2016: Dada, Punk, Parties

Last Friday night I was at the Blender Xmas Show; it is a longstanding tradition, a blended mix of exhibition, party and open studios. Maybe not for much longer for there is talk about Blender closing, nobody knows anything definite. Has the whole area around the Melbourne market has been rezoned? Research is required but after the Sky Vodka mixers, basically ethanol was mixed with filtered and deionised water marketed in cobalt blue bottles that might have been fashionable in the 1990s and standing around in the warehouse for a couple of hours research is the last thing on my mind.

What is on my mind is wrapping this blog up for the year and other anniversaries. It is a century after the summer of 1916 when Dada bloomed in Switzerland but who cares, it is history. To commemorate this centennial I wrote some posts about Dada this year; posts about the various historic forces that had aligned to bring the original Dadaists together in Zurich and the small celebrations for the centennial amongst poets in a bar in Clifton Hill.

I re-read my post about the success and failure of Dada after Joe Corre, the son of Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westwood burnt his Sex Pistols memorabilia. Remember that Dada could not be properly understood until after punk. Ending up in the hands of rich collectors or in museums is not the problem, it is not an indication of success or failure, nor a cause of ossification. Thinking that the success and failure of a movement is dependent on the location of holy relics is as nostalgic as a collector’s desire. Corre was forgetting his father’s three word manifesto: “cash from chaos.”

I am also think what I will do next year with this blog? My first WordPress blog post, Faster Pussycat, was on February 16 in 2008, so early next year in February it will be the tenth anniversary since the start of this blog. This year was a time for big round number milestones for this blog: 1000th posts and 500,000th views. I celebrated my 1000th blog post with a psychogeographical walk. It was not a tour, it was like this blog, a psychogeographical walk, with no plan and no destination. People did give me a presents and bought me drinks, thank you.

I have written some diverse blog this year from a gallery crawl around Chelsea in NYC, to graffiti piecing in Burnside on the far west of Melbourne, to the VR experience of Sean Gladwell’s studio. But the most unusual experience was watching the forgery trial in the Supreme Court.

If you are reading this blog for the first time or for the thousandth time, thank you for reading in 2016.

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6 Years of Blogging

A few years ago I kept on having dreams where I was back at university. I don’t know what my timetable was, or where my classes were, I didn’t even know that there is an assignment due tomorrow or next week but wasn’t worried at all. I knew that the assignment would only take a few hours to write that evening or over the next week and I was confidant that I’ve already done more than enough reading. I think that my dreams were about blogging. I guess that since I’ve stopped having these dreams that I must have graduated.

Black Mark at MONA

It has been six years since I started this blog on WordPress. Things are going well for me as a blogger, after all these years; I’ve got a book deal for my history of Melbourne’s public sculpture. I’m writing articles for magazines and online publications about art. In celebration of this milestone I put together six things that I’ve learnt about blogging.

1 – The convention wisdom about blog stats is that regular posts improve viewing stats. This is, in my experience, not the case. Good stats do not come from regular posts – they come from having good content that will be read again and again by a large audience. A good blog post will keep on attracting readers for years. Writing a regular blog posts is a way to become better at writing blog entries. After a thousand blog posts you should be getting better as a writer.

2 – Most reporters, and sensible bloggers, have a particular beat – science, crime, sport – and stick to it. Mine is the visual arts in Melbourne and I write most of my posts about it. (With a few exceptions like this.) Visuals artists might not appear as important as international politics but as Fremon said on The Wire: “All the pieces matter.”

3 – One way to improve your stats is to be the first one to write about an event that many people witnessed but that was not covered in other media. To write about a topic in depth to be the best source of information on it. That means being prepared to be an eyewitness reporter rather than just using media releases. Being the first to write a report on an event will also get you a lot over readers and links from other websites.

4 – You must do professional development; read, go to lectures and workshops. Gather a group of people interested in the same topic and meet for informal discussions.

5 – Make sure that your blog roll is kept up to date, there is no point in listing blogs that are no longer being updated or with content that you do not endorse.

6 – It is difficult to be a blogger, you are doing it all yourself without the support that a publisher provides a journalist, like a subeditor, an editor. You have to be your own photographers, publicist and subeditor. You really need to be a photojournalist and combine text and photos to make a really successful blog post.

2012 Reflections

This will be my last post for the year, as I need a break.  So here are some reflections on my year of blogging.

Write locally and read globally.

I have been intrigued, and a little bemused, by the global views of this blog. I knew that there were some international views but I thought they weren’t that common.  This is a very local blog with a focus on the visual arts in Melbourne. When WordPress introduced the stats of views from countries I realized how many of my views come from countries other than Australia – I’ve had readers from almost every country in the world. I’m not sure why I have relatively so few readers from New Zealand or why anyone in Africa would be reading it but thanks for reading where ever in the world you are.

American artist Snyder pasting up in Hosier Lane.

This year I have been doing some professional development as a critic going to a lot of art history talks and workshops this year; bloggers do need to do a bit of “professional development” and I’ve certainly been doing that this year. I find out about most of them on Melbourne Art Network. The best were a free mini-conference at Melbourne University: “Dispersed Identities – sexuality, surreal and the global avant-gardes” and the “Workshop on the Human and the Image” at the Centre for Ideas, Victorian College of the Arts (I gave a paper at there – I don’t know if that added to the quality). It has been great getting back to my love of art history and philosophy, although they remind me that I’m glad that I didn’t pursue an academic career especially considering the end of art history department at La Trobe University. The end of the art history department at La Trobe will impact on Melbourne’s visual culture for decades into the future. Studying art history at Monash University was a life changing experience for me – I wouldn’t be writing this blog without it.

The NGV’s new director, Tony Ellwood has been an improvement from what I’ve seen so far; acquiring Juan’s Ford’s “Last Laugh” and exhibiting the Trojan Petition in the NGV’s foyer for a week.

Baby Guerrilla at Union Dinning Terrace

The Trojan Petition brings me to the subject of street art. The big change in street art in 2012 has been street artists competing in mainstream art prizes and being included in the prize exhibition (like E.L.K. in the Archibald) or winning like Baby Guerrilla. Major events in Melbourne’s street art in 2012 included Project Melbourne Underground and the Andy Mac Auction. Hosier Lane has changed since Andy Mac decamped; there has been major construction in the lane and in the adjoining Rutledge Lane (like so many other places around Melbourne) but the art goes on in spite of the now averted/delayed installation of CCTV cameras.

It has been a fun year. Cheers Alley Chats.

Reader’s Poll

It is easy to become addicted to the daily stats of readers displayed on WordPress and like me many bloggers are checking their stats daily. Even with this constant attention and information about referrals, links, search terms and shares it is still very hard to predict what blog entries will attract the most readers. A big influence on the daily views is if it gets shared by a lot of people on Facebook. I can make broad generalizations that certain galleries, like the NGV, and certain celebrity artists, do attract more readers. But I would like more feedback.

I have been trying out features on WordPress. This time I am trying out a poll to find out what type of stories my readers are most interested. I know that polls like these are rather crude instruments for gauging opinions but if you want to leave more detailed feedback please comment. I am particularly interested in the opinions of subscribers and other regular readers. (WordPress has recently changed the way that they record subscribers so I have a lot more than I thought I did last year.)

Thank you for your participation.