|
context
Diary of a Star is a critical take on blogging that appropriates selections from the Andy Warhol Diaries. This project started on 2/28/2004 and ended on 12/31/2007. Originally, I expected to finish it in one year (thirty selected diary entries per year blogged per month), but in the end it took me three years; and this is the only thing that changed from the critical outline that follows below. When necessary, I planned to take no more than a month off from the diaries because of other commitments, but as it turned out at times I took several months off. This could not be helped. What should matter is the integrity of the accounts currently present in this blog. You will find many voices on both sides of the blog, simply because that's life: people live, and die. If after browsing through the entries you feel like dropping me a line for critical feedback or just a question, please don't hesitate to do so: eduardo_at_navasse_dot_net Eduardo Navas
Blogging is an online activity blurring the line of the private and public, something Warhol was interested in doing in all of his work. As it is commonly known, a blog (short for weblog) is basically an online journal where the writer, who is called a blogger, posts entries for online readers. The blogs are mostly informal and extremely biased. Sometimes bloggers, as they realize that their logs have an increasing audience, may tailor their entries to accommodate the readers. This is not always the case but it does happen, particularly if the blogger has a way of letting the readers comment on the postings via a feedback form. The format of the blog is similar to diary entries, only on the Web the content is exposed to an unknown public. This uncertainty places the blogger in an odd place where the writing can at times be intimate along the lines of a personal journal while functioning in a public arena; because bloggers are implicitly aware of this, the entries can be considered tainted. And here the private public dichotomy that Andy Warhol was so interested in exploring becomes exposed. The Andy Warhol Diaries function in much the same way as blogs do today; this may be due to Warhol's awareness of his public persona. The diaries read as though he knew that his material would be published at one point. Indeed, his entries when read online, especially when links are added, are quite fascinating. They read as though he wrote them a few hours before, just like an average blogger would do on an ordinary day. But the credit should really go to Pat Hackett, who edited the diaries, and who wrote all the original entries when Warhol called her in the morning to tell her about the previous day. Ultimately, it may be her editing that makes the Warhol Diaries read as an early printed version of a blog. The Andy Warhol Diaries was edited by Pat Hackett from a set of entries primarily used as Tax expense records. After Andy's death on February 22, 1987 Hackett realized that the tax logs contained rich material that could become the ultimate portrait of Warhol. The result is a set of diary entries that tell us about Warhol's idiosyncrasies while doing what he did best: expose the rich and famous in unique moments that at times could even be considered embarrassing. I use selections of the Andy Warhol Diaries in the form of a blog to comment on diary entries, the private and public, the idea of a celebrity and her life as a public persona, and the activity of web-surfing as part of a new social space. The way the project works is I select an entry from Warhol's diary and type it verbatim on the blog to the right called "diary." I create links of people and places that Warhol mentions. I then comment on the people and/or the entry itself on the blog to the left called "meta diary." What I write always depends on how I relate to Warhol's entry as well as what I learn while surfing the links his entry provided. The entries correspond by date. The way they are recontextualized as a blog allows for the online user to recognize the aura of Warhol, as well as the autonomy of the work as an allegorical piece of art. To accentuate this dynamic, the comments I make are separated from Warhol’s entries in the archives. The user can only read them seperately and must move back and forth between them. I will often take more than half a day to post my own entry, so chances are that when the reader visits this website the "meta-diary" will be a day behind. Diary of a Star was inspired by Baudelaire's dandy, also known as a Flaneur. During a creative critical writing Ph.D. seminar I took with Lesley Stern at UCSD in the Winter quarter of 2004, I was expected to write a critical essay that was creative and which problematized the usual academic approach to writing. My response was an essay which combined Baudelaire's Flaneur and Andy Warhol's persona as the subjects of modernity and postmodernity, respectively. The essay explains how they become my avatars to surf the web. This is why the log entries are posted by "dandy" in Andy's log (right) and by "meta-dandy" in my own log (left). The essay is now part of this project and can be read as a pdf file. A corresponding link is at the top of this page. This project consists of two parts. The first is from March 28, 2004 to May 11, 2004. The second starts on July 1, 2004 and is still going on. The first half has entries from the first two months of Warhol's diaries. After writing for sometime, I came to realize that it would take me about ten years to write all of the Warhol diaries online. I do not have this kind of time to devote to the project so I decided to break it down to a more manageable time period of ten months, which means that each year equals a month. How this works is actually in the meta-dandy blog entry of May 11, 2004. It is quoted below and you can also visit the actual entry here. Following is the May 11, 2004 entry: Tuesday,
May
11,
2004
|
