lines so that the script takes it's own course without predetermined plot or any authoritative control. Moreover, while each poster is a character in this movie, at the same time, they are also an audience actively participating in creating of the work. The only common factor is that the forum is about animal rights for example in this instance which is good since I feel that art should be addressing the real issues and for a meaningful social and political change. The result is an interesting real life transparency.

So... when you say you see forums as a chess game, I see them somehow as a new cinema. I am starting to deal with some of this in my From Portapak to Vlog and Beyond blog.

PORTAPAK

[Minoesj]

Hi Ante,

do you still have your Portapak? It looks like a great gadget and you made me curieus

btw a big welcome to Relentless!

[Ante Bozanich]

[panthera]

[Ray P.]

[Ante Bozanich]

Thanks.

Well, I feel I'm starting to sound self obsessed here and I must admit that both of you, Panthera and Ray are asking some good questions but my life long involvement with art has been rather strange and difficult and this is a very long story but to make it as simple as possible...

After graduating from UCLA some 30 years ago, I received NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) Individual Artist Fellowship which helped me for a while monetarily and had opened the door to showing of my work. So in terms of that, right at the beginning I had some "successes." However, the money I got from US government run out quick; I had to get a job or sell out.

I ended up in NYC alone trying to survive and pay rent, hated narcissistic elitist clubs of art world and became involved with animal rights, street demonstrations etc. Actually, I documented a lot of that on hundreds of hours of video which I hope to edit and somehow present some day. I also used to lug around at least 50 pounds of video gear including portable monitor to display animal cruelty on NYC streets along with huge posters which I would design myself. Nowadays, with new technology, displaying video on the street has become much easier. I have seen PETA people just strapping a large but rather light video LCD flat panel on their chest.

So... even though I've never stopped creating art and my work has been presented here and there at different institutions, museums etc. throughout the world, I've never had time or cared much about to actively participated in any of this and to work on my art career.

I also want to say here that in our post modern time, the boundaries between different media and between art and life are melting. Art has become decentralized and the distinctions between high art and low art are fading. Painting, collage, sculpture, photography, video, film, computer art, performance art, conceptual art, installations, environments, earth art, multimedia etc. are all considered visual arts.

To add to this, I've just run across some thoughts about art which I like:



Art be it 30, 000 year old cave drawings in France or a crucifix in a jar of urine all have a crucial common element - the evocation of emotion, the conveyance of a message.



But ultimately art should be more than just a source of passive bemusement, it should be a participatory activity. When art is a recipe rather than a static monstrosities collecting dust in pretentious museums, art where the viewer is part of the process, they become artists as well. Not only does this dissolve the repulsive elitism staining modern art but it becomes entertaining and enlightening too because there's nothing holy or mystical about art or the qualities an artist must posses. This is the most nihilistic and democratized art movement I can think of because it has no set genre, no clique is defining what's acceptable. Every artist creates what they are best at creating and what's most appealing to them while anyone else that appreciates the same material can use the recipe, the instructions to create their own version, slightly changed to suit themselves. Paint the walls, post on the Internet, wear it on your shirts, it doesn't matter. The more you practice the better the product looks. Link

So... to get back to your question about irony and have I changed my views? Yes it's ironic and I have not changed my views regarding art and museums but at my "old age" I find all this a little amusing and entertaining.

Many times before I've received a letter or a phone call telling me that so and so wanted to show my work here and there but this time it was a little different. About eight months ago, out of the blue, I received a phone call from The Getty Museum representative asking me if I will be willing to be interviewed on camera by them regarding oral history in connection to their forthcoming exhibition survey of California video art. Considering that this was nothing less than The Getty, the richest art museum in the world, I must admit I got tickled a little and had fun talking for couple of hours in front of the camera about my work and crazy things I did more then 30 years ago.

So... although I had fought it all of my life, I think I am starting to understand now why some of my friends and so many people I have known have become "art whores."