Abe Linkoln + Marisa Olson: ABE & MO “SING THE BLOGS”
January 2006
Abe Linkoln + Marisa Olson: ABE & MO “SING THE BLOGS”
ABE & MO “SING THE BLOGS” is a conceptual online “album” featuring Abe Linkoln and Marisa Olson singing posts from their favorite blogs. The Gate Page explores the genre-defining characteristics of blogs and their role as the “voice of the people.” Selecting the “greatest hits” from these online journals—such as the satirical Harriet Miers blog’s responses to her US Supreme Court nomination—the artists engage in a process of reblogging. Linkoln’s selected posts speak to musical genres at large, while Olson’s seek to find harmony within the selections. The project challenges traditional understanding of authorship and questions the role and voice of the artist in the digital age. By framing the blog as a performative stage on which they can potentially copy and spread materials in slight variations, the artists’ album references meme culture and the transformative nature of sampling.
Some of the linked sites related to this project are no longer online, but are available on the Internet Archive.
Abe Linkoln (aka Rick Silva, b. 1977; Piracicaba, Brazil) is a Brazilian-American artist whose videos, websites, and installations explore virtuality, futurology, and speculative ecologies. His work has been exhibited worldwide at institutions including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. He has had solo exhibitions at TRANSFER, New York; Wil Aballe Art Projects, Vancouver, Canada; New Shelter Plan, Copenhagen; and Ditch Projects, Springfield, Oregon. He has been featured in Artforum, WIRED, and Rhizome’s Net Art Anthology. He lives in Eugene, Oregon, where he is an associate professor at the University of Oregon.
Marisa Olson (b. 1977; Augsburg, Germany) combines performance, video, new media, painting, drawing, and installation in her work to address the cultural histories of technology and wellness, experiences of gender, and the politics of participation within pop culture. She is a founding member of the Nasty Nets internet surfing club, a former editor and curator of Rhizome, and the former associate director of the gallery SF Camerawork, San Francisco. Her work has been presented by institutions such as the New Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London, and Tate Liverpool, United Kingdom; the Venice Biennale (2007); Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece. It has also been featured in the New York Times, Interview, Frieze, Art in America, Art21, Le Monde, and the Wall Street Journal, among others.
Gate Pages
Every month from March 2001 to February 2006, the Whitney invited an artist or collective to present their work in the form of a “Gate Page” on artport. Each page was meant to function as a portal to the artist’s own sites and projects. The Gate Pages comprise a range of artistic approaches to the format—while some of them are designed as entry points to the respective artist’s website or promote a recently launched work, others take the form of a more complex stand-alone project.
Wherever necessary and possible, these works are made functional through emulation and reconstructions from the Internet Archive. Not all of them have been restored to their original state and their conservation is ongoing. You can also view the original Gate Pages archive to see how they were presented at the time of their creation.
artport
View more on artport, the Whitney Museum's portal to Internet and new media art.