The man from Neen | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Since a few years ago, when you hired Lexicon Branding to find the right word for this stuff, people wondered if this wasn't a big conceptual piece or, alternatively, a big joke. Are you the Andy Kaufman of the art world?

If you say so ...

Let me put it another way: Are you serious about all this?

I am never serious or not serious. And all this is not conceptual: It's life in progress. Also, I detest jokes: They are '90s art.

I can only partly understand that, because while I know what it's like to be neither, most of the time I am either serious or I am not serious. And I'm afraid that this makes me both un-Telic and un-Neen. What do you say? Are people Neen or Telic?

Of course they are. It's a matter of style. There is a simple factor for somebody to be Neen: He should not have a job. It's not enough, but it's a beginning. But he should not live a miserable life either.

Well, what about the un-Telic or un-Neen things out there? You don't just dismiss them do you?

There is UnNeen and UnTelic stuff that interests me. The New Yorker for example.

Are there perhaps thousands of such things you like? It's a big world.

Yeah: really a lot. There is a whole "Beigë" culture which includes fashion, Muslim people, sports, post-Marxism and a lot of art that we like for different reasons, such as Alex Katz and many others.

I don't think I will go down the "Beigë" road. Let's go back and get some background for a minute. You were born in Greece?

Yes, 1964.

Tell me briefly about your childhood and how you got to this point?

Boring environment, no [relationship to art]. Just decided in 1985, after I saw a Jackson Pollock book, to do art because it seemed easy. I left to go to Italy in 1986, came to New York in 1995. Started painting. Started work with video games -- to find art subjects -- in 1995. I was the first artist to paint a laptop and Lara Croft, according to The [London] Guardian. I made enough [of a] career, [was] bored, went to L.A., opened the Electronic Orphanage, started adventures, Neen, and here I am.

Yes, the Electronic Orphanage. Please explain it and why you're doing it?

Until today, there is not any great way to show digital art. In galleries and museums it seems pathetic, and on the Internet it does not affect the majority of the public, which doesn't know how to click well yet. I decided to create the [least] worse [thing], a physical space where people can spy over the shoulders of the creators and get an idea [of it]. It's on a road which hosts many art galleries, so there is a public which is looking for amazing visual stuff available already -- you don't have to invite the people. It's like installing a Web site in the actual city.

It's also a club where people can meet and realize projects and conspiracies -- aesthetic ones. We are now preparing an E.O. in Goa, India, and another in Shanghai, China. Then, people [will be able to] move from one to the other, it becomes a network. I see E.O. as a very specialized search engine, a Google which checks for geniuses.

And now you're doing this project with the U-Haul trucks and WhitneyBiennial.com. Why?

Because the domain was available. It was the official show's unconscious desire. I see all this as a commission by them. Like a Coca-Cola advertisement where they left a little window open: You can put your mark there.

What kind of people have you invited to do work for this project? Are they better or more interesting than the artists chosen for the "real" Biennial?

I invited of course many who I consider great. The best of them are not in the W.B., but this is not the point. The point is to collect many little different voices and start a new song.

Why Flash animation?

Because it's easy and everywhere. Like oil painting in the past.

How does the Whitney feel about your dot-com biennial?

Apparently they are cool. I don't know, I don't really care. They haven't sent me any lawyers yet ...

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