November 2007: Word of Mouth

     “What exactly is semantikon?” she said with half a smile.
She had already shown her teeth to my peers in the Cincinnati arts community; they had secured funding for her literary organization, lent their credibility. She had shown them --- a door. The lights were still low on the performance side of the venue that night, I could have been on my way home having simply honored a personal request by dear friend, Mark Flanigan, to throw my support adn leave. Now I was stuck between her, the door and forever; two, locked. I understood her questions were the kind of questions that were not questions at all. More like --- a measuring stick inthe shape of knife with a blade that would never shimmer in her shadow. As the lights came up, I watched her shadow melt away, I watched as she eased into my genteel acquiesece ---listened as she explained how she:

“…really didn’t understand all this web stuff...
... maybe we could publish some of my work...
... maybe publish semantikon in paper format under her organization’s banner?”  
“Of course…” she insisted (and despite my silence), “You could edit it.”

     I realized, as I demured, that the piece I had read that night about Ohio cultural figures making good on their own promise, had not gone over nearly as well as the applause suggested. It was lost on her, that the piece opened with a quote by Benjamin Franklin --- inventor, postmaster, statesman, and publisher.
“Industry, need not wish”.

     She must have assumed I was looking to make good on a common refrain about semantikon in Cincinnati arts community at that time; that the site should be in printed format. Her offer to let me edit my own publication, seemed to me, obtuse and insecure.
     Sometime later,as I was going over site statistics, I discoverd that her organization linked to semantikon. There, on their website, they had listed semantikon ---as an "affiliate and a resource". The the truth of the matter is otherwise. Semantikon had never aligned ourselves with her organization. Her organization was simply using semantikon as relevancy tuning, also known less precisiely as“link bait”.A quick of hypertext where you improve your search engine status and relevancy by:

          1. Creating a set of links referencing a bunch of external sites on your own site making claims like those listed
          2. Profit from the popularity of the the websites content and purpose

      The fact that I have withheld the name of the organization in this piece is no mistake. To mention them would contextualize us with them again. So much for the saying “no such thing as bad press.”

     What artists have to say about you when you are an arts organization can make or break your organization. The opening of the world-wide-web complicated this matter. The web was a new mass medium artists could exploit. The web exposes an opportunity for a new dialogue between artists and their audience, and artist with society. Despite limitations, the advantages the internet afford artists exceeds the risks. The web allows artists to conduct their creative affairs without being hindered by how the work will be arbitrated socially and financially, in this way, it provides a new way for artists to work with urgency. Physically, the medium may be limited in terms of how the work can be presented, but in a once in a lifetime paradox, phsyical format does not limit geographic reach. The web also allows artists to share their work with an enormous array of presentational strategie. The control they have over timing, media, messaging, devices, locales and methods offer an extraordinary degree of control and influence over their interaction with the audience. Despite the web’s otherworldly qualities; the web has also meant that artists must better evaluate and articulate their direct role in community life. The physical legacies of our creative ancestors is not our own, and in many ways, inadeuqate for this time. Never has a new mass medium returned so much power to the creative nor, so quickly. Artists can employ the medium, or they can deride it, the fact secure, the web is part of how future generations will account for and measure this generation of artists. Semantikon stands between here and there, part document and archive.
     Choosing to defer on the buying or selling advertising, has left semantikon weak in some people’s eyes. Leaving it up to the audience to share works should be a good thing for artists, for arts publishing, but the urge to negotiate for the aspiration of profit, is severe. For the artists, gallery openings, film festivals and publishing credits that can further one’s career are hard won. To uproot a career’s-worth of professional wisdom is no easy thing, so it is, perhaps, all the better that artists are the first to fully recognize the power of the web.
     Editorial cults and niche publishing being the high-water mark of publishing world before the web, as I think back on the conversation with the unnamed leader of a nopnprofit, I wonder what she thinks one might one get for going away from the web? Really. What might it be like to answer the question of "How will you build your network in an entirely different world where few people are and nothing can be proven?" The tone of such a line of questioning, tilts the edge of the blade to show how it is honed. "How will you manage without us? How will you operate in a world without doors that lock, glass you can see through? A world without the attention paid to the way we stack paper and can negotiate print deals beacuse it takes paper to make paper? How will you operate without everything we have done to create ourselves in the image and idiom of this very real publishing world? What will you do when you don't have other people to explain it for you?" In that world, a focus on community and a trust for "word of mouth", must sound like a rumor.
     It must look like some sort of naïve trust---that semantikon foregoes advertising and most everything about the print publishing world. It must be, that Semantikon appears, imprecise, spending its energy to operationalize a premise--- any step away from direct contact between the artist and their audience at this time, makes way for interference.
     Bearing witness as a heel-riding anthropologist asked to entertain the insecurities of another while on my way to somehwere else with you, I maintain, new ideas about how and why it is important to create community, are not words you should hold on to. Especially when, others want to make it their own by indirect affiliation. Despoite this, leave link bait to link bait.

Next month, we will turn to examine how a community developed around the semantikon space.

Until...
Lance Oditt

Editors Coda | October 2020:
The organization discussed here, is the now defunct Inktank who, despite our philisophical differences, especially those related to their orgnorance of the growing digitial divide, made enormous strides in Over the Rhine community life in the early 2000's. Of course, (of course!) their intention were good, we simply had no interest, instead took our chances and spoke instead, from the performance piece below.


Industry Need Not Wish
” Industry need not wish.”
          -- Benjamin Franklin

August 2004 CNN headline read “Ohio the key battleground state”. Story read, “Ohio a target market.”
TARGET MARKET?
Taken to extremes

and they want a middle.

Mid-west
Middle policy
Middle east
Middle right
and the middle left
Middle finger.

Previous to the onslaught that had Ohioans debating political wolves for breakfast and sycophantic vultures for dinner,
the only headline that made it out of here, was the story of how Federal agents had foiled a plan to bomb a Columbus mall.

A nod to Ben---I say,
so long as no one gets hurt, don’t pick battles your enemies can fight for you.

Paul Westerberg (of Replacements fame) made it all too clear when he said “if you can’t make it in the Midwest, you got no right trying to make it anywhere else.”

Whatever city you’re working that shitty job to get to,
whatever scene you think won’t sparkle and fade.
How ever you deal with the fact that anyone here that can afford your art, will be unbearable.
So long as you’re aware, that your x will fuck someone you know ---eventually --- if you’re here tonite,
if you plan on making it,
you
are taking Ohio with you.

So a toast,
to those you making your practice rounds…
those of you on your way to nationals.
To those of you coming from a therapy session
---or---
Heading towards some un-equivocal breakdown,
A toast to some names and a good reason, to keep in mind.  

-!!-

Hank Williams Sr. died in a car accident on his way to a concert in Ohio,
so
if god is in heaven,
Ohio ain’t about country music.
Bootsy, Adirend Belew, Zapp, Tracy Chapman, Ohio Players, Eric Kunzel, Nine Inch Nails, Devo, The Cramps, The Pretenders, The Raisins, The Afghan Whigs, The Ass Ponies, Over the Rhine and everything after...

Gloria Steinem was born in Ohio
so, take some actual equality.

Charles Manson, little piggy,
changed fairy tales and hot dogs forever.

If Barbie sheik has got you resurfacing your teeth with P&G products,
you’re in the right place, She was imagined here.

When ya need it, Two other homegrowns,
Tracii Lords and John Holmes,
might shed light on a better way
when you gotta take it on your knees.

“stupid fucking white men.” ?
Yes, full of them, and well before General George Custer, as native Jim Jarmursh,
was pointed out in his film Deadman.
 
Ohio has been a symbol of freedom long before any campaign "mastermind” with a mailing list set about spell checking their party rhetoric.

Freedom for slaves
and anyone on their way to freedom to Canada.

Jim Dine paints hearts.
Trent Reznor makes Nine Inch Nails to hang them up.

The Pretenders miss Cleveland, but Chrissie Hynde don’t eat meat in this slaughter house town.

Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling done his homework at Antioch College. The same school that garnered national attention when they in-stated a student policy that one must verbally ask for sex before having it. This alum is happy to report, it cut through to the heart of most matters.

Designer Maya Lin knows something special about war, the name of every person that died in Vietnam.

Hollywood loves us to hate us
as almost every movie or tv show has some reference to Ohio.
(If you pay close attention, characters are either coming from, going to, or in some way, denigrating Ohio.)
Notable examples, the People vs. Larry Flynt, about a porn lord,
and Rain Man,
a movie about the autistic variety of brotherly love
An the Cincinnati film commission would welcome you to know, is the right kind of story about our home.

We look forward to your arrival.