1911 lines
99 KiB
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1911 lines
99 KiB
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<chapter>
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<title>Deep Europe</title>
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<desc>...</desc>
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<mails>
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<mail>
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<nbr>0.0</nbr>
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<subject>[spectre] new mailing list: SPECTRE :info</subject>
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<from>Andreas Broeckmann</from>
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<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
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<date>Fri, 7 Sep 2001 17:47:48 +0200</date>
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<content>[folks: if you are interested in subscribing to this list, please, follow
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the instructions below; as we are expecting quite a lot of initial
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requests, please, give us some time to process everything; greetings,
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andreas & inke]
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SPECTRE is an open, unmoderated mailing list for media art and culture in
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Deep Europe.
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Initiated in August 2001, SPECTRE offers a channel for practical
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information exchange concerning events, projects and initiatives organized
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within the field of media culture, and hosts discussions and critical
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commentary about the development of art, culture and politics in and beyond
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Europe. Deep Europe is not a particular territory, but is based on an
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attitude and experience of layered identities and histories - ubiquitous in
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Europe, yet in no way restricted by its topographical borders.
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SPECTRE is a channel for people involved in old and new media in art and
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culture. Importantly, many people on this list know each other personally.
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SPECTRE aims to facilitate real-life meetings and favours real face-to-face
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(screen-to-screen) cooperation, test-bed experiences and environments to
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provoke querying of issues of cultural identity/identification and
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difference (translatable as well as untranslatable or irreducible).
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WHAT IS (A) SPECTRE?
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1. "There's a spectre haunting Europe ..." (K. Marx/F. Engels)
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2. S.P.E.C.T.R.E.: Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism,
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Revenge and Extortion (James Bond 007 movies)
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3. spektr was a module of the MIR space station focussing on the research of
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micro gravity
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4. Les Spectres de Marx (J. Derrida)
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5. Craig Baldwin's latest movie: Spectres of the Spectrum (2000)
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6. to be continued...
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NETIQUETTE ON SPECTRE:
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- no HTML, no attachments, messages < 40K
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- meaningful discussions require mutual respect
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- self-advertise with care!
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SUBSCRIPTION POLICY:
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SPECTRE is initially hosted by Inke Arns <inke@snafu.de> and Andreas
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Broeckmann <abroeck@transmediale.de>. Requests for subscription have to be
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approved by hosts. Subscriptions may be terminated or suspended in the case of
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persistent violation of netiquette. Should this happen, the list will be
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informed. The list archives are publicly available, so SPECTRE can also be
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consulted and followed by people who are not subscribed.
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*Subscribe
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http://post.openoffice.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
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or mail to: spectre-request@mikrolisten.de
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subject=subscribe
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*Unsubscribe
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mail to: spectre-request@mikrolisten.de
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subject=unsubscribe</content>
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</mail>
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<mail>
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<nbr>1.0</nbr>
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<subject>[spectre] RE: new mailing list: SPECTRE :info</subject>
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<from>Andreas Broeckmann</from>
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<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
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<date>Sun, 09 Sep 2001 19:43:53 +0200 (CEST)</date>
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<content>dear anna,
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thanks for your message.
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Zitiere anna balint <epistolaris@freemail.hu>:
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> dear Andreas and Inke,
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>
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> I was offline a for a couple of days I see now that your initiatives
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> are. I
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> regret tremendously that you decided not to collaborate anymore with
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> the
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> syndicate list, and you preferred to start a new list, but anyway I wish
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> you
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> many success.
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> Meanwhile I saw that you based your new mailing list on the notion of
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> deep
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> europe, a term which I invented in 1996. I insist that you mention in
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> your
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> announcing letter this fact: 'deep europe, a notion coined by anna
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> balint
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> 1996'. I will have to publish in all media forums my article from
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> 1996,
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> everywhere where you announced the new list - which given the
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> circumstances
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> will deepen the crisis and will even mor differentiate the opinions. But
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> I
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> can't agree that you appropriate my term and you base a discussion forum
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> on
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> it without giving a proper credit for it. Andreas, you heard the term
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> deep
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> europe from Geert Lovink, with whom I was discussing my idea in 1996,
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> please
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> clarify this.
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> greetings,
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> Anna
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>
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the term came up in discussion with geert in 1996/97 when we were preparing the
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syndicate workshop for documenta x in 1997; it is quite possible that geert
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brought it up, and i am happy to assume that the term came from anna originally.
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it is a bit odd that you never felt the need to point this out in the last 5
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years when this term has been used also in other publications (like my text in
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the ostranenie 97 catalogue), but i see no reason why you should not be credited
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for 'inventing' it. it's a useful and strong metaphor! (is your own
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interpretation closer to the one that equates Deep Europe with eastern europe, or
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do you follow the interpretation formulated by luchezar, referring to the depth
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of layered identities which can be found any where in the continent, and beyond?)
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i look forward to reading your text from 1996.
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best regards,
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-a</content>
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</mail>
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<mail>
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<nbr>2.0</nbr>
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<subject>[spectre] RE: new mailing list: SPECTRE :info</subject>
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<from>Andreas Broeckmann</from>
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<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
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<date>Sun, 09 Sep 2001 21:52:53 +0200 (CEST)</date>
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<content>dear anna,
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Zitiere anna balint <epistolaris@freemail.hu>:
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> Dear Andreas,
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> I can admit that it was the mistake of Geert Lovink that he has omitted
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> to
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> mention where the term comes from. When you made a statement that the
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> words
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> deep europe was coined by Luchezar Boyadiev I immediatley notified
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> you, please chack your private mail.
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i don't archive my mail, so i will have to take your word for it.
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> The Hyprid Workspace workshop was prepared
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> not earlier than 1997, when the idea and possibility of the Hybrid
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> Workspace first appeared.
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geert and i first talked about the hws workshop that winter, i don't recall the
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exact dates. i have no reason to dispute that the term deep europe came from you.
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> I find terrible that after you left the syndicate list, you base a new
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> mailing list exactly on my concept. Why not find a concept of your own
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> for this purpose?
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why? it is a very appropriate concept which we are very happy to use? i find it
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very odd that you would claim an exclusive right to sth that has been in
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discussion left, right and center for 4 years now ... you should look at this
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appropriation with pride, if you have to.
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>You could read first my deep europe text on the syndicate
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> list, if you would be subscribed.
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maybe you can send it to me anyway?
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greetings,
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-a</content>
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</mail>
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<mail>
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<nbr>3.0</nbr>
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<subject>[spectre] RE: new mailing list: SPECTRE :info</subject>
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<from>Andreas Broeckmann</from>
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<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
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<date>Mon, 10 Sep 2001 10:27:05 +0200</date>
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<content>dear anna,
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>how could I be proud of my work if you don't give a credit for it?
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you are being given credit for it now. you should be proud of it anyway -
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there are many things that many people do and never get credited for. it's
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called history.
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>And you say that Luchezar Boyadiev has coined the term deep europe?
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no, if you reread my mail you will see that i wrote that he offered an
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*interpretation*. i look forward to your own definition.
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>I am sorry if
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>Geert Lovink hided my text from you for five years, I would have never
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>guessed that he proceeds this way.
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i don't see why it should be geert's resposibility to post your text, and
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why you have not felt the necessity to do this yourself?
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>I have immediately notified your when you
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>first pointed publically for the term a wrong origin. I will publish the
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>text first on the syndicate list, where it should belong. You can use the
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>term of course, as a stated before, I just ask that you mention that I
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>coined it.
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the term deep europe was coined by anna balint. it was passed on by geert
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lovink. it was used by andreas broeckmann and inke arns. it was interpreted
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by luchezar boyadjiev. it was used more by sally jane norman, iliyana
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nedkova, nina czegledy, edi muka, and many others. it is a piece of
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language and cannot be controlled. it was coined by anna balint in 1996.
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regards,
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-a</content>
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</mail>
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<mail>
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<nbr>3.1</nbr>
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<subject>[spectre] "Deep Europe" is really deep?</subject>
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<from>Pasztor Erika Katalina</from>
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<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
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<date>Mon, 10 Sep 2001 11:48:20 +0200</date>
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<content>Dear Anna, dear Andreas, and dear all, who are involved,
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I was lurking on the syndicate list for years, I never dared to send a letter.
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Well, I never had any special reason to do so. But now I have to write a
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comment on "Deep Europe" and its copyright problem of Anna.
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"Deep Europe" is only a flat slogen in my opinion .
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(Except Anna I guess not so many of you follow the developments of the
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political situation in Hungary, which is a kind of illuminating story of how
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modern political marketing-communication (and media!) can sell about 5 million
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Hungarians down the river.... with fine tuned slogans.)
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There is a lot at stake at the election 2002: if the Rights (the Guys) win,
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than Hungary will be conserved into a society what is an interesting mixture of
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network capitalism and new-feudalism spilled professional political Public
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Relation sauce on it. The national identity ("the national copyrigths") begins
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to awake again but now it is assited by the active service of marketing and
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management sciences. Philip Kotler's excellent and energetic students' rhetoric
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feeds losers of the society with slogans and kitschy shows: national identity
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becomes more important for the "folks" than the parliament controll of the
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butget what The Guys spend on it. "Hungary - what you hide in your heart",
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"Memory becomes Hope": politics are full of pink emotions nowadays around here.
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(The sweet-gloomy-funny thing is that all the slogens of the government are
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"invented" by the "Happy End PR Agency" :-)
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"Deep Europe" - is nothing more than a slogan, invented by Anna or Gert, who
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cares. Slogans kill meaning, slogans are the effective power of our media and
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Public Relation culture. Slogans has a function to be obscure to understand as
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many ways as many people gets it.
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"Deep Europe" means nothing without context - and the context is created by
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physical and intelectual activity of people in time: the context is a process
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in space and time. Although The Guys introduced successful PR slogans into
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politics, only the context shows the real meaning.
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"the past just has been started" in Hungary (I do not know who said it,
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sorry... probably I read it in the Narancs - a liberal weekly) - why should we
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start it Anna, too? I hope we can kill off slogans and their
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copyright-arguments in case of starting to think in - as distinct and exact
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terms as it possible. Anybody who cares, should see further and deeper than
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"who owns the copyrights of Deep Europe".
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Sorry for my poor English mistakes what may confuses the transmission of the
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core message-:)
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Yours truly,
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Erika Katalina Pasztor
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media artist&designer, DLA student of Intermedia Dep., MKE
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founder and editor of Hungarian ArchitectForum (Epiteszforum) Online</content>
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</mail>
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<mail>
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<nbr>3.2</nbr>
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<subject>[spectre] RE: "Deep Europe" is really deep?</subject>
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<from>anna balint</from>
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<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
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<date>Mon, 10 Sep 2001 12:59:43 +0200</date>
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<content>Dear Erika,
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maybe not many people care about slogans, but I do: if once for a term is
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given a history, I feel better if that history is correct. In my view it
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must have been important, if once it gave inspiration for so many people.
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For me the most funny and ironic is that all this discussion is going on out
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of its syndicate contexts. I was always happy to give and I am glad if
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people use the term I invented, and naturally I don't copyright the term, I
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say that I coined it. If you are curious to my context and my
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interpretation, please subscribe to the syndicate list. Now there is a
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discussion about ascii art definitions, when I feel it will be appropriate I
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will publish my text.
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greetings,
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Anna Balint</content>
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</mail>
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<mail>
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<nbr>3.3</nbr>
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<subject>[spectre] Deep Europe? Deep troubles! with the "authors"</subject>
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<from>ana peraica</from>
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<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
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<date>Mon, 10 Sep 2001 13:31:00 +0200</date>
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<content>Dear all,
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I had problems deleting boring Syndicate mailings last months and then
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illiterate (Syndicate) mailings / attachments. I have a pain in my finger
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that I use for the Delete type.
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Just few minutes ago I recieved an e-mail, one of the most beautiful e-mails
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from the old Syndicate list - asking is someone is still there. It looks
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like a child entering to the village abandoned. The list still exists, but
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emptied, evacuated. The person knows not that there was a war. As seems,
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right now, there is an abandoned territory, one refugee camp and one new
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self-proclaimed republic. I saw that scenario, and I know those arguings
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right now... of who was the first calling on the of independency in 1968,
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of who spoken, who wrote.
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Sides are chosen. And now we don't have a Red Cross that will locate people
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we need to. I still don't know who is where as there are only few names
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posting. How can I find people whose e-mails I like? The war happened.
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And now the discussion is on inheritage. We are dividing names, history,
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terms...
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About terms, I am not fascinated anyhow. It is like the Humpty Dumpty from
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the Alice in Wonderland who coincides terms, and with the exclamation of the
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White Knife 'I invented it'. So what????
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(BRACKET NOTE - But it makes me to think, do I need to protect my terms as
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'Soros realism' in arts? Where do I need to go for that? Ok, I tell you - I
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invented a term Soros-realism I find crucial in interpretation of the
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artworks of nineties and last few years of this century, and it referrs to
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the arts of politically founded melancholia and pittiness, that has a
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connection to the socrealism of engaged art. It provides a reading of one
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narrative continously and gives a differentia specifica to the art of
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activism on the West. I find it ingenious, I am so delighted that every day
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I wake up and thing - how clever I am when I manage to invent such a thing.
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I feel so good, I love myself more since I done it. And I find myself more
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beautiful, thinking - one day if this continues I will get the Miss Europe
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prize. I am so clever and so beautiful since then. I am a witch. I knew it
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is going to happen. I wrote a text Unsubscribe! and I should have done it
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then. Why I didn't follow my intuition? Doesn't matter, I am so clever and
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so beautiful. I am a princess of the cleverness and beauty and witchcraft.
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When I recieve too many stupid e-mails I just go to the bathroom to see
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something nice, and I exclamate 'Soros Realism!!! Yes, Yes!'. So, please, if
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someone hears anyone else telling it without my name in reference, please -
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slam him in the face for my own dignity. You are my friends anyhow... And I
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will protect words you told, and wrote, to me. Please just put them bold, so
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I know which one you want to keep for your own creme against time, for your
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own grave. On my it is going to be written: A. P. (1972 - ...) THE INVENTOR
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of the term Soros-realism. It would be ME, ME, ME. It is I; I, I, I who
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invented it. It belongs to me and I carry it to my grave! Everyone who
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invented a term should write right now! On the graveyard we'll have terms
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and ideas. Terms should keep us to tell we are immortal no matter we are
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under the face of the earth.)
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But, if you find this stupid (mast.., fu...) that I have a certain erotic
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effects to my own terms - please ignore, I was joking. Soros realism was
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invented by artists, and Soros, and Stalin, and Lenin. But that topic is
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erotic too (mmmm.... nice!), nothing is erotic as those names...
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'Deep Europe' is invented by those who were digging, in a certain sense.
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Diging what? Diging who? Diging under who?
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Otherwise people call it East, living on the surface. But who invented
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East - West - South - North?
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How can one write providing references... Weather (ref. anonym. since
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Aristotle On metereology) in Croatia (inv. Zvonimir, ref. Pavelic, ref.
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Tudjman) is sublime (inv Aristotle, ref/bold. Kant, ref Bataille...) today
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(ref. fuck who invented today?), rain (ref God?, ref Aristotle ibid) falls
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(ref. Archimed, ref Newton...), writing (ref Arabians) to you (ref. Syndicat
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e) an e-mail (ref. ref. ref. ref.....).
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Deep Europe? Deep troubles! Andreas vs "Anna", Syndicate vs (Syndicate) vs
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((((Syndicate, ref (((Syndicate), ref ((Syndicate) ref (Syndicate))).
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Who invented "Syndicate" (Marx?), who invented NN, Andreas, Anna? When do
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you need to start with the intellectual property? It is destroying text, it
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is destroying communication, it is self-referrent at the end. And in the
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reference I can only write terms as - copyright, brand. It is boring as NN
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was boring. Boooooring, the worst that can be.
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Who has a copyright, which brand is this piece of activism? Now what is the
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original Syndicate - copyright, brand????? Seems this is the original
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discussion, covered by the terms. Tell it loudly! There are three lists, one
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is empty, one is Intenger's, one is elite. One interpetation what is/was
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Syndicate is its original address, the second - name, the third - people.
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Or, this is a discussion on factory, brand and quality?
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best,
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Ana</content>
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</mail>
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<mail>
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<nbr>3.4</nbr>
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<subject>[spectre] RE: Deep Europe? Deep troubles! with the "authors"</subject>
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<from>anna balint</from>
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<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
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<date>Mon, 10 Sep 2001 15:13:00 +0200</date>
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<content>Dear Ana,
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as a researcher the main and very important questions I am fascinated about
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are who, when, what did, organized, wrote, said, how idea circulates. I
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confess repentingly that I spend weeks thinking about who for example
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Dionysos Aeropagitos was, what and when did he write. Or for instance I
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spend months to compile a Robert Filliou bibliography and I am happy to find
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under any cicumstances a fragment of his. If once he influences the whole
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media art scene, I am curious to find any detail of his work, and I try to
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go back to the most authentic sources.
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This fascination made me also to subscribe to the Syndicate list. I find
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more than fascinating how the individual, the private interacts with public,
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how one individual influences the other, how authors can grab contemporary
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spirituality, how collaboration takes place. If many terms are invented, I
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wish to know who, and when invented them, myself I never use for example the
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word 'intermedia' without thinking to Dick Higgins. He has coined it, and
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with this word and his way of thinking still influences the whole art scene.
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I like to be aware of that, and I like to handle with care and in a
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responsible way terms. That's part of my ars poetica if you like.
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I am honoured if I can be in touch with authors and I can follow their works
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as they arrive unmoderated to a mailing list. I find interesting the way 60
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people left the syndicate list, and feel more comfortable with less
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information to deal with on a new, restricted mailing list, though I see
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here many problems - that of the syndicate archive for example - which still
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waits to be discussed and solved.
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Syndicate list is not integer's list, it stays for those people interested
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in East-West media art contacts and in contemporary media art theory who
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don't find too difficult to not open, delete, archive, read or enjoy the
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mail coming from artists, organizers, curators from East and West Europe and
|
|
who care about the public space of the list. There are subscribers, readers
|
|
and contributors, Claudia Westerman and Jaka Zeleznicar build a web page for
|
|
the list, and we are all considering ways for organizing the incoming mail
|
|
through self moderation, bureau automatism, perhaps a digest for
|
|
announcements and theoretical texts.
|
|
|
|
greetings,
|
|
Anna</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>3.5</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] Syndicate (ref. Broeckman, Arns, Kluitenberg, Benson, Pandilevski...)</subject>
|
|
<from>ana peraica</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Mon, 10 Sep 2001 18:09:48 +0200</date>
|
|
<content>Dear "Anna",
|
|
|
|
The problem of the circulation of ideas, and tracing of them is today quite
|
|
hard. Circle is replaced by the more dimensional bowls, explosions, curves.
|
|
Tracing (of authors, of e-mails, of people...) is also hard. Linearity is
|
|
impossible. For that one should have at least continous space or time.
|
|
|
|
Once I done an exhibition project completely based on gossiping, it was on
|
|
the Oreste show in Venice, on Biennale (I hope you will not take this as a
|
|
self-promotion I don't intend to do among people that know my work and
|
|
ideas). It was the same obscure idea that lead me, that things are running
|
|
out of the documentation, catalogues, newspaper's reports or critiques. That
|
|
information is spoiling.
|
|
|
|
Then, as the problem of redundancy happened to me (and somehow I expected
|
|
and calculated on that phenomenon), as every name would invite in mind
|
|
another one, at least those of love affairs related, and each topic and
|
|
reference another one, and we know it from the hypertexts that it is - real, I decided
|
|
not to border anymore.
|
|
|
|
I am, myself, more considered with the streaming ideas than on linking them
|
|
endlessly in any case even in .html (and that is why I never use footnotes,
|
|
so what? - McLuhan never give his due respect to anyone before, hardly
|
|
mentioning any other name, and that does not make him less fair writer).
|
|
Only bad writers need to plug in the theory into someone elses, as the
|
|
theory they plugged in will save them from the critique. Only desperate
|
|
souls need to say - you didn't make a reference on me.
|
|
|
|
Reading according to names reminds me on the old time investigations... 'I
|
|
read complete Hegel' - do you think Hegel is the one that is interesting or
|
|
the world of his ideas. I know, it is a matter of the original thinking and
|
|
hypercitation, when the author becomes the 'author', and a person becomes a
|
|
kind of - it, a book, and turning back to their original existence on this
|
|
planet is also an interesting point, but reading Hegel so deeply one can
|
|
only become Hegel. Moreover he is dead, so becoming a dead person is not
|
|
some erotic idea...
|
|
|
|
What do you get willing to pay attention to dead ideas (and what worse can
|
|
be than a dead idea?), and making your own a cornerstone for the graveyard?
|
|
That is nercophilic, and more - nomenophilia is the worst deadness of the
|
|
dead. Nomen est amen! Name does exist separately from the named... That is a
|
|
point of buirocracy. Even alive authors don't like to live only in the
|
|
brackets (((((as they are claustrophobic)))))).
|
|
|
|
Why do you go back and did you really find important branding of thoughts?
|
|
Authenticity in the Internet age???? Don't you find yourself doing a kind of
|
|
Sizif's job. Why didn't you post that text, why are you bordered with
|
|
copyrights, authenticity, and invention of small notions such the one of
|
|
deep europe is. Copy-left it, we done it on the Syndicate not egoistically,
|
|
and now you protect your own rights? And you were, as you say, reading it?
|
|
Why do you border with words, dots, commas... What do you want to say is
|
|
important, not how you designed it. We all know who told what, we are not
|
|
illiterate so much to think that things might be so original...
|
|
|
|
I understand the term Deep Europe, but not like you. I don't like it, i feel
|
|
referring to the d e e p s h i t and i wouldn't like to enter deeper in
|
|
that part of the Europe, as I was already too deep. That means 'your' term
|
|
is for me frightening, not challenging on thinking. It makes me to run
|
|
away....
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately in your e-mail I saw more the problem of the originallity of
|
|
the name Syndicate, not the problem of Deep Europe, as - sorry on a note -
|
|
Syndicate meant more than one term, and it made many of terms to be coined.
|
|
Actually why, when you feel so related to authenticity don't face the fact
|
|
you lost the Syndicate of the Syndicate? You quoted the name with no
|
|
content?
|
|
|
|
If you were consistent, you would have to write Syndicate (ref.Broeckman,
|
|
Arns, Kluitenberg, Lovink, Benson, Harger, Pandilevski, Zivanovic... and
|
|
around hundreds of more?) in the head of every e-mail on that bracket list
|
|
(the quote, the reference to the Syndicate). And pay attention to the order,
|
|
use alphabetically, it is better, there was no hierarchy of me - myself
|
|
and - I!.
|
|
|
|
Who the fuck invented friends !!!???? (cough, ref. M. Benson)
|
|
|
|
best,
|
|
ana</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>3.6</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] Syndicate (ref. Broeckman, Arns, Kluitenberg, Benson,
|
|
Pandilevski...)</subject>
|
|
<from>w.p.</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Mon, 10 Sep 2001 19:55:46 +0200</date>
|
|
<content>>
|
|
>
|
|
> ______________________________________________
|
|
> SPECTRE list for media culture in All Europe</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>3.5</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] Deep Europe</subject>
|
|
<from>Bruce Sterling</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Mon, 10 Sep 2001 11:01:43 -0500</date>
|
|
<content>> the term deep europe was coined by anna balint. it was passed on by geert
|
|
> lovink. it was used by andreas broeckmann and inke arns. it was interpreted
|
|
> by luchezar boyadjiev. it was used more by sally jane norman, iliyana
|
|
> nedkova, nina czegledy, edi muka, and many others. it is a piece of
|
|
> language and cannot be controlled. it was coined by anna balint in 1996.
|
|
>
|
|
*Hey, "Deep Europe" has even been in the WIRED magazine "Jargon File."
|
|
Trust me, all hope of control is lost.
|
|
|
|
bruces
|
|
|
|
*If you enjoy seeing net.english under construction, check this out:
|
|
|
|
http://www.logophilia.com/WordSpy/topwords.html</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>4.0</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] Re:[spect] list info</subject>
|
|
<from>Janos Sugar</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Tue, 28 Aug 2001 18:36:46 +0200</date>
|
|
<content>what about this:
|
|
|
|
SPECTRE concentrates on the artistic and political situations of Eastern=
|
|
Europe to foster links of communication and collaboration among media art=
|
|
communities throughout the continent. This network connects artists,=
|
|
activists, theorists, and media producers from 28 European countries=
|
|
through both online and offline venues, embodying the tensions and=
|
|
conjunctions arising from the cultural, geographic, and economic remapping=
|
|
of Europe. =20
|
|
|
|
(slightly modified version of Jordan Crandall's column _ European net=
|
|
communities_ published in Artforum, March 1998, p. 20)</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>4.1</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] Re:[spect] list info</subject>
|
|
<from>Inke Arns</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Tue, 28 Aug 2001 22:44:16 +0200</date>
|
|
<content>At 18:36 28.08.01 +0200, Janos Sugar wrote:
|
|
>what about this:
|
|
>
|
|
>SPECTRE concentrates on the artistic and political situations of Eastern
|
|
Europe to
|
|
|
|
nope. ;). why should spectre concentrate on situations in eastern europe? i
|
|
have to admit that I am as much interested in western "situations" as i am
|
|
in northern, eastern or southern ones. Madrid, Warsaw, Stockholm, Budapest,
|
|
Lisbon, Moscow, Berlin, Tirana, Marseille, Ljubljana, Genua, Bratislava,
|
|
Sheffield, Lodz, Linz, Tblissi ...
|
|
|
|
>foster links of communication and collaboration among media art
|
|
communities >throughout the continent.
|
|
|
|
i like "throughout the continent" though.
|
|
|
|
perhaps we should really leave of the notion of "deep europe" and rather
|
|
simply call it "europe", or "the continent", although "continent" might
|
|
sound as if you were speaking from a GB perspective (I was once invited to
|
|
a panel discussion in GB where i was supposed to give a "continental view"
|
|
on the media art education situation in GB... i told the audience that i
|
|
was "amused" ;)
|
|
|
|
the advantage of "deep europe" would be that it does not really designate a
|
|
geographic territory, but rather a state of mind, a kind of openness, or a
|
|
special way of joining different/separate entities together ...
|
|
|
|
>This network connects artists, activists, theorists, and media producers
|
|
from 28 >European countries through both online and offline venues,
|
|
embodying the tensions >and conjunctions arising from the cultural,
|
|
geographic, and economic remapping of >Europe.
|
|
|
|
too much focus on "tension", and, more importantly: like this it all sounds
|
|
like a "finished" project. I think it should be kept more open.
|
|
|
|
>(slightly modified version of Jordan Crandall's column _ European net
|
|
communities_ published in Artforum, March 1998, p. 20)
|
|
|
|
?
|
|
|
|
greetings,
|
|
inke
|
|
- mostly offline 2-21 Sep 2001
|
|
- http://www.v2.nl/~arns/</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>4.2</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] Re:[spect] list info</subject>
|
|
<from>geert lovink</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Wed, 29 Aug 2001 09:28:20 +1000</date>
|
|
<content>Hi all,
|
|
|
|
concerning announcements. I am not so much against them and I think that are
|
|
not exactly creating a environment in which an interesting
|
|
discussion/exchange will occur. I am not saying that Spectre should have
|
|
less announcements. I personally find them secondary and not all that
|
|
interesting. Necessary and but not vital for a list. I understand that
|
|
Annick and Eric as media professionals need this info but that can't all be
|
|
it. I like the idea of a quiet list but I would rather say a quality list,
|
|
with surprises and necessary differences. The silence related to the crisis
|
|
in Macedonia really worried me.
|
|
|
|
I do think that Spectre should not just be Syndicate 2.0 or even worse, 1.1.
|
|
Something went wrong and that something needs to analyzed. Just to continue
|
|
doesn't make sense to me and has the danger of repetition in it. Why not
|
|
change a few basic parameter or has everyone turned conservative in terms of
|
|
list culture and the everyday? I still like the ideas of a web-based
|
|
conferencing system a la slashdot which Amy Alexander proposed. I think
|
|
that's gonna be really necessary at some point and I don't see why we can't
|
|
develop such a thing. It's really not all that difficult anymore. Look what
|
|
www.autonomedia.org has done with their portal.
|
|
|
|
Best, Geert</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>4.3</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] list info + ars meeting</subject>
|
|
<from>honor</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Wed, 29 Aug 2001 11:34:51 +0100</date>
|
|
<content>hi,
|
|
|
|
janos wrote:
|
|
|
|
> >SPECTRE concentrates on the artistic and political situations of Eastern
|
|
> Europe to foster links of >communication and collaboration among media
|
|
> art communities throughout the continent. This >network connects
|
|
> artists, activists, theorists, and media producers from 28 European
|
|
> countries >through both online and offline venues, embodying the tensions
|
|
> and conjunctions arising from the >cultural, geographic, and economic
|
|
> remapping of Europe.
|
|
|
|
well, this is just a personal point of view, but i found this definition
|
|
quite prescriptive and a bit restrictive. i'm not sure its accurate to say
|
|
that we only concentrate on 'eastern european' situations, and given the
|
|
progress the syndicate made in trying to break down territorial
|
|
distinctions of identity, i feel that using terminology such as the above
|
|
might be regressive.
|
|
|
|
also, if members of [ spectre ] are from one of '28 european countries',
|
|
that counts me out already. is it necessary to be _from_ one of 28
|
|
european countrries, in order to contribute to the list in some way?
|
|
anyway ....
|
|
|
|
regarding a meeting in linz - do we still want to do this?
|
|
|
|
who is available around lunchtime on tuesday 4 september (sometime between
|
|
1200 - 1400)?
|
|
shall we stick with the brucknerhaus bistro? i think that's the easiest
|
|
location myself. they always have lots of tables set up in the
|
|
brucknerhaus, just near the bistro so this seems to be a sensible option.
|
|
|
|
so let's have a textual show of hands - who can come at this time?
|
|
if this isn't a good time, feel free to suggest another time.
|
|
|
|
best
|
|
|
|
honor</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>5.0</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] Re:[spect] list info</subject>
|
|
<from>David Whittle</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Wed, 29 Aug 2001 10:37:04 +0100</date>
|
|
<content>Inke wrote:
|
|
|
|
>>SPECTRE concentrates on the artistic and political situations of Eastern
|
|
>Europe to
|
|
>
|
|
>nope. ;). why should spectre concentrate on situations in eastern europe? i
|
|
>have to admit that I am as much interested in western "situations" as i am
|
|
>in northern, eastern or southern ones. Madrid, Warsaw, Stockholm, Budapest,
|
|
>Lisbon, Moscow, Berlin, Tirana, Marseille, Ljubljana, Genua, Bratislava,
|
|
>Sheffield, Lodz, Linz, Tblissi ...
|
|
|
|
I second that absolutely!
|
|
|
|
>
|
|
>>foster links of communication and collaboration among media art
|
|
>communities >throughout the continent.
|
|
>
|
|
>i like "throughout the continent" though
|
|
>perhaps we should really leave of the notion of "deep europe" and rather
|
|
>simply call it "europe", or "the continent", although "continent" might
|
|
>sound as if you were speaking from a GB perspective (I was once invited to
|
|
>a panel discussion in GB where i was supposed to give a "continental view"
|
|
>on the media art education situation in GB... i told the audience that i
|
|
>was "amused" ;)
|
|
|
|
you don't say! I vote (again) for 'deep europe' for the reasons Honor
|
|
outlined, and for the resonances you mention below.
|
|
|
|
>
|
|
>the advantage of "deep europe" would be that it does not really designate a
|
|
>geographic territory, but rather a state of mind, a kind of openness, or a
|
|
>special way of joining different/separate entities together ...
|
|
>>This network connects artists, activists, theorists, and media producers
|
|
>from 28 >European countries through both online and offline venues,
|
|
>embodying the tensions >and conjunctions arising from the cultural,
|
|
>geographic, and economic remapping of >Europe.
|
|
>
|
|
>too much focus on "tension", and, more importantly: like this it all sounds
|
|
>like a "finished" project. I think it should be kept more open.
|
|
|
|
Yes. Also, for me the problem with this and the previous formulation is
|
|
that 'trajectory' or 'remapping' implies a relationship with the
|
|
'transition studies' industry, as well as, perhaps at a further remove, a
|
|
particular narrative of 'development'. We should be open to every possible
|
|
perspective on current situations, including going backwards and standing
|
|
still...
|
|
|
|
pretty much sitting still,
|
|
|
|
D.</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>6.0</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] DEEP EUROPE AND DISPLACED IDENTITIES</subject>
|
|
<from>tamar s</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Tue, 20 Nov 2001 16:30:57 +0200</date>
|
|
<content>DEEP EUROPE AND DISPLACED IDENTITIES
|
|
|
|
A silent voice comes to life triggered by the deep Europe concepts to
|
|
comment about its identity. I speak from an immigrant country, my ancestors
|
|
came from Poland, I have friends whose origins are from all over the globe.
|
|
I leave in a mixed village by the sea where Moslems, Christians and Jews
|
|
leave together. 15 minutes from Tel-Aviv, Israel. The Muasine 6 Muslim
|
|
narrator, prays 5 times a day, this sound is overwhelming and punctuates the
|
|
days.
|
|
|
|
I cook Arab food with recipes I get from a woman I know at the local market,
|
|
mixed with Eastern European recipes I have from home. The language of my
|
|
trade is English, my syntax is weird, but my sense of poetry comes from the
|
|
bible, which is written in my mother tongue.
|
|
|
|
Life hazards, due to local terrorism attacks, is being reported dail
|
|
y on tv, Our sense of a safe geographic map had shrunken during the last year,
|
|
but my real window is window's nt. The internet had always served as a
|
|
strong displacement tool, through which my displaced identity found fellow
|
|
voices that shared and enhanced my new media enthusiasm.
|
|
|
|
Internet communities like real life communities are always trying to
|
|
define an `other`, a bad guy, in order to map their boundaries. I find the lost of
|
|
boundaries thrilling. My web sites design, net.art projects and interactive
|
|
installations I dream up, trying hard to realize in a place where the
|
|
infrastructure for such a venture is scarce, are all strengthened by info
|
|
bubbles the travel through my mailbox, for I'm an artist who found the
|
|
virtual reflections a hell of a place to be.
|
|
|
|
Tamar Schori</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>6.1</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] DEEP EUROPE AND DISPLACED IDENTITIES</subject>
|
|
<from>KINGA ARAYA</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:23:17 -0500 (EST)</date>
|
|
<content>Tamar,
|
|
Great inspiring message. I hope to see some of your artwroks somewhere (in
|
|
Canada?).
|
|
Take care,
|
|
Kinga (the 'other' displaced 0/1...)</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>7.0</nbr>
|
|
<subject><nettime> Report from Albania</subject>
|
|
<from>Geert Lovink</from>
|
|
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
|
|
<date>Thu, 11 Jun 1998 23:15:45 +0200 (MET DST)</date>
|
|
<content>Culture after the Final Breakdown
|
|
A Report from Tirana, Albania
|
|
By Geert Lovink
|
|
|
|
As expected, Tirana offers much more reality than one can cope with. My
|
|
first encounter was overwhelming and confronting. As Europe's poorest
|
|
country, deeply Balkan and the most isolated communist regime for decades,
|
|
the rythms must have been slow here in this former outpost of the Ottoman
|
|
empire. Ismail Kadare, Albania's current national writer in exile, is
|
|
trying to find excuses for this historical inertia. But for Kadare
|
|
slowness does not equal backwardness. As he writes in Printemps Albanais,
|
|
his report of the 1990 events, "slowness can reveal, as under an
|
|
unpenetrable armor, ripeness and the inner light." This must be for
|
|
connoisseurs. Tirana in late spring of 1998 gives a rather different
|
|
impression--a steamy, grimy intensely balkan 'summer in the city' feeling
|
|
combined with the sense that the entire country is struggling to get back
|
|
to or? move on to normal. The country is visibly recovering from the
|
|
total breakdown of March 1997, which can be seen its Pointe Omega, the new
|
|
year zero. In that sense Kadare is right: Albania's "1989" is just over
|
|
one year old and the world should take this cultural delay into account.
|
|
|
|
Did Jean Baudrillard ever witness the violent aspects of a concrete,
|
|
massive, sudden, social implosion? I wonder. Baudrillard, who played so
|
|
with the model of the implosion, must have sensed something in this
|
|
direction, but his style is too linear, one-dimensional to describe the
|
|
multi-layered realities of the balkans. French language games are fading
|
|
out now because actual history-in-the-making can easily do without such
|
|
concepts (and intellectuals all together). It is not even about media. In
|
|
Albania, the slow decay from within (even more disastrous than elsewhere),
|
|
combined with a collective frustration over missing the historical wave of
|
|
1989, finally turned into an explosion of violent disinterest and despair.
|
|
It is tempting to speak of "post apocalyptic zones." But this is merely
|
|
postmodern rethoric. Which contemporary philosopher is studying the case
|
|
of Albania? The country is hardly ever mentioned by journalists. Robert
|
|
Kaplan's widely acknowledged 'Balkan Ghosts' (1993) and "The End of the
|
|
Earth" (1996) travelogues through the world's abandoned places, rust belts
|
|
and war zones. These books are a usefull starting point but they do not go
|
|
beyond mere description. Kaplan lacks a theoretical framework that could
|
|
match the conservative agenda of culturalists like Samuel P. Huntington.
|
|
In what terms should the situation outside the Fortresses be described ?
|
|
Do we only speak in terms of "exclusion"? Or would you prefer an "exotic"
|
|
view on the pitoresque Balkan, like in Tintin's album "King Ottokar's
|
|
Sceptre"?
|
|
|
|
What puzzled me most about Albania is its delayed, but primal drive to
|
|
(self)destruction. The roads are in the worst possible condition,
|
|
sometimes not even existing. Many places lack electricity and running
|
|
water, not to mention destroyed schools, dilapidated buildings. What is
|
|
this hatred towards anything public? And there is still no comprehensive
|
|
analysis of the 'events' of March 1997. The dry overview of Miranda
|
|
Vickers and James Pettifer ('Albania', New York University Press, 1997),
|
|
stops in late 1996 and carries a now ironical, perhaps then too optimistic
|
|
undertitle: "From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity." We should now read it
|
|
backwards. That's dialectics these days. The old one step forwards, two
|
|
steps back--no synthesis in sight. What we can see is tragic, ultra-modern
|
|
history in the making, monitored by brand new Euro-cops of the West
|
|
European Union, half-hearted Italian neo-colonialism to prevent mass
|
|
escape from the ruined country and plenty of wild electronic media,
|
|
pirated software, even a tiny bit of Internet, provided by the UN and
|
|
Soros, via satellites and radio links.
|
|
|
|
Seen from the dusty, crowded streets of Tirana, filled with its notorious
|
|
stolen Mercedes cars, Kosova seems a very distant place, despite all the
|
|
refugees that are now flooding in to the Northern Albania. The Nole
|
|
government is certainly concerned with the worsening situation, so are all
|
|
Albanians. But they lack any military option: their army is a joke
|
|
compared to the well-armed and experienced Yugoslav army with its
|
|
para-military units. Albania can only call for more foreign involvement,
|
|
not only in Kosova, but for itself. There is a big need for a capital,
|
|
infrastructure and human resources from NATO, EU, Soros and other NGOs. Or
|
|
from Rome, Athens, Istanbul, Saudi Arabia. It actually does not matter
|
|
where it comes from. At least, that's the impression. It is the time of
|
|
reconstruction and 'development'. That's the big picture--on a more
|
|
personal level, daily life goes on..cafe society--thousands of Albanians
|
|
on the streets and terraces of hastily and illegally erected cafes whiling
|
|
away the time.
|
|
|
|
So here we are--the first ever new media arts event in Albania,
|
|
"Pyramedia", organized by the "Syndicate" network, a mailinglist of small
|
|
institutions and individuals from both ex Western and Eastern Europe (for
|
|
a report, see Andreas Broeckmann in the Syndicate web archive). A small
|
|
group of 10-20 dedicated Albanian artists, teachers and students have
|
|
shown up to attend the three days of screenings and presentations. Edi
|
|
Muka, who is teaching contemporary arts (video, installations, etc.) at
|
|
the Tirana Arts Academy is the driving force behind many of these events.
|
|
I interviewed him twice, at the V2-DEAF festival, September 1996 in
|
|
Rotterdam and after the fall of Berisha, in July 97 during "Deep Europe"
|
|
(Hybrid Workspace, Documenta X). This time, I spoke with him on the
|
|
terrace of Donika Bardha's Gallery XXI, Tirana's first commercial modern
|
|
art gallery, opened last March, a green (and clean) oasis close to the
|
|
central Skanderbeg square and surrounded by a decent cafe and restaurant.
|
|
This quasi-privatised corner of the pavement has palm trees and a
|
|
fountain. Edi Muka is cool--his dress, sunglasses, the way he's got things
|
|
in control (except when the lamp of the videobeam breaks, a major
|
|
catastrophe which happened twice...). Edi Muka is well informed, not only
|
|
about arts and culture, but about politics and media as well. After he
|
|
returned from Italy, where he fled in the early nineties, he worked with
|
|
foreign journalists and in the field of "independant media" and their
|
|
Western support organizations.
|
|
|
|
According to Muka, Tirana will sooner or later feel the impact of the
|
|
influx of refugees in the North. But for the time being it is still
|
|
recovering from the "anarchy" of March 97, the few days when the state
|
|
lost its monopoly on violence. Shortly after the incident, a commission of
|
|
all the political parties represented in Parliament was formed to
|
|
reconstruct and study the events. But within a few months, controversy
|
|
between the members broke out and the final report is still pending. So
|
|
the cause of all the destruction remains vague. Can it be reduced to a
|
|
plot or conspiracy? According to Muka, Berisha at a certain point decided
|
|
to let everything go when he found out that he could not use the army to
|
|
attack the city of Vlora. "He defends himself now by saying that he had to
|
|
arm the members of his party in order to defend them. Maybe I am wrong.
|
|
No one knows how reliable the data of this commission is. But a fact is
|
|
that most of the townhalls were set on fire. There was a lot of corruption
|
|
under the Berisha government, illegal deals regarding privatization and
|
|
real estate. A lot of them were done in favour of Berisha's Democratic
|
|
Party members. So this was a good chance to wipe out the evidence. In
|
|
Vlora people initially burned the police office and the secret police
|
|
headquarters. But the burning of townhalls came later."
|
|
Culture lost too. Museums were looted, even worse than in 1992. Churches
|
|
too. Most of all it blocked a process, several years of gradual progress.
|
|
For example, after March 1997 students did not come to school anymore. It
|
|
was impossible to get them back to the classroom. "If you see such a
|
|
destruction happening around you, after seven years of supposed
|
|
'democracy', the already strong desire of Albanians to leave the country
|
|
grew ten times."
|
|
|
|
Since December 1997, things have apparently changed for the better. Edi's
|
|
students returned to their classes and a number of cultural events took
|
|
place. In October 1997, eleven artists participated in 'Reorientation',
|
|
an exhibit in a ruined factory, outside of town, curated by Muka.
|
|
The show was mainly installations, referring to the state of ruin and
|
|
was considered a turning point. Gezim Qendro, now the director of
|
|
the National Gallery, participated, along with Edi Hila, one of Albania's
|
|
modern post-1990 painters, and some young artists.
|
|
|
|
Edi Muka: "Despite the fact that it took place in a part which is full of
|
|
guns, a lot of people showed up. They were eager to see something
|
|
different." Another landmark was Albania's participation in Ostranenie,
|
|
the ex-East media arts festival which took place for the third time in
|
|
Dessau in november 1997. Albanian video artworks were screened there for
|
|
the first time. Also, an annual visual arts competition took place. Muka:
|
|
"In the past, everybody just hung some artworks on the wall of the
|
|
National Gallery, no curatorial work, no critics, just a big chaos. This
|
|
time there was some selection. But there was still a lack of the ability
|
|
to experience things. There were only few who reflected on what had
|
|
happened in 1997. I don't think this is normal. There is the tendency to
|
|
escape, the young generation leaves the country and the old ones do it in
|
|
their way. I concentrated my work on a group of young artists, students
|
|
who do reflect on the situation. In February,1998, a first show with them
|
|
followed in the renovated gallery of the Academy of Art. It was really
|
|
good and a large audience showed up. I gave some lectures about
|
|
ready-mades and abstraction, which is still not very known here. Students
|
|
have difficulties understanding what happened historically and
|
|
epistimologically." And Galeria XXI opened, which is trying to promote the
|
|
art market in Albania because there is no such thing.
|
|
|
|
The early revival is evident in other fields as well. The 'Days of New
|
|
Music' program a few months ago tried to open up the traditional Albanian
|
|
folk music and elaborate it in a 'modern' way. A proposal to build and
|
|
staff a new National Theater was approved. But there is still no decision
|
|
on the future of the "International Cultural Center" the enormous white
|
|
pyramid once the Enver Hoxha Memorial Museum. In its most recent
|
|
reincarnation, it is used for the Italian "Levante" trade fair, displaying
|
|
trash consumer goods.
|
|
|
|
All this is now in Edi Rama's hands, the brand new Minister of Culture.
|
|
Rama, 34, is an experimental artist who played an important role in the
|
|
student movement of 1990 and worked and exhibited abroad. His story is
|
|
telling--In 1996, he was beaten up by Berisha supporters and he then moved
|
|
to Paris where he lived in exile. This spring, when he returned to Tirana
|
|
for his father's funeral, he was invited to replace Arta Dade, then
|
|
Minister of Culture, who lacked any vision on revitaliziing
|
|
culture-in-ruins with little or no budget. Rama immediately agreed. His
|
|
first action was a radical reorganization of the ministry, the first one
|
|
ever in fifty years. Edi Muka has known Rama for years. "He is a
|
|
charismatic person with a lot of ideas, even though he might not have much
|
|
experience with administration. He has already left some marks."
|
|
|
|
I managed to get an appointment with Rama on the fourth floor of the
|
|
former Central Committee building. Edi Rama: "I inherited an institution
|
|
still based in the old structures. It is also important to change the
|
|
physical aspect of the building. It was not functional and there was a lot
|
|
of dust that needed to be cleaned." Rama would not say how much money he
|
|
can freely spend. Rama: "The budget is low, but even that is misused. So
|
|
the first step is to create projects that will make a decent use of the
|
|
budget possible. Only after that, we can increase pressure on the
|
|
Ministery of Finance and start to approach NGOs."
|
|
|
|
Where are your priorities, in film, visual arts, media? Rama: "Until now,
|
|
the ministery worked as a sponsor of cultural ghettoization. It supported
|
|
our self-complimentory attitude towards history and the related
|
|
institutions that we inherited from the past. The Writers Union, in fact
|
|
all cultural institutions--these old structures are not anymore a threat
|
|
towards democracy, but they are a obstacle."
|
|
|
|
Do you see a growing divide between the low-brow media culture
|
|
and the elite high culture?
|
|
|
|
Rama: "If I can make a comparison. During the Communist period we were
|
|
living in a Jurrasic Park. Now the dinosaurs have disappeared but we are
|
|
still in a park where anything can happen. You never know from where the
|
|
danger is coming from. In that respec, things are very disordered. The new
|
|
media situation is like a jungle. But I am convinced that the only support
|
|
we can give to these newcomers is freedom. With the possibility to
|
|
express yourself in a free space will also come a need to learn and how to
|
|
deal with this space. Nowadays, here, people are convinced that freedom is
|
|
much more difficult than isolation. To administrate freedom means to
|
|
administrate yourself. During the time that you had to pass on the shelf
|
|
of totalitarism, you were administrated by someone else. You were not an
|
|
individual. There was no responsability and no anxiety. In freedom, all
|
|
these elements become part of you."
|
|
|
|
When asked about all those leaving the country, Edi Rama is sending out a
|
|
permanent invitation to all Albanians to do something for this country.
|
|
"But it is pretty hard to make invitations because you cannot offer any
|
|
guarantees. The problem with this community has been that it always worked
|
|
against its own future. The most paralyzed were the young generations.
|
|
They were marginalized by the gods of politics and culture. The big
|
|
challenge now is to listen more carefull to their needs in order to make
|
|
them feel at home in their own country. To a certain age every Albanian is
|
|
a refugee in his own country. It is felt as a transit station."
|
|
|
|
You are not member of a political party. Is it more or less difficult
|
|
than you expected?
|
|
|
|
Edi Rama: "I do not need to operate in a political field because
|
|
my power is not of a political power but a cultural power."
|
|
|
|
Until now, local Soros Foundation officials have not felt the urgency to
|
|
open a "Soros Center for Contemporary Art." This might change soon. Like
|
|
in other countries, the leading 'civil society' intellectuals, mainly
|
|
writers, were not so sensitive to contemporary art forms let alone
|
|
'electronic art'. But there is another, underlying reason for the low
|
|
priority status of new culture. Understandibly, human right violations,
|
|
food aid and the basic restoration of law and order take highest priority
|
|
with Western governments and NGOs. But with this comes a very specific,
|
|
subconcious, definition of 'democratic culture', a formalistic,
|
|
instrumental and legalistic approach which defines democracy according to
|
|
its institutional structures, not to its actual lively elements. We can
|
|
see a similar problem in the field of 'independant media'. What counts is
|
|
the primacy of frameworks, not initiatives or individual modes of mediated
|
|
expression.
|
|
|
|
Edi Muka: "We can see a standardized way of thinking within these NGOs.
|
|
They are working according to pre-established models, without paying too
|
|
much attention to the local requests. It is definetely important what they
|
|
are doing, to promote NGOs that develop democracy. But what is desperately
|
|
needed in Albania is a "cultural revolution." A large program to reach all
|
|
generations, not only the young. Let's take one example. The main support
|
|
for translations comes of course from the Soros foundation. They are now
|
|
mainly doing philosophical books from the fifties and sixties (Nietzsche,
|
|
Sartre, Camus...) and literature." Contemporary books on visual arts,
|
|
media and cultural politics are a first requirement in order to spread a
|
|
comprehensive understanding of the new (media) techonologies, their
|
|
internal logic, history and potential. And this counts for many fields in
|
|
culture. Otherwise, the existing devide between Western commercial media
|
|
trash and post-communistic and nationalistic state-sponsored, folklorism
|
|
will establish itself, leaving little or no room for contemporary forms of
|
|
expression.
|
|
|
|
According to Edi Muka, staying in cafes all day long is nonsense--artists
|
|
spaces should be created, giving people the possibility to prove
|
|
themselves. Step by step this will bring the attention to Albania and will
|
|
take away the desire to leave the country. International exchange also
|
|
plays an important role in this. Soon, Soros won't be the only source of
|
|
money. Pro Helvetia (Swiss) is coming, a French Institute will be
|
|
established and perhaps also a German Goethe Institute. Regional exchange
|
|
should also increase to avoid ethnic tensions like those experienced with
|
|
neighboring Macedonia. Muka: "The tendency should be to find common
|
|
points, as citizens of the world, not as ethnic Albanians."
|
|
|
|
What is striking is the absence of discourse. There is no Albanian art
|
|
magazine. Before 1990, art critics were politicized and condemned in the
|
|
early nineties. Within the discipline of art history, political aims
|
|
had taken precedence over professional standards. The National Gallery has
|
|
taken the initiative to start an art magazine and the first issue is due
|
|
to come out soon. Then there is the magazine Perpjekja (Endeavour), a
|
|
quarterly cultural journal, edited by Fatos Lubonja. An english anthology
|
|
appeared in 1997, edited by Fatos Lubonja and John Hodgson. It takes a
|
|
critical approach to developments in Albania and runs translations that
|
|
deal with issues common to other former Eastern European countries. A
|
|
structure needs to be created to train art historians, critics and
|
|
curators. Muka: "What I am doing now is teaching students to write down
|
|
their ideas, to arrange a space. But that is not enough. Now it is time to
|
|
build the educational programs." A year after the total implosion,
|
|
everything beyond boredom and escape seems possible, first of all a second
|
|
Piramedia.
|
|
|
|
Syndicate: Andreas Broeckmann, A short Piramedia report
|
|
http://www.v2.nl/mail/v2east/0741.html
|
|
|
|
A copy of the Perpjekja/Endavour anthology may be obtained from: John
|
|
Hodgson, 30, Green End, Granborough, Buckingham, MK18 3TN, England.
|
|
|
|
Edi Muka: kiko41 {AT} hotmail.com, tel/fax +355 5222752.
|
|
</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>8.0</nbr>
|
|
<subject><nettime> The Politics of Cultural Memory</subject>
|
|
<from>Eric Kluitenberg</from>
|
|
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
|
|
<date>Wed, 21 Jul 1999 18:43:28 +0100</date>
|
|
<content>Dear nettimers,
|
|
|
|
This rather long text is the extension of a lecture I presented in Tirana
|
|
(Piramedia), Tallinn (ACTION - REFLECTION) and Prague (Translocation).
|
|
Because of the enormous scope of the topic I opted for a rather personal
|
|
approach. The text will be published in the forthcoming book MEDIA ˇ
|
|
REVOLUTION, edited by Stephen Kovats, Edition Bauhaus #6, published by the
|
|
Campus Verlag (Frankfurt a/M & New York), and is due for release as a
|
|
biligual german/english edition on October 11, 1999. It will be
|
|
accompanied by the ostranenie 99 CD ROM.
|
|
|
|
hope it is of interest to a few of you
|
|
|
|
eric
|
|
|
|
___________________
|
|
The Politics of Cultural Memory
|
|
|
|
Upon her spoon this motto
|
|
wonderfully designed:
|
|
"Violence completes the partial mind." [0]
|
|
|
|
Identity, Belonging and Necessity
|
|
|
|
A visit I made to Tirana (Albania) in April 1998 marked the start of a
|
|
personal investigation. An investigation into a complicated field,
|
|
somewhere between cultural memory and politics. What I wanted to do is to
|
|
sketch out and map a territory of identity, memory, politics, and media.
|
|
The need for this was primarily of a personal nature. There was no
|
|
expectation that I would be able to get any kind of complete understanding
|
|
of what the relationship of politics and cultural memory entails.
|
|
Certainly not beyond the excellent writings that have been produced
|
|
already in this area, most of whom I am quite ignorant of. Yet, feeling
|
|
the need to do this, if only for myself, seemed enough of an incentive.
|
|
Since everyone's experience is always different and specific, my findings
|
|
might even be useful for others grappling with the same questions I wanted
|
|
to map out.
|
|
|
|
My need for this investigation originated from an unresolved dilemma.
|
|
Writing this in July 1999, the dilemma, obviously, remains unresolved,
|
|
though it still strikes me as something dramatic. One of those crucial
|
|
experiences you would have gladly dispensed with.
|
|
|
|
This particular story starts in Tallinn in 1995. I was invited to help put
|
|
together a conference on the social and cultural impact of digital media
|
|
and networking technologies on the Baltic states, called "Interstanding -
|
|
Understanding Interactivity". The aim of the event was to go beyond the
|
|
economic and technological perspectives, and develop something of a
|
|
critical cultural and social point of view.
|
|
|
|
We were at the end of the second day of the three-day conference. The
|
|
topic was "Community and Identity in the Global Infosphere", and a host of
|
|
speakers was dealing with ways of reconstructing identity and the social
|
|
sphere in the realm of digital media. At some point the sys-op of the
|
|
ZAMIR peace network from the former Yugoslavia (who happened to be present
|
|
in the audience) grabbed the microphone and made a short, clear, and
|
|
rather devastating comment:
|
|
|
|
"We've been talking all day about identity issues now, and their value.
|
|
Our recent experiences, however, have taught us that nothing sets people
|
|
more apart than identity!"
|
|
|
|
I had, as I still have, no answer to this objection. It couldn't have
|
|
pinpointed the dilemma more clearly. The idea we had started from was to
|
|
question what two simultaneous extraordinary transformations meant for a
|
|
country like Estonia. On the one hand Estonia was contained in a process
|
|
of re-inventing its national identity, a few years after breaking free
|
|
from the former Soviet Empire and Russian rule. At the same time Estonia
|
|
had entered the information era overnight, depending for its economic
|
|
survival on a networked international economy that undermined the very
|
|
notions of national sovereignty it had just retained. The notion of a
|
|
national Estonian identity is deeply problematic, if only because of the
|
|
large Russian minority within its borders, which comprises one third of
|
|
the overall population of the country.
|
|
|
|
The reconstitution of national identity is a fundamental dilemma that pops
|
|
up again and again in the aftermath of the revolutionary changes that have
|
|
taken places in the former 'East'. Identity is belonging, and a basic
|
|
sense of belonging to me seems indispensable for any kind of social
|
|
structure to be able to function, for any kind of social cohesion to
|
|
emerge. The refusal of the identity question in name of a universal
|
|
ideology (modernism) or materialist system (neo-liberalism), inevitably
|
|
leads to a reactionary response. Identity forges connection, but it is
|
|
simultaneously also a principle of separation. This principle of
|
|
separation is at the heart of the dilemma we suddenly saw ourselves faced
|
|
with that afternoon in Tallinn.
|
|
Deep Europe
|
|
|
|
Europe is a container of identities. A sedimental layering of cultures
|
|
past and present, in permanent flux between moments of crisis and tragic
|
|
sublimity. In this shifting landscape the dilemmas of identity can turn
|
|
into drama, especially in those regions where Europe is at its 'deepest',
|
|
i.e. where most identities overlap (and collide). This sedimentary image
|
|
of the cultural map of Europe derives from the concept of Deep Europe, as
|
|
put forward by the Bulgarian artist Luchezar Boyadijev. Boyadijev provides
|
|
a highly original reading of post-wall Europe.
|
|
|
|
In Boyadijev's explanation of 'Deep Europe', "the notion is a metaphor
|
|
which could be problematic. In the logic of this metaphor, deepness or
|
|
depth is where there are a lot of overlapping identities of various
|
|
people. Overlapping in terms of claims over certain historical past, or
|
|
certain events or certain historical figures or even territories in some
|
|
cases. It could also be claims over language or alphabet, it could be
|
|
anything. Europe is deepest, where there are a lot of overlapping
|
|
identities."
|
|
|
|
The formation of identity is a fundamentally dynamic process. It is also
|
|
subject to manipulation. The construction of identity refers to a reading
|
|
of the past that can be subjective, incomplete. Sometimes it is linked to
|
|
clear interests of a group. It is often difficult to fully substantiate
|
|
the claims made in this formation process. Identity, therefore, is not
|
|
just belonging, it is clearly also politics.
|
|
|
|
Identity and memory are connected. Identity at the very least means to
|
|
remember one's origins. If memory belongs to a group, a time, a region, a
|
|
nation or any other larger structure, it immediately becomes deeply
|
|
political. Cultural memory is crucial in the formation of an identity that
|
|
transcends the merely personal. Cultural memory is not just museums, books
|
|
and monuments. Cultural Memory rather is politics pur sang!
|
|
Cultural Memory and Collective Identity
|
|
|
|
The Estonian philosopher Hasso Krull once remarked in one of his lectures
|
|
that "history is a machine going nowhere". Though he might be right, the
|
|
idea does not seem very useful to the formation of any particular kind of
|
|
social order (such as a nation state). Krull's contention will therefore
|
|
not be likely to gain much approval amongst politicians, whatever their
|
|
sign may be. It is more interesting for any kind of politics to create a
|
|
meaningful context, both for the present as well as the past.
|
|
|
|
This meaningful context can best be understood as a narrative, a way in
|
|
which material objects, events, documents and descriptions are linked
|
|
together into a coherent narration of past and present. This narration
|
|
conveys to its audience how the present derives from the past, and how the
|
|
signs that structure and signify the world around them, bear witness to
|
|
this inextricable connection between past and present. What the objects of
|
|
the past tell their audience is the necessary state of things in the
|
|
present. A society doesn't just exist, it is an emergent property of a
|
|
multitude of events that have shaped its current state. Its members are
|
|
never alone or alienated, rather, they are interwoven in the very
|
|
historical fabric of that society, which shapes their perceptions and
|
|
values as much as their immediate physical and social environment.
|
|
|
|
The objects belonging to the cultural heritage of a given society are
|
|
never isolated bodies in a decontextualised hyperspace, nor are they
|
|
self-contained objects in a post-historical era. Their symbolic
|
|
significance is not contained so much in their artistic or aesthetic
|
|
qualities as such, but rather in the degree to which they are part of a
|
|
convincing narrative that binds the object and the viewer together in a
|
|
shared system of beliefs. What the object and the audience tell each other
|
|
is that their inalienable connection testifies to a continuity, which
|
|
transcends the limitations of the merely individual, in time (history) as
|
|
well as in space (a people).
|
|
|
|
That is, if you believe in it.
|
|
|
|
There are various ways to describe this function. The Egyptologist Jan
|
|
Assmann speaks of cultural memory as a connective structure founding group
|
|
identity through ritual and a textual coherence [1]. He explains that the
|
|
past is never remembered for its own sake. Its main functions are to
|
|
create a sense of continuity and to act as a motor for development. The
|
|
present is situated at the end of a collective path as meaningful,
|
|
necessary and unalterable. Assman defines such cultural narratives as
|
|
'mytho-motorics'. They motivate development and change by presenting the
|
|
present as a deficient reflection of a heroic mythological past. A past
|
|
which should be restored for the future.
|
|
|
|
What this view implies is that cultural memory acts beyond the founding of
|
|
group identity and continuity of present and past, into the future. It
|
|
presents a particular view of the future as necessary, and provides
|
|
direction for collective action in the present to move towards it. The
|
|
goal is to recapture and restore the ideals which have been lost in the
|
|
deficient imperfections of present day-life. Ideals that can be retained
|
|
through collective action, whether this be in the form of ritual or rather
|
|
through revolutionary change.
|
|
|
|
Cultural memory in a living culture is never fixed. It involves a constant
|
|
reinterpretation of the present in terms of the past to decide on possible
|
|
actions for the future. Meaning can shift and rituals can take on
|
|
different forms. Rather than being fixed in an anthropological text book,
|
|
the cultural memory of living cultures is suspect to manipulation. Since
|
|
the definition of cultural memory depends on a continuous exchange between
|
|
the memory objects of a given culture and their interpretation by its
|
|
members, it is however difficult to reveal the outcome as fraud. Cultural
|
|
memory simply is the outcome of this interplay. It is the process that
|
|
counts, and not its arbitrary fixation.
|
|
|
|
The definition of identity that results from this memory construction,
|
|
therefore is deeply imaginary. Benedict Anderson has convincingly argued
|
|
that "all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face
|
|
contact are imagined." Imagined because they deal with how people imagine
|
|
themselves and one another. Today almost all communities people belong to,
|
|
are too large to allow for direct face to face contact between all its
|
|
members. Therefore the modes of imagination employed to imagine one's
|
|
community must somehow be organised via an inbetween mechanism or
|
|
apparatus (i.e. media in the broadest sense of the word).
|
|
|
|
The set of values and ideas that binds people together in a community
|
|
necessarily have to become mediated values and ideas. There is nothing new
|
|
in this, nor is it something pertaining specifically to the formation of
|
|
the nation state. Someone argued with me after a lecture about this topic
|
|
that if you would have asked a random inhabitant of Western Europe in the
|
|
late medieval times to define her or his identity, the most likely
|
|
response would have been; "Christian", clearly illustrating a grand
|
|
transnational identity-structure. Even more so, the measure of control
|
|
over the media that dominated identity discourse then and now is probably
|
|
quite comparable. The era of electronic media does, however, introduce a
|
|
new dimension of speed to this process; a fatal acceleration towards the
|
|
immediate.
|
|
Location of Memory:
|
|
|
|
Where is the memory of a culture, of a society located? Principally in
|
|
the memory objects that hold the traces of the past. As noted before, in a
|
|
living culture this location is fluid and dynamic. Memory is stored both
|
|
in material and immaterial forms.
|
|
|
|
A seemingly stable container of cultural memory is the built environment.
|
|
The streets of cities and villages, the architecture of the buildings, the
|
|
artefacts that inhabit the living space, they all testify to the
|
|
persistence of a culture's and a societies' memory. It was hardly a
|
|
surprise, in retrospect, that an ahistorical, or maybe better
|
|
anti-historical, cultural movement such as the Italian Futurists hailed
|
|
the virtues of war to destroy the stifling remains of moulded, bankrupt
|
|
and corrupted cultural history. The explosive beauty of the modern war
|
|
machine, ecstatically embraced as a relentlessly powerful tool to break
|
|
the chains of a suffocating cultural past.
|
|
|
|
The monument as a physical embodiment of community memory, has, of course,
|
|
always been a focal point for the struggles over cultural memory.
|
|
|
|
Cultural memory is also contained in immaterial form. First of all in
|
|
language, both in spoken language as well as in its written forms. Orality
|
|
and speech seem to be imbued with a much more subtle connection to
|
|
history. Speech, through accent and choice of words is usually connected
|
|
to a regional origin. Accent and dialect are the regional containers of
|
|
cultural memory par excellence, they are as much part of the narration of
|
|
past and present, as the stories they convey. It would be interesting to
|
|
question if the concept of a nation state is conceivable at all without a
|
|
writing system?
|
|
|
|
Like the monument, language is an embodiment of community memory, albeit
|
|
an immaterial one. Language has often become the battle ground for
|
|
cultural and political conflicts. In part these conflicts revolve around
|
|
the suppression of a local language or dialect to facilitate the
|
|
superimposition of a new dominant cultural system. There are also other
|
|
more hidden forms of assimilation and resistance that can become the
|
|
object of such clashes.
|
|
|
|
In Estonia, for instance, the suppression of the Estonian language was
|
|
quite overt during the Soviet occupation of the country. The Estonian
|
|
language was stripped of its official use-value and relegated to the
|
|
personal realm. Russian as the new state language (i.e. the language of
|
|
bureaucracy) took its place. But exactly through this shift from public
|
|
life to the personal sphere, the threatened national identity and the
|
|
personal identification of the Estonians became deeply associated with the
|
|
use of the Estonian language. For them it was particularly shocking that
|
|
Estonian officials of the Soviet system started to 'Russify' the Estonian
|
|
language by importing alien language structures from the Russian language
|
|
into Estonian. One such example was the introductory phrase most Russians
|
|
would use, saying "I am X, son of Y", which was then also used by these
|
|
officials when they introduced themselves in Estonian. By most Estonians
|
|
these subtle modifications of their native language, were felt as a
|
|
particularly direct assault on the sovereignty of this last personal
|
|
sphere.
|
|
|
|
Music is another strong container of culturally specific memory
|
|
structures, like rhyme, its formal characteristics ensure a pertinence
|
|
from one generation to the next beyond and outside of a writing system. In
|
|
a larger sense, aesthetic and formal design principles are the immaterial
|
|
principles that structure the awareness of the viewer about the cultural
|
|
significance of individual objects, even if no explicit story is connected
|
|
to them. Obviously there are countless art objects and use objects that
|
|
physically embody these principles, but it seems that their "narration"
|
|
determines their meaning in a living culture. Cultural memory in these
|
|
instances is located principally in our heads, rather than in the memory
|
|
objects themselves.
|
|
|
|
Today, this memory function is increasingly organised via the media
|
|
system, of print, electric, electronic and digital media. This media
|
|
system has become increasingly integrated, both through technological
|
|
developments (such as digitalisation), and because of economic integration
|
|
(mergers and concentration in the media-industries). This integrated media
|
|
system internalises the main functions of cultural memory, it becomes its
|
|
principal 'location'. It acts as a documentation system, of current as
|
|
well as past events. The latter by making use of continuous references to
|
|
that past with historical media documents. The integrated media-space also
|
|
acts as a system of symbolic representation; of individuals that represent
|
|
power (political leadership) or spiritual values (religious leaders), or
|
|
simply by setting an artistic or interpretative agenda.
|
|
|
|
What the media system is particularly good at is the creation of
|
|
collective narratives. TV so far champions this function as Marshall
|
|
McLuhan already rightfully observed in the mid-sixties, reflecting on the
|
|
TV coverage of the Kennedy funeral. McLuhan writes: "Kennedy was an
|
|
excellent TV image. With TV, Kennedy found it natural to involve the
|
|
nation in the office of the Presidency, both as an operation and as an
|
|
image. TV reaches out for the corporate attributes of office. Potentially,
|
|
it can transform the Presidency into a monarchistic dynasty. A merely
|
|
elective Presidency scarcely affords the depth of dedication and
|
|
commitment demanded by the TV form." [2] (...)"Perhaps it was the Kennedy
|
|
funeral that most strongly impressed the audience with the power of TV to
|
|
invest an occasion with the character of corporate participation. No
|
|
national event except in sports has ever had such coverage or such an
|
|
audience. It revealed the unrivalled power of TV to achieve involvement in
|
|
a complex process. The funeral as a corporate process caused even the
|
|
image of sport to pale and dwindle into punny proportions. The Kennedy
|
|
funeral, in short, manifested the power of TV to involve an entire
|
|
population in a ritual process." [3]
|
|
|
|
Quite recently this enormous power of TV to integrate a public of billions
|
|
into a collective act of cognitive processing in depth was again
|
|
strikingly illustrated. First by the televised wedding of Princess Diana,
|
|
but most of all by the almost global live coverage of her funeral,
|
|
following her tragic death. In the process of the televisual rendition of
|
|
a royal fairy tale-turned-nightmare, Princess Di became a purely
|
|
symbolical embodiment of community values and aspirations, making her no
|
|
more real than Delacroix's liberty, leading the people.
|
|
Commodification of cultural memory in the information age
|
|
|
|
The European Union has identified Europe's cultural heritage as its
|
|
greatest 'info-asset' for the information economy of the future. It has
|
|
engaged in a scheme for offering multimedia access to Europe's cultural
|
|
heritage as a business opportunity. Given that the core of the future
|
|
information economy is information goods, and given that there is a
|
|
particular interest in rich "content" for the information and
|
|
communication structures of the "emerging information society", the EU has
|
|
declared the commercial exploitation of multi-media access to the cultural
|
|
heritage of Europe the highest aim of its funding programs in this field.
|
|
|
|
Through a "Memorandum of Understanding" and the establishment of
|
|
"co-operation frameworks" such as MEDICI (Multi Media Access to Europe's
|
|
Cultural Heritage), this new market sector (cultural content industries)
|
|
is actively encouraged. The notion of culture as public domain does not
|
|
seem to have been a consideration when these policies were developed. Even
|
|
less so does this policy-framework open up any spaces for critical debate.
|
|
|
|
This failed opportunity may in part be understood as a reluctance on the
|
|
part of the European Union to give itself a cultural definition, given the
|
|
great diversity of cultural identities within its (expanding) territory.
|
|
It is, however, problematic that in a period of European integration, the
|
|
EU is not willing or able to create a space for critical debate about the
|
|
urgent questions of the new cultural formations in Europe. Together with
|
|
the lack of democratic substance the European Union has become an abstract
|
|
and alienated technocratic and bureaucratic structure, that affords little
|
|
opportunity for identification to its 'citizens'.
|
|
Uncritical Regionalism
|
|
|
|
Boris Groys has pointed out a more subtle form of commodification of
|
|
cultural memory. It starts with a strong anti-modern resentment, which is
|
|
particularly notable in the countries of the "former East" of Europe.
|
|
Groys notes that modern art does indeed negate the old cultural identities
|
|
and their perceived historical unicity, originality and authenticity. The
|
|
defenders of national identity do not appreciate that, but also the
|
|
"international visitor of the virtual museum of identities", who has no
|
|
wish to be confused by ambiguous signs, has no appreciation for it.
|
|
|
|
This postmodern cultural tourist, lost in the decontextualised societies
|
|
of spectacles and ubiquitous consumerism, is looking for a lost cultural
|
|
authenticity which she/he hopes to find in the revival of pre-modern
|
|
identity and sentiment, particularly in 'the former East'. "The global,
|
|
postmodern, flâneur, lacking a clear definition of identity, is certainly
|
|
sceptical about any claim to a universal truth. But it is exactly this
|
|
fundamental scepticism that allows the acceptance of any other point of
|
|
view, as long as it understands itself as regional and does not claim
|
|
universal validity", Groys writes. This attitude results in an unpleasant
|
|
complicity of a reactionary regionalism and the international cultural
|
|
tourist industry, where even certain cultural fundamentalisms are
|
|
uncritically accepted, as long as they manifest their claims to an
|
|
absolute truth on a regional plane. [4]
|
|
|
|
Although Groys acknowledges the museum as a typically modern institution,
|
|
isolating objects from the specific historical and socio-political context
|
|
in which they operate, the "museified gaze" of the repressive politics of
|
|
identity and the international cultural tourist are for him bound together
|
|
with the museum into a single system. Certain specified memory-objects are
|
|
charged with meaning by these actors, much in the same way as the museum
|
|
carefully enacts their display into a coherent narration, to create the
|
|
deeply desired illusion of a stable identity. The regional fundamentalist'
|
|
dictator is thus seen as a somewhat hyper active, but nonetheless
|
|
sympathetic kind of curator. [5] A last defence outpost of difference in
|
|
an ocean of negated signs.
|
|
|
|
Perversion of memory
|
|
"Nobody, either now or in the future, has the right to beat you!"
|
|
|
|
In the Balkans, where Europe is at its deepest, the battles over identity
|
|
and memory are the most severe. The clashes over history, territory,
|
|
belonging, language and religious identity have a traditionally violent
|
|
character and are linked with some of most tragic chapters of European
|
|
history. In the wake of European integration and the emergence of
|
|
globalisation the regional fundamentalist wars seem to have reached an
|
|
unprecedented level of intensity and destructiveness.
|
|
|
|
In March 1989, the Slovenian art collective NSK (Neue Slovenische Kunst) /
|
|
Laibach staged a chilling performance in Belgrade, called "Lecture", which
|
|
was to pre-figure the terrible events to follow. The performance also
|
|
revealed the dangerous character of one of the most sad perversions of
|
|
cultural memory of recent history. In the NSK 'lecture' parts of
|
|
appropriated speeches by the nationalist Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic,
|
|
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbles, and the architect of British
|
|
pre-worldwar II appeasement politics Richard Chamberlain, provided the
|
|
elements of an explosive mixture.
|
|
|
|
Three months later, Slobodan Milosevic would speak in almost the exact
|
|
same words on Kosovo Polje, the Field of Black Birds, commemorating the
|
|
600th anniversary of the Serbs' defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Turk
|
|
Empire in 1389 on that very "field of black birds". [6] At this occasion
|
|
Milosevic used his famous words 'nobody has the right to beat you',
|
|
referring to the growing animosities between the Serb and Albanian
|
|
population of Kosovo.
|
|
|
|
Both ethnic groups disputed their contesting historical claims over the
|
|
territory of Kosovo. The Serbs stressed their long lived cultural roots in
|
|
the Kosovar soil, exemplified by the many cultural heritage sites
|
|
consisting of medieval churches, monasteries and Serbian dominated cities
|
|
and villages. The Albanians on their part stressed their decendance of the
|
|
ancient Illyrians, a people who are believed to have occupied the Balkans
|
|
some time before the ancient Greeks - and 1,000 years before the Slavs.
|
|
|
|
In the nationalist rhetoric of the Milosevic regime the cultural heritage
|
|
sites of Kosovo, such as the famous monastries of Zica, Decani, and
|
|
Vansjka, were functionalised to serve a sinister political program. Kosovo
|
|
was declared the cradle of Serbian culture and the Serbian nation, a
|
|
theory that had been very popular since the days of the Serbian
|
|
nationalist of the late 19th century. It had been this nationalist
|
|
movement that managed to shake of Ottoman rule finally in 1878, after 500
|
|
years of occupation. By portraying the cradle of the proud Serbian nation
|
|
under threat, the right and the need for its territorial defence and
|
|
ethnic purification was created by the Milosevic regime.
|
|
|
|
In the ten years this regime has ruled the remains of the former
|
|
Yugoslavia, it never failed to recognise the importance of the media and
|
|
the TV in particular. Perhaps Milosevic had read McLuhan with more than an
|
|
absent minded interest. He and his advisors knew very well how the TV
|
|
could be employed to create the collective narratives needed to justify
|
|
his nationalist and ethnically hyper-violent politics, and how to motivate
|
|
the Serbian people to engage in action.
|
|
|
|
TV according to McLuhan is a cold medium, it involves in deep cognitive
|
|
processing, but does not excite the viewer. If this is true, then the
|
|
motivation of the viewer towards action of required more than the simple
|
|
exposure to a blatant political message. Goebbles already noted that
|
|
propaganda requires the creation of an 'optimum anxiety level'; a feeling
|
|
of threat and unrest that should, however, not transgress the boundaries
|
|
of panic.
|
|
|
|
In Serbia the feeling of constant threat was created by the Milosevic
|
|
regime in various ways. On state-television a relentless campaign, using
|
|
the horrific images of forced baptism of orthodox Serbs in Croatian
|
|
worldwar II death camps hammered home the message of the luring dangers
|
|
next door. The reports of international criticism reinforced the feelings
|
|
of being under siege of practically the rest of the world, while mythic
|
|
stories of the partisan achievements helped to boost moral. In this
|
|
gruesome media-mix the evening news became the focal point of a national
|
|
mania, a nation wide brainwash that slowly but surely prepared the grounds
|
|
for war.
|
|
|
|
When considering the various contesting claims about history, territory,
|
|
language and religion, within the terrain of the former Yugoslavia, the
|
|
current two dimensional maps of the international 'peace' brokering
|
|
agencies seem hopelessly beside the point. When these claims, Croatian,
|
|
Serbian, Muslim, (or possibly even Austro Hungarian), are projected
|
|
individually onto this terrain, virtually identical maps emerge. Each of
|
|
these maps would more or less cover the entire terrain of the former
|
|
Yugoslavia. This layering of contesting claims and identities over the
|
|
disputed territory is what constitutes the depth of the Balkans and marks
|
|
its tragedy. Only a three-dimensional map of the terrain of the former
|
|
Yugoslavia can therefore properly explain the complexity of its cultural
|
|
history. It is also clear, therefore, that within the current
|
|
two-dimensional logic of the international peace-brokering agencies, the
|
|
conflicts on the Balkans cannot be resolved.
|
|
|
|
Access to cultural memory and participatory identity construction
|
|
In his book "The Rise of the Network Society", Manuel Castells, analyses
|
|
the rise of two diverging spatial logics. One of these spatial logics is
|
|
close to what we customarily think of when considering the concept of
|
|
physical space. Castells calls it the 'space of place'. In this spatial
|
|
logic, experience is located in an embodied existence, here and now. But
|
|
this experience is heightened, and to some extent estranged, by the
|
|
emergence of a second spatial logic, which, although connected to the
|
|
first, seems to evolve outside of the control of the vast majority of the
|
|
earth's inhabitants; the 'space of flows'. The space of flows consists of
|
|
the countless disembodied informational and economic interactions within
|
|
the world's information and communication networks, and is quickly
|
|
becoming the prime locus of economic power and material wealth.
|
|
|
|
Given the profound impact the new configurations of the space of flows
|
|
increasingly will have on most peoples lives, Castells is deeply concerned
|
|
about the divergence of these two spatial logics. During the preparatory
|
|
discussions for the program of the third Next 5 Minutes conference on
|
|
Tactical Media in Amsterdam (march 1999), David Garcia, one of the
|
|
co-editors on our team felt the need to respond to Castells' call for
|
|
action. Garcia: (...) I believe we must create a more consciously
|
|
dialectical relationship between these two realms, (which Manuel Castells
|
|
describes as the Space of Flows and the Space of Place) because (with
|
|
Castells) if they are allowed to diverge to widely, if cultural and
|
|
physical bridges are not built between these two spatial logic's we may be
|
|
heading (we may already be there) towards life in two parallel universes
|
|
"whose times cannot meet because they are warped into different dimensions
|
|
of hyper space". (...) I believe that one such bridge or entry point may
|
|
lie in notions of reclaiming memory through re-imagining the public
|
|
monument. I still believe that any broad discussion about the public
|
|
domain can not be separated from the physical embodiments of community
|
|
memory in the form of public monuments. "The model here is that of the
|
|
city (the polis) in classical antiquity, and the stress is the memorable
|
|
action of the citizen, as it publicly endures in narrative".
|
|
|
|
Public narrative is an activating principle. Memory is never constructed
|
|
solely for its own sake: It structures the relationship between past and
|
|
present to formulate a plan for future action. Disputes about public
|
|
narratives, in the Space of Place are traditionally negotiated
|
|
non-violently through democratic participation, both in the act of
|
|
creating memory and the formulation of plans for future action, as well as
|
|
their continuous revision. The new networked space of flows requires a
|
|
similar democratic participation, or public access.
|
|
|
|
More importantly, the new space of networked communications still holds a
|
|
promise and a more profound potential for public participation than the
|
|
accustomed modes of participatory decision making. It transcends the
|
|
limitations of the regional focus of the embodied space of place, but it
|
|
also decenters the media control over the completely centralised
|
|
structures of broadcast media (radio and TV). Paradoxically the new Space
|
|
of Flows simultaneously holds the potential of absolute transparency,
|
|
making every single operation within the informational environment
|
|
perfectly traceable. At which point it threatens to become a space of
|
|
absolute control and observation - the ultimate instrument of
|
|
authoritarianism.
|
|
|
|
The decentralised media and communications model that the Internet
|
|
introduced in the beginning of the nineties, is dissipating quickly under
|
|
the pressures of commercialisation, and (even worse) government control
|
|
over 'harmful content'. Still the best chance for avoiding the dangerous
|
|
manipulation of memory by an increasingly sophisticated medialised
|
|
propaganda machine, is the radical opening of the media-landscape for a
|
|
multiplicity of uses. This consciously opened mediascape will constitute
|
|
an integrated electronic space of flows, where countless people will
|
|
engage in the participatory construction of memories and identities,
|
|
simply by creating their own heterogeneous messages...
|
|
|
|
Momentarily, three competing models for the future media landscape
|
|
circulate; a model of complete centralised control, countered by the model
|
|
of complete privatisation and market regulation, and thirdly the model of
|
|
the networked public sphere. None of these models are self-evident or
|
|
inevitable outcomes of the current phase of transformation the networked
|
|
communication system is going through. Their instigation is a matter of
|
|
choice, of clear real-world interests, and of policy. These choices are
|
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part of a fundamental political struggle, whose outcome will determine
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|
whether the new space of flows will be as experientally empty as the
|
|
technocratic structures of the EU, or whether it can offer the spaces of
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|
identification and multiplicity that Europe as a whole at least, so
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|
blatantly lacks at the moment.
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|
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Epilogue: Liberate the wires - Free the ether - Give us Bandwidth!
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Bandwidth is a technical term. It refers to the information transfer rate
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|
of an electronic communications system. In social and political terms it
|
|
embodies the question of access to the international communications
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|
networks, in particular to digital networks such as the Internet.
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|
|
|
The Bandwidth Campaign, which was held as part of the Hybrid Workspace
|
|
temporary media laboratory at documenta X in Kassel, centred on the demand
|
|
for a more equal distribution of bandwidth across the earth and within
|
|
society. It made a radical demand for the creation of structures for
|
|
public bandwidth to accommodate a host of participatory functions. In the
|
|
best traditions of the modern art of political propaganda a set of
|
|
unambiguous slogans was created. A selection of these slogans completes my
|
|
journey for now...
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Bandwidth is the power to speak
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|
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Bandwidth is the ability to assert yourself
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|
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Bandwidth is the Power of Access
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|
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Access to information and communication should be a fundamental democratic
|
|
right, for all citizens of the world
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|
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We want bandwidth now!
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|
|
---- Notes: ----
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0 - distilled from the song "War" by Henry Cow (Anthony Moore / Peter
|
|
Belgvad), 1974.
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|
1 - I paraphrase Volker Grassmuck here from his text "The Living Museum",
|
|
which has been an invaluable source of references. The text can be found
|
|
at: http://www.race.u-tokyo.ac.jp/RACE/TGM/Texts/Museum/museum.html
|
|
Grassmuck refers in his text to: Jan Assmann, "Das kulturelle Gedächtnis.
|
|
Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen", Beck,
|
|
München, 1997.
|
|
2 - Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Media - The Extensions of Man", 1964,
|
|
cited from Routledge, London, 1994, p. 336
|
|
3 - ibid, p. 337
|
|
4 - Boris Groys, "Logik der Sammlung", Carl Hanser Verlag, München, 1997,
|
|
pp. 52-53.
|
|
5 - ibid, p. 54
|
|
6 - "Kosovo" in Serbian means "black bird"
|
|
Eric Kluitenberg,
|
|
Amsterdam, July 1999.</content>
|
|
</mail>
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|
<mail>
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|
<nbr>9.0</nbr>
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|
<subject>nettime: report from belgrad</subject>
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|
<from>Geert Lovink</from>
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|
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
|
|
<date>Tue, 26 Nov 1996 09:16:53 +0100 (MET)</date>
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|
<content>>From drazen {AT} opennet.org Mon Nov 25 23:36:58 1996
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|
|
Time for justice!
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|
|
|
The second round of municipal elections in Serbia turned out in something
|
|
nobody could expect. After triumphal victory on the federal level for ruling
|
|
party and its satellites, local municipal elections in their second (and it
|
|
should be) final round showed totally different picture. In 15 of 18 major
|
|
sites in Serbia ruling party of Slobodan Milosevich suffered great losses,
|
|
and opposition coalition "Together" took vast majority of votes. In some
|
|
cities, like Belgrade, opposition took more then 90% of votes and it turned
|
|
out to be disastrous debacle for Slobodan Milosevich. The results of
|
|
elections imply that the opposition should take total control of all major
|
|
industrial cities in Serbia.
|
|
|
|
So, after urban population showed its will, the ruling party and its
|
|
infrastructure of corrupt judges and courts has denied the results of
|
|
elections, due to "irregularities". So they cancelled results of elections
|
|
in almost all places where they were in minority and called for a third
|
|
round that should take place on Wednesday. (For example in Belgrade
|
|
opposition took 70 mandates of 120, but after "legal intervention" the
|
|
number was lowered to 27!)
|
|
|
|
All that caused revolt of people all around Serbia, so huge protests on the
|
|
streets of cities started. Today is the sixth day of protests, and only in
|
|
Belgrade more then 200 000 people protested for more then six hours in a
|
|
very cold winter day. Every day at 15:00 protests start, and people
|
|
peacefully express their claims so that their will should be respected.
|
|
Today students from Belgrade University entered into the protest and claimed
|
|
that they will not go back to classrooms until the government does not obey
|
|
the results of elections.
|
|
|
|
The radio B92 is the only electronic independent medium in Belgrade and is
|
|
the only source of reliable information. During regular protest routine,
|
|
demonstrants go every day in front of regime's TV station and newspapers and
|
|
express their revolt and at the end of march they come in front of B92 and
|
|
show their gratitude for the incredible effort and enthusiasm of B92
|
|
journalists.
|
|
On several occasions we expected that police will step in and close the
|
|
radio (as well as its Internet department) but happily we are operational so
|
|
far.
|
|
|
|
Nobody could predict how and when this will end. Both sides are firmly on
|
|
their standpoints. People want justice for their free political will and
|
|
Milosevich does not want to lose even tiny bit of its ruling power. Until
|
|
now everything went without incidents, and everybody expects it will stay
|
|
that way. But, the tension is rising every day, as well as the number of
|
|
demonstants on the streets.
|
|
|
|
Hopping that justice will win in the end
|
|
Drazen Pantic</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>9.1</nbr>
|
|
<subject>Re: nettime: report from belgrad</subject>
|
|
<from>Armin Medosch</from>
|
|
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
|
|
<date>Tue, 26 Nov 1996 15:13:27 +0100</date>
|
|
<content>Hello nettimers,
|
|
|
|
I am really glad about this report from Belgrade, especially since the
|
|
big german newspapers donŤt write about it.
|
|
|
|
Today in "Sueddeutsche Zeitung", which is the biggest "quality"
|
|
newspaper in Germany there was only a ten line article. Titled "Biggest
|
|
demonstrations against Milosevic since 1991" it writes in a very vague
|
|
way about the whole thing, letting it look like some students
|
|
demonstrations. Also the manipulation of election results by the
|
|
government are not reported as fact but as "said to be". On the same
|
|
page there is a rather big article about former Turkish President Ylmaz
|
|
being beaten on his nose in Hungary. For me this shows that "Western
|
|
Democratic Media" are not really that democratic or that free, but
|
|
rather selective. Disinformation can also be created by focusing on some
|
|
topics and on others not. I donŤt understand, why big Western media like
|
|
Sueddeutsche Zeitung donŤt report in big style about the struggle of
|
|
Serbian people against anit-democrat powers, but probably they have some
|
|
reason. Also the media in Germany didnŤt complain much about Tudjman
|
|
ignoring/suppressing the results of the Zagreb elections.
|
|
So maybe the reason is that the Germans want the Serbians always look
|
|
like the bad guys. A self-conscious peopleŤs revolt doesnŤt fit into
|
|
that picture maybe. Or there are any strange deals with Milosevic behind
|
|
the scene.
|
|
|
|
The same journal Sueddeutsche Zeitung also didnŤt report any background
|
|
information about the riots in Indonesia that summer. All you got to
|
|
know was, that there is an opposition and ther was some fighting, how
|
|
many people were injured or killed and taken to prison and that most of
|
|
them (?!?) were released from jail a few days later. But it was never
|
|
told that the father of the opposition leader was a democratically
|
|
elected President who was overthrown by a military coup by the now still
|
|
governing dictator and that this action was supported by the CIA and
|
|
could happen while the world was fixated on the war in Palaestina in 67
|
|
(source: Noam Chomsky, Power and Economy). Without this background
|
|
nobody could know how bad it was for the opposition that the daughter of
|
|
the former president can now not be a candidate for the elections next
|
|
year in Indonesia because she was removed from the head of the only
|
|
opposition party through this government intervention. At the same time
|
|
Indonesia is considered a "very interesting market" and German companies
|
|
like Telekom and Siemens are doing very good business there. The German
|
|
state itself sold between 20 and 30 military landing boats (from former
|
|
East German Navy) to Indonesia. These boats are ideally fitting for
|
|
invasions of Islands like East-Timor (but this is not the only
|
|
suppressed region in Indonesia) because they can call at sandy beaches
|
|
and spit out light tanks and armed troops trhough a front hatch. Also
|
|
these boats are extremely fast, making 60 knots. When the German
|
|
Government was attacked by (not too many) journalists about the sale of
|
|
these boats they defended themselves by saying that all weapons were
|
|
dismantled from the boats. Anyway its easy to install new weapons and
|
|
better ones then the outdated east german/russian rocket throwers.
|
|
|
|
So what Chomsky says in "Power and Economy", that bringing democracy to
|
|
the world is not really the goal of the West, can be found true in the
|
|
case of Indonesia. It seems to be more interesting for the West to have
|
|
a strange kind of "stability" even if this means to support totalitarian
|
|
regimes, because this stability - which is often a stability of
|
|
graveyards - protects Western investments. The role of media - and not
|
|
just the real cheap mass media but also the so called quality newspapers
|
|
- seems to be to find excuses for the acting of governments and
|
|
multinationals and to spread disinformation by leading the attention of
|
|
people in the own country to other topics at a given moment.
|
|
|
|
These are examples for information controll, not totalitarian controll
|
|
but self controll of capitalist newspapers (or is there a state
|
|
influence that we cant see). It is something that makes me very angry
|
|
for a long time also because it is so hard to proof how these things are
|
|
done purposely. Without well recherched backgrounds it often stays very
|
|
nebulous what is really going on. So I have no clue why German mass
|
|
media are not reporting about what happens in Serbia right now. Maybe
|
|
somebody can help me.
|
|
|
|
Armin Medosch</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
<mail>
|
|
<nbr>10.0</nbr>
|
|
<subject>[spectre] where is deep europe?</subject>
|
|
<from>Andreas Broeckmann</from>
|
|
<to>spectre@mikrolisten.de</to>
|
|
<date>Thu, 15 Nov 2001 13:57:29 +0200</date>
|
|
<content>here is an excerpt from a text that i wrote in 1997 for the third
|
|
ostranenie catalogue; i think it clarifies at least my understanding of the
|
|
notion 'deep europe':
|
|
For the Syndicate workshop at the Hybrid WorkSpace during the documenta X
|
|
in Kassel we chose the title "Deep Europe". We were looking for a term that
|
|
was neither East- nor West-specific, that carried some of the historical
|
|
baggage of the notion of Europe, and that was at the same time strange
|
|
enough to be easily understood as ironic. It was an experimental title that
|
|
turned out to be an interesting focus for thinking about the context of our
|
|
work. In the end, Luchezar Boyadijev's (Sofia) reading of 'Deep Europe' was
|
|
accepted by most participants: 'The notion is a metaphor which could be
|
|
problematic. In the logic of this metaphor, deepness or depth is where
|
|
there are a lot of overlapping identities of various people. Overlapping in
|
|
terms of claims over certain historical past, or certain events or certain
|
|
historical figures or even territories in some cases. It could also be
|
|
claims over language or alphabet, it could be anything. Europe is deepest,
|
|
where there are a lot of overlapping identities.'
|
|
|
|
This mapping of culture and of the depth of identities onto the mental and
|
|
physical geography stands not in contradiction to, but is a condition of
|
|
the work that is being done in electronically networked translocal
|
|
environments equipped with all sorts of telematic gear. After the workshop,
|
|
Branka Milicic Davic wrote: 'what is deep europe? is it real? is it safe?
|
|
my answer is - yes. deep europe is real. it exists. i do not need visa to
|
|
be there, i do not need an invitation letter to be there, i can simply sit
|
|
and think and i am there - in the land without borders, policemen,
|
|
elections, president, government.... where no radio or TV station will be
|
|
banned... whose citizens are speaking different languages without shame...
|
|
and lot more. deep europe is my homeland, my private mental space, which i
|
|
share with others. deep europe recognizes words like exchanging, sharing,
|
|
growing. and that's why i believe deep europe exists. because i went there,
|
|
and i can go there whenever i wish. to exchange, share, grow and
|
|
understand.'
|
|
|
|
On the surface, the Syndicate is an informal network and an 'intercom'
|
|
system for people in the media art community in Europe and beyond. At the
|
|
same time, this inter-communication effects a re-mapping of cultural and
|
|
mental territories that transcends the political, religious and territorial
|
|
separations which we regard as a temporary nuisance, rather than as the
|
|
last word on this imagined continent/container. Lisa Haskel (London)
|
|
concludes her Deep European 'letter from home': 'So perhaps, this is what
|
|
Deep Europe is all about. Not a political position, a utopia or a
|
|
manifesto, but rather a digging, excavating, tunnelling process toward
|
|
greater understanding and connection, but which fully recognises different
|
|
starting points and possible directions: a collaborative process with a
|
|
shared desire for making connection. There may be hold-ups and some
|
|
frustrations, quite a bit of hard work is required, but we can perhaps be
|
|
aided by some machinery. The result is a channel for exchange for use by
|
|
both ourselves and others with common aims and interests.'
|
|
|
|
http://www.v2.nl/east/archive/deep_europe/</content>
|
|
</mail>
|
|
</mails>
|
|
</chapter> |