Lucy Alcock wrote:
>
> Relax,   I'm not 'way hip' - I live at the bottom of the world in a city of
only 150,000 - or 300,000 if you include the region!  (Remember this list goes
a little wider than the old US of A.).

Oh, I don't know about that. There's a New Zealand artist by the name of
Mike Stevenson who uses art world comspiracies as the subject of his
work. In a recent issue of World Art (2/1996) he says: "It's
particularly interesting to consider this conspiracy about the center
when you don't live in the center. I think that's another inherent thing
about provincialism, that you have conspiracies about the center because
the center has had that power over you."

Politicians like Jesse Helms have made great use of art world and other
conspiracies to make the world a safer place for cigarette
manufacturers. The media saturated generation that's coming up seems to
be aware of the ridiculousness of this tactic and that's what I think is
meant by "post-ironic". The actual irony is that the best thing museums
can do now is to be museums, places where the "real thing" is made
available to help visitors locate themselves in a growing global media
environment. Yeats was wrong, the center is holding, but it's in the
individual and community.

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ROBBIN MURPHY, creative director, artnetweb
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