Angelo Plessas

I dont remember when I first got posted..It might be around 2003..is this enough?

Nate Hitchcock

Nikola Tosic

I do not remember when was my first time on Rhizome. It must have been
around a decade ago (late 90s?).

I remember Rhizome was funded back then. At some point they lost the
funding, or something like that, and they decided to make it
commercial. I emailed one of the people who ran it - do not know the
name - and offered to organize outsourcing in Serbia. I think they
said they needed something like 50.000 USD for programming and I said
that could be done for 5.000 USD easily. They did not accept (!).

I guess they could not fire their current programmers who might have
been their friends or something.

Anyway Rhizome always felt unresponsive and distant. To me, it is like
trying to be friends with a most popular girl in the school or
something. Clearly one feels one has to be friends with them (which
already is kind of weird) and then once you get this feeling you also
realize that this is not easy to achieve.

This is how I always felt about this site. Kind of snobbish. That is
the first impression.

Maybe I am just insecure and antisocial. These two characteristics do
fit an Internet nerd profile for sure.

I really got upset over Brian Droitcour’s work. Brian is a
Russian-English translator employed by Rhizome to write about art and
he pretty much invents and colors stuff up the way he wants. He wrote
about my work without checking with me, basing it either on his
imagination or stuff he overheard while being my guest, and published
it. Rhizome did not care to take it off.

To me Rhizome is no different than someone’s blogspot. It is fun for
them but it is not an objective source of information. It always felt
that way.

But art is corrupt and art websites are the crown of this corruption.
Do nothing and pretend you do something - add no real value but create
the impression of value. Impression of value best maintained by
aggressive yet closed social cliques. Hire cheap low quality well
motivated labor (preferably friends who can dress and act the role).

After a decade with Rhizome I fail to see the value. If one of their
friends can ruin your image with one article then what is the point of
being featured in their blog or being the database. All these
functions are kind of useless if their essential attitude towards
understanding of art and people who make it or appreciate it is
faulty. If the entire system is based on who is friends with whom than
fuck it.

Rhizome still hosts my art BrianDroitcour.com -
http://www.rhizome.org/object.php?o=49208&m=1004517

I am still in the process of looking for a lawyer to sue Rhizome.

Ceci Moss

I discovered Rhizome when I was a senior at Berkeley. Up to that point, I was mostly interested in critical theory and intellectual history, and during my last year, I started gravitating towards media studies. I took a few media theory classes and I was roommates with Nate Boyce, who shared his collection of pirated video art tapes and his art books. I credit Nate with introducing me to a lot of this stuff. I moved to New York after I graduated in 2005 and I started working as the Special Projects Coordinator at the New Museum and Rhizome. Marisa invited me to contribute to the blog at some point, which was a really big deal! See below for my first post, from 2006. Marisa was incredibly encouraging about my writing, which meant a lot to me. The editor position came up a year later, I applied, and I got the job! I’ve been bloggin’ ever since.

Brian Droitcour

I started working for Rhizome as curatorial fellow in September 2008. I’d been in New York for about nine months, after moving here from Moscow, and I was looking for some kind of art institution to get involved with. I knew one of the staff writers (Tyler Coburn) and followed the blog. Rhizome seemed like it was doing more interesting things than any other organization around, so when the c.f. position came up I applied for it. And after my six months in that position were over I stuck around.

Also: I remember the first time I visited Rhizome.org. It was in the summer of 2007, when Documenta did the international independent art publications projects. I found a link to Rhizome on the Documenta site and clicked through to the ArtBase. This was before the last big redesign. If my memory’s not deceiving me, it was a huge list of mustard-colored hotlinks on a black background. It was overwhelming and I left.

Justin Kemp

jmb posted one of my pieces and i remember being super excited and telling a bunch of my grad school friends and all of them being like, “whats rhizome?” 

i dropped out the next day cuz i was finally too cool for school.

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2018
luv u rhizome <3

Travis Hallenbeck

It was January 24, 2007 - only 3 years back, but it seems like so long ago. It was an online show with Nasty Nets, Supercentral, and Olia Lialina.

Lauren wrote a description of my Livejournal that took it as seriously as I did. (John Michael had del.icio.used it a month before - he knew me through Javier in Athens, GA.) Looking back, it was important to get someone else’s take on what I was doing, because I’d been living in my head/online too much (I still am - why remembering and writing this is important!).

Here’s a post where I welcomed people from Rhizome.

I still think the best thing I had a part in on Rhizome was encouraging this post of Micaela Durand/BFFA3AE’s.

SeeCoy (Chris Coy)

Getting posted on rhizome was like the one cool, high school senior
kid with the bauhaus t-shirt high-fiving my nerdy-freshman-internet-fanboy-self and saying: ‘Hey, you’re ok.’ with the subtext being not only, ‘Hey you’re ok’ but, ‘Hey, it’s gonna be ok; you’re gonna be ok- and I’ll even be your friend and share what you’re doing with everyone else who gets it.”  I was ecstatic. Truly. A euphoria also experienced with the life-changing (not exaggerating) discovery of John Michael (Boling) & Javier’s website 53o’s, nasty nets and the entire del.icio.us internet surfing scene. Thx everyone for everything. <3