We work out until it hurts!

if there ever will be a conclusion of this than it should be that brian droitcour is an artist.

i mean, what else can be said. everything else is bullshit.

brian is a perfect example of someone who has lost his way and thinks he wants to succeed in something which has something to do with whatever he thinks is important. in fact his heart craves for imagination and expression.

brian, quit the professional writing bullshit and be a poet.

at some point you will realize this… hopefully sooner.

and you are still an asshole. but we are all assholes sometimes. takes one to know one.

see how nice i can be!

certainly this whole business with rhizome.org and brian droitcour is annoying boring and dragging on.

i have received so many emails and comments.

half of these are how i should quit and how it is embarrassing and how it is really boring. i usually ask these people to actually check what is going on.

a friend of mine got recently hurt really bad by a newspaper, like a week ago, and he was extremely upset. sort of like i am. i did not really understand it. i was like - you are mad, go do something useful. but he kept talking about it. i really did not understand.

and then this happened to me. and now i do understand.

other half of comments i get are mostly that i am doing good and this comes from people who have experienced the same problem. someone presented them badly, people who care that they are treated properly, with respect.

what can i say… please do not send me emails how i should quit and how boring this is for you. if it is boring than do not follow it, it is only on my little blog and in comments to an article. there is plenty of other stuff online to follow. weather i should quit we will see, some discussions there are i think interesting and maybe something useful comes out. maybe the article will not be taken off but i hope that people in rhizome.org realize they should take a bit more care what they publish online. tomorrow it could be one of you who they write bizarre reviews about and then you will definitely understand what it is about.

as many things in life, one has to experience it to fully understand it. neither rhizome.org staff, nor brian nor part of the audience can understand the feeling when this happens to you. all i can ask is at least some understanding for the problem and patience to analyze it full.

in my opinion brian robbed me of some of my work and an opportunity to develop it in my own terms. i was robbed several times recently and i was cool with that, it happens, but in this case, for some reason, i feel something more than just property was taken.

thank you those who support me…

let me know about that lawyer…

for sure this will be forgotten in a month, or in a year, or in a decade. what will remain? maybe just a bit more respect from publishers and writers about their subjects.

i know no other way to make this point but what i am doing now, i am not smart enough to do it differently and this is my problem. maybe if i was born with more intelligence and more power i would solve this in a better way, maybe if i was friends with someone who can influence them or whatever. but i am not. this stupid drama is all someone like me can do and i hope at most it has some effect.

i am only a fart in the wind…

will it damage my image. that is up to you. all i know is that i am doing something i think i should be doing. i made a nice website about it - like i always do.

and brian is an asshole.

…

but what is bad taste, where does it start and where does it end. how far can someone yell and scream and bitch. how does public perception of this behavior work. i do not know. it is interesting… in a business which is about being cool it is always scary that you are not cool. but what does this mean “cool”? i am sorry i am not smarter to be really cool but what can one do…

i know how it feels when you watch someone sing really bad karaoke, you get embarrassed yourself. but sometimes you need to give it a try and go through it. understand this behavior. it is human. it is beautiful.

and brian is an asshole.

rhizome.org does not care. brian is their friend and they protect his methods.

seriously thinking about hiring a lawyer now - my lawyer is in serbia, anyone in nyc who wants to sue rhizome.org? im fed up with trying to talk to these people and playing around forums and blogs. it is time to move this to the next level. i would like to see them present their fiction in front of a court.

let me know

for one i have bellow proof.

check blakeyross.com.

i have written like a super long email (think several pages in a4 print) to lauren cornell explaining why every single mention of me in that stupid article is incorrect, damaging, hurtful and should be taken off.

for some reason rhizome.org can not get organized to delete one single paragraph.

i am getting a feeling they are stalling me.

when brian made absolute fuckup with the procedure and rules and made this article it is fine. but suddenly procedure is slow and must be obeyed and they can not just edit the damn article and take me out.

i mean what is this? kafka? it would take anyone there to edit an article in 5 minutes. fuck his rights as a writer, what of my rights in the first place? just take me out of that rubbish.

as time passes more and more people read this article and more damage is done. i have carefully explained why this article is damaging and i do not want to write about this in public anymore. there are serious reasons why. serious to my work, to me and to my art.

rhizome.org obviously does not take this as seriously as they should if editing one single paragraph is more important than such damage to me.

keep in mind that the effect of this article is as if a spy would publish national secrets in newspapers. you can not see that but some people will see it and it will damage me and my work.

this is clearly explained to lauren and yet there is no reaction - they are discussing?!?!?! what is there to discuss. either do it or don’t.

if you do not want to do it than we continue this useless battle over stupid blog posts and comments and emails but ultimately it will be me who will suffer damage due to this article and now both brian and rhizome.org will be responsible for this.

i was asked by lauren cornell, executive director of rhizome.org, to provide texts which prove that what brian droitcour wrote is incorrect.

i have managed to quickly call all my contacts and come up with a list of people who can guarantee my authenticity:

Queen of Spain
Bill Gates
Salvador Dali
the girl next door
High Priest of Burma
Editor of CNN.com
Michael Jordan and all 5 of his children
Kermit the Frog
my mom and dad
my best friends
previous previous director of Moscow Museum of Modern Art
the guy who once made coffee for Fidel Castro 5 years ago
my invisible friend JORKOH
Steven, guy I met on depressed.com chat (he always supports me no matter what!)
all taxi drivers from Stellenbosch, South Africa
a girl I wanted to sleep with
Maria X, greatest artist on earth who is not yet discovered by Brian and rhizome.org
Queen of Netherlands
King of Spain

i said i can provide them contacts to all these people except JORKOH who speaks only to me through telepathy.

if you have 5 mins free please write something about my art and me, write whatever you want, you can not be more off base than brian, and send it to me so i can forward it to rhizome.org.

obviously i am fucking around with this lauren cornell request, cause her request is like the game bullies play in school - they draw apples on a wall and say they will kick your ass if you do not pick them. (yes, school is cruel!)

if i am going to be bullied by rhizome.org i can at least have some fun with it on my own blog.

i was very inspired yesterday with all the crap about brian droitcour article. amazing how i got upset. he is lucky he was not in the same country with me at the moment.

in any case i made a website briandroitcour.com.

i found it funny to write those parodies in his style and people like them so ill play more with that, under his name. consider this an art work.

i submitted it to rhizome.org artbase and i hope they accept it. following description was added:

BrianDroitcour.com is a content / publishing online art piece focusing on the media and individual interpretations of art and artists identities. An art piece is free to evolve after it has been released in the public and is subject to shifting,c hanging, morphing. How far can these changes go? How different can someones impression be from the original intention? What is the function and credibility of media and art history? How can an individual cope with lack of control of his own identity? BrianDroitcour.com is a project asking these questions but not offering any answers…

i choose allegory and appropriation as categories. (had to look those up on wikipedia!)

brian should be flattered i dedicate so much attention to him, just as, i guess, i should be, that he dedicated so much attention to me. as i told him when he was here - he should be an artist and not a journalist. obviously he sucks as a journalist, someone will kill him at some point. i already got like 4 other people complaining about his shit writing.

but i think he would be much better if he was just doing art and stop trying to be this wannabe power guy. has something to do with childhood inferiority complex to try to be a journalist, curator, whatever is on top.

there you go… petty psychoanalyses for free

i will stop writing about this issue now, i am already mega bored by it…

it is true that i welcomed brian droitcour in our home and he was our guest for several days. i have done this because my impression was he was travelling through and might need a place to sleep over and cut costs. i am always happy to host people who pass by or visit. i did not know what actually brian does. he appeared to be no different than any other traveler - little cash and interested in some relaxation and i was ready to help out. i was not aware he was working or he was interested in writing about anything. he did want to meet artists but i also want to meet artists or athletes or anyone when i go somewhere.

problem is that he never said he will write about me or anything i do. he never presented himself formally. i was keen to discuss my work with him, and also his work, but he seemed bored by that and we spoke about other stuff. he actually showed extreme disinterest in my work which from one side was ok cause we had other stuff to talk about, but on the other i was keen to talk to people about my work as it always offers me a perspective.

he never declared that he is researching me for an article and i never treated him as a journalist. i never gave any statements, never gave him any documents, nothing. i was hanging out with this guy for few days trying to get to know him and for him to understand me better maybe. like with anyone who visits.

indirectly i got a link to the rhizome article a day after it was published. he never told me about his intention to write this nor asked me for approval or use of any of my material.

i was never asked to contribute to this article, i was never asked for any permissions or any approvals. the article was a complete surprise to me. maja ciric sent me the link and she said i got a lot of space. i did not read it, i quickly skimmed it and emailed brian with “nice text”. i felt stupid sending this but we had another argument over emails and i wanted to send something nice. i actually did not read the text. i saw he wrote quite a bit and read few words but i actually had super hard core headache and fever and could not focus.

next day, today, i sat and read the text.

my first impression was: what the fuck is this???

i mean this text is like a parody or something. it has nothing to do with me. my heart rate was like 200bpm. my head was pulsating from adrenalin. i was super angry. i was like this for most of the day. who is this guy to write all this bullshit about me. he was in my home few days ago, my guest, why did he not at least tell me about the article???

almost every word in that text is totally wrong. i can say he got my name write. everything else is like a joke. like someone making fun of what i am and what i do. and how many people have already read this? how did this get approved?

also things he says about ljubljana, zagreb and belgrade are bizarre. text is full of stupid petty stereotypes, misinterpretations, totally reversed ideologies, placed out of context information… also the way he quoted maja ciric, i have met he recently but it seemed strange that he was saying these things and i also did not get an impression he interviewed her. i called her on the phone and she was confused as well - she was never interviewed and she did send some statements but asked to check the text before publishing and he never did this.

basically brian droitcour just put together whatever came to his head and published it with no checking, and no interest in opinions of people who were in the text. he placed strong connotations on me and maja yet these, at least in my case, are terribly wrong (and i think in maja’s) and also he presents everything in a totally wrong concept.

i am not sure if brian ever had journalism training but he probably broke every single rule… and he did everything he could not to prevent these mistakes. probably the most unprofessional behavior ever by a journalist.

i was super angry, i was beyond myself. why would someone do this to me? why would someone do this to anyone? is it not so simple to just send the text for checking, or to formally interview people? i always ask my subjects and i am always available for comments.

i have to apologize to rhizome staff as i emailed them in panic. i hope they reconsider this statement.

i emailed brian to take the article off but he refused. in my opinion he probably does not even understand how much damage he is doing and how much off he is. he could have changed the article not to include me but he did not do it. he had the whole day to do it.

brian droitcour came here, spent few days, he was our guest, he ate with us, met my parents, i drove him around, paid for his food, have him gifts, even made him sandwiches for his next trip. he did not understand much, i think he is not a very understanding type, he seemed very focused on certain things but totally isolated from others, and he made up his own story which gives a very wrong picture of what is actually going on. what some people are trying to do, what their goals are, what the environment is etc…

at first i was impressed with brian and i respected someone who would start a research trip. he reminded me of explorers. he was strange a bit but i still respected him and i thought i understood his goal and wanted to help. i thought people who explore should be helped.

but unfortunatelly he is not able to understand what he is exploring. he is probably one of the more isolated people i have met. he is superficial. at least in this case he demonstrated this methodology. he is not able to understand beyond what he concludes in first few seconds which is, in his case, totally wrong.

there are people here who have been doing work and fighting for their work for decades, culture is being developed for millenniums, you can not just come over, summarize it in an article in 5 minutes, press publish on rhizome.org and lock these people in your superficial stereotypes.

rhizome.org and such media have enormous power and such power must not be given to people who do not respect it and do not know how to use it well. who are not willing to take time and study the subjects and understand them. it can not be given to people who treat decades of someones work, someones identity, as a piece of chewing gum which has to fill todays editorial requirement.

some respect should be given to the subjects and people take a bit more to be studied than brian droitcour’s 5 minutes.

unfortunatelly brian droitcour also writes for other magazines and, i am guessing, plans to expand his writing and curating career. i hope that now he learns to respect people more. however, after i have met him and after this incident occurred, i doubt that he has it in him.

i would still appreciate if rhizome.org would take off that false article and reconsider their editorial policy - learn from this error.

i was inspired by brian droitcour article on rhizome so i made some parody examples how brian might write about other subjects:

this is how brian droitcour would write about rafael rozendaal:

Rafael Rozendaal is an artist, webdesigner and Andy Warhol fan from Maastricht, Holland. While Rafael pays his bills by doing freelance webdesign he uses his free time to produce drawings, oil paintings and Adobe Flash animations. Rafael has focused on drawing mustaches and painting canvases in full colors with triangles on edges.

Other major cultural contributions from Maastricht are White Devils metal band and Johan Van Dynk, 65 year old naive artist and performer who trained his dog to pain portraits. However Maastricht offers extremely poor cultural support so Rafael was forced to experiment with Adobe Flash software and find his own way.

this is how brian droitcour would write about miltos manetas:

Miltos Manetas is a Greek immigrant artist who focuses on producing oil paintings of floors, tv screens and women. Especially interesting is his study of his Chinese girlfriend Yi Yo. In free time Miltos has experimented with Adove Flash and HTML coding as an art medium.

Miltos is currently residing in London due to lack of support from his native Greece. No one is preventing him from painting tv screens in London!

this is how brian droitcour would write about andy warhol:

Andy Warhol is a Polish American painter know for his paintings of every day food items from supermarkets. During the interview with Andy Warhol he offered me a cigarette and I was touched by his Eastern European / Polish politeness. This Polish artist has left his mark on me with his dominant use of red and magenta. There are many Warhol works which can be admired but I am touched by his Tomato Soups.

This amazing specimen of Polish American movement and culture in our native USA will be remembered for generations.

However, Andy Warhol and Ronald Regan are contemporaries they have never officially collaborated. It is not clear if there were intentions by either parties to interact.

this is how brian droitcour would write about paris:

I arrived in Paris and stayed for 5 hours on the train station. After I checked the initial brochures on the train station it was clear to me that in spite all the history and advertising Paris did not have much to offer culturally. I managed to talk to few people I heard about a decade ago and some I found on a local website for pet exchange, but due to my lack of knowledge of French and their culture, we did not get very far. Although Paris is five times bigger than London it still offers 23 times less cultural content.

maybe we need brian droitcour to give us a new view on art history or world in general???