[spectre] please link to this site: http://waldvogel.plaintext.cc/

[Florian Cramer]

Am Donnerstag, 23. Februar 2006 um 23:10:19 Uhr (+0100) schrieb Inke Arns:
 
> I am "singling out" Waldvogel because 1) he is the only of the three 
> curators who's possibly known outside of a (or even in the) German 
> speaking context (as Spectre), and 2) because his name is the only of 
> the three that keeps re-appearing on mailing lists like Nettime and 
> Spectre. Furthermore, I am "singling out" Waldvogel because 3) 
> indeed, he is one of the three curators of the upcoming Manifesta in 
> Cyprus (and, through that, has quite an international exposure). And 

Just to add my 10 cents: I am singling out Waldvogel (by running the
site while being another writer whose anonymized writing makes up a
considerable part of the "Just Do it" book) because ripping off other
writers seems to run as a theme through his entire career.  This blog
entry <http://ronsens.de/machtdose/sampletexter.html> says, in my
translation:

  "Culture jamming will eat itself - that, too: With his contribution to
  the 'Just Do It' exhibition, Waldvogel hasn't acted as a sampling 
  writer for the first time. His essay 'Culture Jamming: The Visual
  Grammar of Resistance' (published in 2003 in: 'Die Offene Stadt:
  Anwendungsmodelle' ['The Open City: Application Models', edited by
  Marius Babias and Florian Waldvogel] is sheer text theft as well.
  The reader had been available as a PDF file for a long time, but 
  was taken offline with the relaunch of the Zollverein art space.

  Gregor, July 11, 05"

I wouldn't mind that if he were an underground anti-copyright
activist, like Sebastian Lütgert, for example. But he wants to have the
cake and eat it, too: work in institutions, but screw institutional
responsibility; copy other works, but commercially release them with his
name tag; pose as a "radical", but only to invest as little
intellectual effort as possible; mask his intellectual incapability.
The latter (despite all borrowings from what might have been good texts)
fully comes across in the essay mentioned in the blog entry and which is
still online at <http://www.rebelart.net/i0002.html>. That text is
unreflected enough to mix Nazi and authoritarian vocabulary like
"Lebensraum" and "Vollstreckungsbefehl" into a piece supposedly about
critical left-wing urbanism. And I'm only scratching the very surface of
the imbecility of this text. 

He's also the only of the three curators who ducked a reply to us after
our protests. And on top of that, Inke's text that got ripped off into
"Just Do It" originally had been a lecture of her's at Zollverein - when
Waldvogel was its curator, and listening to the talk. So beware of Mr.
Waldvogel attending your lectures.  There's a chance that they end up,
with his name tag, in his next brilliant catalogue, getting him the next
big job in the art world. I just learned that he has become a curator at
Witte de With in Rotterdam.

It sounds unbelievable, but to see that I'm not exaggerating, have look
on the Manifesta 6 site
<http://www.e-flux.com/displayshow.php?file=message_1108382427.txt>
where we learn that he is, quote, "Author of Who Let the Dogs Out
(2001), co-editor of Campus (2002), Die Offene Stadt (2003), Julie
Ault/Martin Beck Critical Conditions (2003), Bank 1-3 (2004) and Just do
it!  (2005)". And did I mention that when "Just Do It" came out, he and
Thomas Edlinger went onto a tour through Germany where they made public
readings of "their" book?

-F


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