Clinton Fein's Annoy.com
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called it obscene and illegal; renowned artist Lynda Benglis dubbed it "Press Art."
Introduction
Fein's annoy.com is a visceral response; nothing more than an in-your-face, bitterly ironic and unapologetically wry interpretation of the events, politicians, consumer brands and media onslaught that are packaged to relentlessly permeate our consciousness and intoxicate our senses.Read more
Originally spawned in a digital realm at the dawn of Internet commercialization, annoy.com brazenly trashed the distinction between content and conduct by challenging the constitutionality of an insidious provision of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that criminalized any “indecent” computer communications intended to “annoy” another person. The provision in question made criminal, constitutionally protected communications among adults, including public officials.
In 1997, the launch of annoy.com mocked the oppressive attempts to limit electronic expression by linking provocative imagery to a suite of proprietary web tools designed to inspire and facilitate a dialogue that continues to test the limits and definitions of “decency” and “annoyance” today. With freedom of expression in one of the most exciting and promising mediums since the turn of the century at stake, Clinton Fein challenged Bill Clinton and his administration that ratified the Communications Decency Act by filing a lawsuit against Attorney General Janet Reno, which would wind itself all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
The images in this exhibition are the direct manifestation of that challenge, extracted from their interactive context, adjusted and translated into a static medium using a Color Cruse Camera process to create archival quality, state-of-the art color photographic Type C Prints. The images selected for the exhibition represent a snapshot of the events, people and brands that are rooted in annoy.com’s already formidable history.
Reviews
The more umbrageous among us may not click past Annoy's home page, primed as it is for publicity with repeat-looped images of a wide range of uncovered private parts and brazen racial epithets. That would be a shame. The interesting thing about Annoy.com is that many will find it more amusing and enlightening than irritating..Click for select reviews
Contemporary art gets no more incendiary than the C-prints on political and social topics…
Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle
…downright obnoxious…
News.com
He’s made Mickey Mouse a homosexual martyr, strapped Dick Cheney to General Electric’s electric chair, slapped the pope onto a perforated condom wrapper and transformed Lady Liberty into a rifle-wielding madwoman.
Tanya Pamploni, The San Francisco Examiner
The more umbrageous among us may not click past Annoy’s home page, primed as it is for publicity with repeat-looped images of a wide range of uncovered private parts and brazen racial epithets. That would be a shame. The interesting thing about Annoy.com is that many will find it more amusing and enlightening than irritating.
The site is worthy of exploration for its irreverent use of interactivity, and there are also other kinds of provocative material here — in particular, cogent essays on media and social issues that are as edgy as anything on the Internet.
The Images
The New Missus The New MissusNot like the limp wristed of Italian fame, with cowering limbs effeminate from toe to hand; Here at our blood-soaked, dark gates shall stand a fleshless killing machine with a weapon whose discharge is incarcerated thunder, and her name Mother Fucker. From her cold, dead fingers Screeches isolationist disdain, her lifeless eyes dictate The polluted harbor over whom twin cities loathe and litigate. "Vomit from your ancient lands your rotting wealth!" sneers she with grit-clenched teeth. "Yoke your diseased, your frail, Your sickly masses choking to breathe Ours free, The stinking diversity of your tainted shores. Bring only, the rich, pure, pharmaceutically virgined to me, I pack my heat behind the impenetrable door!" Osama Bin Laden
Blood Spangled Banner
Oh, say can you feel by the dusk’s fading light
How so sadly we mourn our constitution is screaming?
Whose wise words and great power could not win such a fight,
When our guardians we watched stripped the words of their meaning?
And the terrorist nightmare, the politician’s hot air,
Simply stole all we love
Our liberty no longer there.
Oh, say from the rubble that is now a mass grave
Can our freedom we rebuild and our constitution we save?
Banana Republicans, Stock Market Crashes Gap Generations, World Trade Center Ashes Sweat Shop Shenanigans, Corporate Snitches Apple Stock Options, Abercrombie & Bitches Starbucks Addictions, Executive Greed Monsanto Corn Ears, Burger King Feed General Electric, Vice President Energy Searle Pharmaceuticals, CEO Synergy Sweaters by Nike, Portfolio Big Bust Microsoft Antitrust, Mister Ashcroft Mistrust Bullets by Bennetton, Kenneth Cole Blues Mattel Bulimia, Martha Stewart Stews Dell Dudes in Doldrums, Global Currency Woes Scandalized CEOs, WTO Lows Commodities Fading, Futures Uncertain Insider Trading, Inside Halliburton Inefficient Management, Beneficent Boards Embattled Embezzlers, White Collar Fraud Black & Decker, Black & White, Presidential Joke Texas Rangers, Harken Energy, Diet Pepsi, Coke Patents, Trademarks, Casual Fridays, Low Class Action Suit IMF, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit
Strike a Pose... Judy Nathan, Gracie too Diallo, that is Amadou Andres Serrano.. Damien Hirst Decency above all first Abner Louima, Holy See Howard Safir, Hillary Chris Ofili.. Pataki too Sensation, NYPD Blue Rudy has class Rudy has taste Brooklyn Museum, Sacred Waste Disney.. Times Square.. Prostate Blues Donna Hanover.. Bloomberg News Vagina Monologues, Penis Passions Tabloid Headlines, Fascist Rations Funding Witholds, Catholic Leer Virgin Dung, Madonna Smear
Stern Lawbreaker! yet thou dost wear The Calumniate 's most malignly mask; Nor know we anything so dark As is the taint upon thy task: Truth burns before thee on her deathbed And distrust in thy bidding dreads; Thou dost accuse fair moon of treason, And the most despised fires of hell, with thee, fester sick devoid of reason. To nobler functions, awful Power! I call thee: I myself resist Unto thy trickery from this hour. O let my revulsion have no end! Give unto me, made bitterly wise, The spirit to challenge the ghastly lies; The confidence of freedom try; Or in the death of Justice thy bondman let me die!
Dick Cheney
Enviroviticus Out of the fumes that choke us, Black as the Soot from oil to drill, We curse whatever gods may be For environmentalists shrill. Amidst the stench of weeping bark With brazen chop and pious pave. Under the ozoneless of skies We damn the soil, dehydrate your grave. Beyond this place of sweat and Khaki Looms naught but Nature's sickly grudge, And yet the warming of the globe Finds, and shall find, us unwilling to budge. It matters not how green the gas, How dry the sand; how diluted the brand, We are the masters of our dearth: We are the destroyers of our earth.
George Washington
George Washington
Burn Baby, Burn Burn Baby, Burn; Earn Baby, Earn; Green Backed Stealth Red Neck Wealth High Stakes Blood Sports Low Key Afterthoughts Temper High, Semper Fi; In God We Trust, For This We Die.
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
It was the sickest of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of tabloidism, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of misinformation, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Disgust, it was the season of Darkness, it was the fall of integrity, it was the winter of despair, we had nothing behind us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Hell, we were all going indirect the same way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insist on its being received, for tragedy or for tears, in the desperate degree of emphasis only.
Timothy Mc
Veigh
Timothy Mc
Veigh
Lethal IndigestionThe more we kill, the more we eat; The kids explode; the mothers bleat; A toxic wasteland blows apart; The heavens bleed; the frying starts Foot and Mouth and Bomb and Hand; Burgers, Rifles, Promised Land, Swallow the poison, kill the swine; Block the circuit; pretend it's fine. It's payback baby, even score; It's in God's name, it's just one more. The more we kill; the more we waste Perfect precision, damn good taste.
Jon
Benet Ramsey
Jon
Benet Ramsey
With the regurgitated hollow of greedy promises and sycophantic evil, the lickspittle hounds of perversity package our collective grief, and with depraved, whore-like lust, sell it back to us for nothing less than our battered souls, politics, and thirty pieces of tarnished silver.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
We don't believe in mass branding of people. There are saints, martyrs and devils of every stripe, color, and ethnicity. For every martyr-like American prisoner of war, there is an American that will happily kill and rape a fleeing Albanian refugee. For every slaughterer in Serbia there is a gentle kind protector that will shield and hide victims (only to be turned into a Steven Spielberg movie one day). And for every well meaning political leader, there is an opportunistic pig who will stop at nothing to assert supremacy in an uncertain world.
John Paul II
John Paul II
Holier Than Thou...Hallelujah ®, Praise the Lord ® Jesus, Inc. God Corp. Holy See ® Holy Blind ® Virgin Slut Cruel Kind Intellectual Property Antiquated Prophecy Madonna ® Pepsi ® Silent Night AIDS Amen.com ®. © Copyright
Uncle Sam
Uncle Sam
And as the bastards went to war No one cared, 'cos no one saw With no thought, no rhyme, no reason The empty threats of troop cohesion Were left lying like a corpse in an early grave And still they gave The deathly lies and violence "Fag," said I, "It's time to go The war is over end the show. Your life is only worthwhile when you die Although we asked, we cannot take the lie" And the bombs and bullets echoed through the desolate night With deafening lies and violence The blind and wounded could not find There was nothing left behind And the victory scream of naked hate Could do nothing to redeem the State And the Law said "These people cannot any longer help us win the war" Forever more And then killed them with lies and violence.
Annoy.com Lawsuit
On January 30, 1997, Clinton Fein launched annoy.com, simultaneously filing a federal court action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief challenging the provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 that criminalized any "indecent" computer communication intended to "annoy" another person.
Much of the content on annoy.com was deliberately provocative and very often, somewhat crass, mocking the pretensions and piety of politicians and media alike.
The CDA’s assault on the First Amendment could not be countered with subtleties. So began a prolonged court battle against Janet Reno and the Clinton Administration that was finally determined by the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
Fein became the first South African born activist to challenge the United States government before the Supreme Court.
See Details of Annoy.com Lawsuit
Post Traumatic Press Syndrome
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Artforum, New York's prestigious art magazine, pulled an advertisement for an Annoy.com exhibition.
The advertisement consisted of an image displaying a purse-lipped Rudy Giuliani sitting naked in a urine-filled glass box, referencing the technique used by artist Damien Hirst and part of an exhibit, Sensation, that resulted in the former mayor withholding funding from the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Artforum would later give conflicting reasons for the decision that day veering between operational and ideological justifications.