NOTES

1. Carsten Höller, "The B-P-E Laboratory of Doubt ," in Laboratorium (Germany: Dumont, 1999).

2. A mixtape is a compilation of songs recorded in a specific order, traditionally onto a compact audiocassette. A mixtape, which usually reflects the musical tastes of its compiler, can range from a casually selected list of favorite songs, to a conceptual mix of songs linked by a theme or mood, to a highly personal statement tailored to the tape's intended recipient. Essayist Geoffrey O'Brien has called the personal mixtape "the most widely practiced American art form."[1] and many mixtape enthusiasts believe that by carefully selecting and ordering the tracks in a mix, an artistic statement can be created that is greater than the sum of its individual songs, much as an album of pop music in the post-Beatles era can be considered as something more than a collection of singles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixtape (accessed July 1, 2008).

3. Norman "Jack-of-All-Genres" Cook, in addition to his former occupations as bassist for the Housemartins and one-third of acid house hitmakers Pizzaman, is also the man behind one of the most popular of the new flock of English "Brit-hop" producers, Fatboy Slim. Releasing his Fatboy material through club staple Skint, Cook's raucous blend of house, acid, funk, hip-hop, electro, and techno has added to his already formidable reputation as one of the foremost all-around producers on the U.K. club scene. Sean Cooper, allmusic (((Fatboy Slim > Overview))), http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wifoxqqhldje (accessed June 3, 2008). As a DJ, he used to work with samples and loops of other songs. At the highest point or climax of a song he would cut the loop  he was playing in half each time it played so that at the end of the effect the intensity of the song would rise and explode. A loop of the loop of the loop, and so on.

4. "‰¥Ïpunctum is also: puncture, little hole, small spot, small cut, and also coincidence.  The punctum of a photo is that chance that in it blunts me (but that also injures me, punctures me." "The punctum comes right after the studium:  'the so vast field of the indolent desire, of the diverse interest, of the inconsistent flavor: me gusta/no me gusta, I like/I don't." Roland Barthes, La CÌÁmara L̼cida (Buenos Aires: PaidÌÒs, 1989).

MIXTAPERS "R" US
Leonardo Marz

What has happened here is something rather curious. Transart Institute's (TI) third generation graduation show has been not-curated. Why? Well, we can start by mentioning that trying to connect the artworks presented by the graduates might seem forced due to what actually is pulling them together is just a matter of chance. Just the fact that we participated in the program is a great coincidence. So, trying to find another characteristic as a theme to approach a generality in the work of all graduates would result in an arbitrary reading of the show, and that is something we are not interested in doing.

The artworks presented in the show are the result of two (more or less) years of individual research and experimentation carried on by each one of the artists and their mentors. They may not have a common theme, but they do have a common space and the syntax of the exhibition maybe a way to approach them as a group.

The idea of not-curating a show may sound like a paradox since we are working with the idea of not-doing, and, like Carsten Höller explains it in a text for Laboratorium, not-doing is doing:

"The best thing to do when you are expected to do but cannot do is not to do. Do not, and because this is impossible, do less. It may sound a bit construed, but I would like to emphasize a structural link with the notorious condition of the quantitative and qualitative factor-researching experiment, which is the ceteris paribus condition. It could be of interest to conduct an experiment, which aims not to intervene, by keeping all conditions constant/paribus to the greatest degree possible, and not to vary one. A dilemma: If my contribution to Laboratorium would be not to do, not to intervene, do the doless, I would do the not-doing, and hence not not. Do I contradict myself by doing writing about not doing?

Not really, because if I wouldn't exist, I would not not do. Keeping the problematic meaning of "existence" aside, I suggest to assume generously that existing is doing, and that not-doing is a form of doing. This may be exemplified etymologically by the obvious absence of a specific word for the opposite of doing. There is also no word for the opposite of thirsty. No-word situations are often interesting fields for exploration: not represented in the language hints at a 'development' too recent to be described in words (Thomas Kuhn); the new paradigm hangels with difficulties its way to the Wortschatz through the jungle of metaphors and comparisons. What is a metaphor, an image, for the do-less?"¹

The idea of having a not-curated show hence becomes a curatorial proposal that allows us to present the works of the graduates as a series of self-curated micro exhibitions displayed inside a common space. These events will co-exist perhaps without the need to connect them to a central idea at the beginning, but to wait for the visitor to elaborate the possible readings. Therefore, we present a compilation, a show that behaves somewhat like a collaborative mixtape:² TI's mixtape, graduates' mixtape, visitors' mixtape, and chance's mixtape? We have various possible compilers and a set of artworks in common.

The conceptual bond between the work of each artist and its context is an approach towards the interpretation of the artistic process. The work of altogether evidences the conceptual overflow that exists at the present time due to the great amount of acceleration in meme transmissions. Now we experience culture information in a continuous way through a series of replicators echoing these cultural units with the possibility to override a system if they behave like the Fat Boy Slim effect.³ A customary phenomenon in a curated show is the following: when a series of artworks with similar characteristics are displayed in a space, the recipient looks for the differences between each one of them through their relationships to a central discourse. But when the works respond to diverse ones, trying to establish the same relations is pointless, the receiver tends to un-differentiate them as units associated to a center and starts experiencing them from what Negri would call "the common."

A way to approach the show is through its syntax. When a homogenous set of artworks experienced from "the common" is referential to diverse states of things, a decoding ambiguity is driven by the interaction of those realities. This ambiguity, due to the saturation of possible interpretations, triggers the connections to the context of each work separately, allowing their iconic function in relation to the other works to function as punctums⁴ in the show. Therefore, the iconic networks with affective, mnemonic and visual characteristics are empowered by the overflow from the context of each artist, and in their saturation and acceleration during the interpretation process. Plus, the repetition of the decoding in networks of punctums saturates the interpretation again and the overflow phenomenon is appreciated again leaving an exponential metaphor about its consequences in the experience of facing different information networks.

It is a superimposing of meta-systems. When in a system of punctums the networks become stabilized what needs to be done is to make flexible the affective construction of relations again to start doubting of them, generating ambiguity again. It is then when the belief becomes flexible/relative. In the field of image, this event becomes complex when the image is referential to diverse states of things. Then the object can be approached by means of iconic filters that are connected in affective networks, and that are reshaped and so on, to make clear that stability does not exist. This recurrent phenomenon at the present time, in a context where the relations caused by the acceleration in the relations of consumption of information generate more complex social bonds, closed and dynamic circuits, is presented in the show. This way this show empowers a recurrent phenomenon at our present time: the saturation of information fostering the initial homogeneity of its interpretation and to know continuous planes, followed by the joint of punctum networks, followed by the generation of doubt. Before this situation, the artists may be interested in the particular connections the spectators achieve with their own individual pieces and with the possibilities these contribute to the readings of the entire graduation show.