Roman Milisic & MJ Diehl

OCT 2001

The thing about fine art is, 6 times out of 10 we're apologizing for it. To ourselves, that is--for bothering to go. 3 times out of 10, we allow ourselves to hate it outright (more if it's a gallery on the Lower East Side). It's tough to find great art these days. (Litmus test: if your friend did it, it's not good art. If you're in a chi-chi gallery uptown and Brie is served, it just might be.) Very rarely do we have a run-in with painting, sculpture, or installation that manages to relocate the effects of Ecstasy to the back of our eyeballs. No kidding, that's what art did in the old days.

It's not that all artists are shit. It's that a lot of art tends to ignore what's going on in culture- now- rather than embrace it. Today's culture is the culture of involvement. We're all famous, soon will be, might as well be. The democratization of fame epitomized in reality TV shows, the media's DIY spin on fame, the theatrical disintegration between the performer and the audience-has thrown everyone in to a wan spotlight. And held in that spotlight, we've all felt the urge to dance, to be part of the event. Do we feel we can? Of course!--Andy Warhol and his ilk pulled aside the curtain and debunked the “mystique” of creativity long ago. And, being the tech-whores that we are, we all know how to use the controls.

For the good or bad, technology has made whatever we want to do easy. Publish, record, design, and distribute work at the click of a button. Who wouldn't, under these circumstances, think they should be part of the great Art Circus? If not as producer, then at least as muse.

The culture of involvement requires art to be active. Or better still, interactive. Fire-breathing freaks working the crowd in the absence of the stage doesn't quite cut it. Artists that invite you to watch them slather themselves with rat shit as they snort 50-foot lines of coke off a canvas, while endless video loop of Grandma inserting an enema rages in the background, miss the point. And, the thin interactivity of current NetArt at best tries, but ultimately fails. For, in these typical examples of pseudo-interactivity, we are still ultimately asked to revere artists as idols for worship---which is totally and completely over.

Fact is, we could give a flying fuck about an artist's statement, unless we're actively involved in the conversation fueling it. We neither need nor want you to speak for us. You should be speaking with us. Art should no longer be the subject, but the platform for conversation.

In that respect, art should take a leaf from fashion. Fashion could never exist without people. It has always activated lifestyles. And it has always moved its creations off the wall and on to the users.

The Fashion Automatic Event last month is one example of an art that finally gets the point. Rather then the aggressively authored statement of the artist-star, the audience invited to co-author and co-create the House of Diehl fashion line. Upon arrival, guests were taken into a "styling booth," and--in collaboration with our designated stylist-sculptor--we deconstructed the very clothes we had on; creating an instant and one-of-a-kind item- creating couture. It was a bit like playing dress-up, with us as subject and muse--except the finished product was not the equivalent of being dragged backwards through a thrift-store, nor had the cheesiness of a performance art debacle. Between us, we created an avant-garde and very cool-looking outfit. And we looked rather dandy, to boot. On a bigger scale, the House of Diehl aimed push fashion to its absurd conclusion: instant, designer-free, borrowed, and in style for precisely one evening. Moreover, whether it was a stunt, happening, party, or philosophy-fueled fashion label, the Automatic Event was a damn good time.