posted

neoscenes

I’ve been using the neoscenes pseudonym, brand, art-name, label, whatever, since 1983. I came up with it back when I was living in Santa Monica, California, around the time that I was beginning to print and mail a lot of postcards. Yes, back when I was a passable-but-not-very-talented surfer, back when Reagan’s brain disease became very apparent, and when Suicidal Tendencies was just a band. Back when I used to dress in a three-piece suit and drive a Fiat Spyder convertible down the Santa Monica Freeway to the Harbor Freeway into Downtown Los Angeles up to five days a week, exiting opposite the Bonaventure Hotel, parking in the underground garage under the corporate headquarters of Union Oil Company of California and marching to the elevator, riding to the third floor, often with the CEO, saying hello to that blond girl, Carol? Cindy? who worked the front desk, and, cruising down the hall to the right, past Lida, my secretary, to my office from the window of which, if you leaned up against the walnut-paneled wall and it wasn’t too smoggy a day, you could see THE HOLLYWOOD sign that has been such an icon for the movie-going world… Enough said…

The connotation of neoscenes as a “new scene” — an idiosyncratic personal vision — has been invoked in the creative art icons in a variety of forms that are generated and sent out. Network, time-based, and other electronic media works are signified by a ©19-or-20-something hopkins/neoscenes. All the hundreds of snail-mail postcards, which have decorated peoples refrigerators, walls, galleries, and studios around the world, carry this identification. You never know when you’ll run across a neoscene …

The neoscenes.net domain was reserved back in 1998 or so, and although there is an interior design consultancy in Mauritius ‘neoscenes.com’ and a piece of video editing software ‘neoscenes’ that both came later to the web, neoscenes.net dominates any searches using the name.

posted
  • place: Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany

blackbird sings

Nan’s funeral in Charlottenburg. I see a number of people that I have not seen in some time. Kathy Rae is there from Manchester, and Sandro, one of the students who came to Iceland all those years ago.

The funeral is moving, standing room only. In the room with the casket, a video tape interview with Nan running silently, along with a projection of one of her Light-water videos. Flowers, candles. Friends in black. Stories from a few folks.

After the service, Sandro mentions that he has a photograph from the Iceland trip, which he then pulls from an envelope. I am moved when I see that it is one of my postcards that I sent him after the trip. I think I sent each of the students that I had addresses for a copy, if I remember right. I immediately notice that it is on resin-coated paper, ach, but that was a time when I could use nothing else as I had only the college lab which could hardly be called a lab even. I worked with what I had. He said he would send me a high-rez scan of it. It underlines that old idea I had to gather up all the postcards that I have ever sent and put on an exhibition. What fun that would be. Especially if each of the people would attend the show.

It is very nice to let memories of Nan float up, especially her work which is essentially about Light. And her presence as a mentor, teacher, friend, her art. generosity. And the community she supported.

And memories of her Armani suit and her fondness for good cognac.

Avalon from Roxy Music plays in one interlude. and I make this small tribute — blackbird sings…

(00:10:13, stereo audio, 19.6 mb)

posted

postcards

I am an active node in the Mail Art Network—since around 1984—and also a nomadic network node via the Internet since 1992. The world-wide post- or mail-art network is a rich forum for expression that, despite it’s institutionalization in recent years (and now, what with the Death of the so-called Father of MailArt, Ray Johnson, this trend will probably accelerate), it remains a vital, anarchic, and complex entity. I stumbled onto this ethereal network of beings by accident, but basically as a direct outgrowth of my love of sending and receiving post (a tendency rooted in the dislocations of familial life).

I can still recall the enjoyment I got from sending out requests for information to almost every address listed in the original Whole Earth Catalog! This postal-fascination started with my father’s, and subsequently my own interest in stamp collecting. Seen, the microscopic evidences of an exotic culture showed up magically each day. The local postmaster, Mr. King, lived in a big house in the middle of huge fields of daffodils—the remains of a nursery that also provided our lawn with these spurts of white and yellow flowers as the earliest manifestation of springtime. Trips to the post office, next to the small General Store, had the character of entering a known space that contained a portal to all other spaces, exotic and otherwise. A space-time enfolding that revealed the nature of the universe to a child. more “postcards”

posted
  • place: online and Boulder, Colorado

get-carded and War-No! online

stress/migraine, get-carded online, December 2002, [online and Boulder, Colorado]

Trebor initiates an online anti-war project that I contribute three cards for [ed: the project link is long-dead; the project did not out-last the war]:

Dear Manifestors,

I work collaboratively and individually across, often merging disciplines and teach critical net cultures at the Department of Media Study at the State University New York at Buffalo.

I am part of get-carded.net, an activist e.card site. So far 70 students, artists, educators, and activists contributed to its first initiative opposing the war in Iraq — “War No!” On the site you can add your own cards as well as send those by others. The goal of the site is in particular to involve high school students in expressing their politics.

“Get Carded” is an art activist e.card site that allows open submission. The site launches with anti-war cards by 80 artists. https://get-carded.net

Trebor Scholz

posted
  • place: Newton, New Jersey

printing

Days flicker past again. I am caught up, first in simply enjoying time with friends, and now, back to printing. For the first serious time in almost three years. I will spend the next week printing up some new works, developing film from the past six months, and contact printing two years worth of negatives. Of course, in a week, I can hardly make a dent in the quantity of prints I would like to make … Last night I developed twelve rolls of film, today I made about 100 proof prints, postcard-sized of that material, so that at least my postcard stock in replenished. Tomorrow I will do contact printing, and then later I will make prints for a number of people.