(originally published in networked_performance in 18.11.2005)
It all began a couple of weeks ago with the post “on blogging as curating“. Quickly the discussion about it turned into “tagging as curating”. Katastrofsky took it one step further, proposing in his personal blog (in accordance to what he had explored in his “the original” project) tagging as owning.
The idea is simple, and it would make Duchamp proud of this new pupil of his. In a set of three simple rules the artist asks us to choose one site whatsoever (the more you like it, the better), then to tag it as an “interactive readymade by Carlos Katastrofsky” and it’s done. You become the owner of an online readymade done by you and Katastrofsky himself.
The simple act of signing, so characteristic of readymade works of art (and from a conceptual point of view, the work itself) is replaced by a tag defined by the artist, the creator of this “performative” piece. The interesting thing here is that it is not the artist who signs (tags) the existing object. The artist only allows us to do it for him, and by doing so he completely looses control of what becomes one of his works of art. In the end it doesn’t matter if noone else recognises what you just did as a readymade done by both of you, but then again they might.
Using del.icio.us, and defining a priori the readymade-iser tag, Katastrofsky allows for a community, or a net of readymades of his authorship to exist. Tagging something as a Katastrofsky’s collaborative readymade opens the door to the club. You get to know what are his readymades, how many of them there are and who owns them (and most important of all, if yours is better than the rest).
By recurring to del.icio.us or the Flock browser he is creating a “one tag” network centred around the ideas of tagging as signing (he allows others to tag in his name) and tagging as owning (what you tag in his name becomes your own katastrofsky piece). If in “the original” it wasn’t possible to choose what you could own, the decision belonging solely to the artist, now it depends on you entirely. Now everyone can have whatever “interactive readymade by carlos katastrofsky” they desire.
free interactive readymade
2005
Carlos Katastrofsky
http://blog.subnet.at/carlos/stories/1814/
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