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

What's the matter with the Biennial? People love to complain about it. But there's a lot of digital and new media work in it, some of which must be Telic or Neen. Isn't it any good?

I love the Whitney Biennial: They always have great works there. They are family. I am not against them. I just want to use them.

Use them for what?

For propaganda ... free [access to the] public. We have to learn to use institutions in an alternative way. It's not fun anymore to do things with them. Of course we will keep doing [something] because they give us money. But every time they do something, [we should] try to open them to unknown factors. Deviate their intentions. We don't only live anymore in the "Society of the Spectacle," we are spectacle.

So it's fair to say this is about getting attention?

Of course it is for attention! Why else [would] a person like me set up a show? I am not a curator ... But I also want to see a beautiful experiment happen and give a reason to my friends to do beautiful stuff.

Is "art" a bad word these days? Is trying to create "art" a bad, or dull, or old idea?

Art is OK: It's classic.

Well, what is art? And do you try to create it?

I don't try: I do. I don't really want to, because I am lazy, but that's life ...

How does the iamgonnacopy.com fit in to the Neen or Telic view of things? You'd like to see copyright eliminated? Why?

Copyright and intellectual property are some of the most urgent social [issues]. People don't realize it but we live now in a time where images and ideas are replacing nature: We should be able to move freely inside this nature, and the main reason is that a part of it is inside ourselves. We are made up of logos and pictures, books and music. The images of paintings, once published, belong to everybody and the same is true for the songs by Beatles or the Coca-Cola logo. If I have a dream which is a collage of all that, I should have the right to do whatever I want with them.

Isn't it more complicated than that?

I believe that copyright and intellectual property are really black and white issues. It's like slavery: Either you consider that all people should be born free, or you want some of them under the control of others. Information is like people: It has its own life, separated by its creator. Nobody should own his/her information, at least after he/she made it public and therefore he/she exchanged it with fame and other bonuses.

So I assume Neen is not copyrighted? And I can do anything I want with it?

Yes, indeed.

I don't know, suppose I headed an organization of homicidal maniacs or neo-Nazis, and we decided we liked Neen as our new brand name, and we stole it and made huge money off of Neen T-shirts that supported our ability to kill people, wouldn't you want the legal power to stop us from using it?

Of course not. It's part of the game: Words bring us to an unpredictable version of reality. They are cultural software, not Yellow cabs.

On one hand, you seem like a fan of commercial culture. On the other, you seem to be against some of the things that drive it. How do you see it?

There is no such a thing as commercial culture. All culture is commercial and a few commercial objects are culture. I am interested only in those, wherever they come from.

What kind of system of government would you prefer?

I don't care as long as it respects the freedom of the Internet. If they start to limit it, I will just move to another country. The Internet is like drugs: We should not lose a second chance to experiment freely and methodically with our inner self.

Through Neen and the Electronic Orphanage, you're working with a lot of young people. What's the best quality they share?

The fact that they absolutely ignore the heroes of the past century. I was speaking with a Japanese girl and I said something about Karl Marx and she asked me, "Who is he?"

"You don't know K.M.?" I said. "What about Lenin?"

She said, "Oh, yes, I've heard about him. Isn't he a friend of Che Guevara?"

Now, this girl is a very smart one and I am sure that she will collect the info she needs about all those people, if she needs it. Not like myself and my friends who know about Marx but we never read any of his books.

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