:: Monday, August 30, 2004 ::


ORIGINAL POST: Wednesday, August 25, 2004
BY: Lora McPhail

Revolver Publishing presents Black Friday: Exercises in Hermectics, an online project curated by Christoph Keller. The project is a collection of downloadable PDF files from 48 international artists, responding to the bifurcated theme "What is Black Friday?" This prompt is, ostensibly, answered with regard to one of two branches:

1. Black Friday, Sept. 24, 1869, in U.S. history, day of financial panic...more
2. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, is historically one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year... more

The contributions are primarily images serving as responses to or illustrations of the theme question. Hiding somewhere between the notion of "book" and "net art," there is an absence of guidance readily available that would contextualize or make relevant each work to the theme, or each work to the other. As such, I find myself more intrigued by the impetus for posing this topic, and the curatorial conceit behind the selection of participants, neither of which are included within the context of the project. Only the definitions of the questions serve to provide a framework for the project, and, of course, the endeavors of the publishing house itself. While the collection does make for a modestly interesting and elaborate puzzle, it lacks the conceptual and formal rigor to be either a fully assembled and edited book or an integrated and vital net-art work. Nonetheless, the investment is an interesting study in the tension between and the desire to integrate hard and soft media in a meaningful way.

Black Friday : Exercises in Hermectics is available online from July 10th of 2004 through September 11th of 2004.

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