[Nettime-bold] RE: commentary on Unsubscribe text

["anna balint" <epistolaris@freemail.hu>]

'Il n'ya plus de centre de l'art.Chaque artiste doit se considérer comme
faisant
partie d'un réseau'  Robert Filliou - Eternal Network

Dear Ana, folks, auto replyer,

One of the fantastic aspects of the net is the immediate accesibility to the
texts,
sources, works, people. One minute search on the web is enough to
acknowledge
the context of a text, and  find out that the Eternal Network text was
published. One more minute is enough to overcome the impression that mail
art circles were ever closed. For people with theoretical interest in
mailing lists, networks, netart  - the net will probably be a minimum
reference.
Unfortunately I did not find your text in the nettime archives, as it is
very raw and inefficiently organised. Contrary to such net archives, mail
art archives already developed archiving, filtering strategies, and methods
for organise information.
Art and media concerned BBSs, mailing lists owe a lot to the correspondence
networks and movements, even the mailing list technique was developed in
mail art circles, it goes back to the newsletter of Dick Higgins and   the
New York Correspondence School of Ray Johnson. Besides technical aspects, on
the content level even nettime reproduced and interfered with many of the
mail art and fluxus phenomena  - intermedia, collaborative work, the
multiples, the anticopyright movement, much of the netart, media art, visual
poetry, copy art, censorship questions, radio art, sound poetry, fanzines,
video art, computer art, alternative music, alternative galleries, museums,
comes from the correspondence art and fluxus.
When about bulky correspondence art materials, many theories and concepts
cover them very well, mail art theories in the first place, but the library
of Borges as well, some notions of  Flusser, the palimpsest (of Hakim Bay as
well), heteroglossic forms of Michael Bakhtin  - his theory of reverse
culture covers your original text as well - hypertext, and so on.
When about legacy of ideas, would it be a coincidence that one of the
moderators of this list comes form the American Fluxus circles, the other
from the Advancement for the Illegal Knowledge group, the third close to the
Marshall MacLuhan heritage - connected with Fluxus, as Marshall MacLuhan was
first published by Something Else Press?
The concepts, theories, practices and attitudes of the correspondence art
infiltrated not only mailing lists, but contemporary art practices - the
call for artworks and papers for instance, its morality, its rules. The
idea, the illegal knowledge which circulated through postal network on a
global level became much more known and legitimate on a larger scale due to
the net.  Though many things originating in the correspondence art became
more visible, some still wait to be discovered. Topics, methods as well. For
instance correspondence artists adored trash, crab and junk, they very much
explored and recycled it.
When about empty places in mailing lists, the squatters logic works, what's
wrong in that? That logic brought up alternative spaces, alternative radios,
alternative tv's, alternative art, alternative idea.  Nokia is  a spammer?
Great!  We found out! The Dalai Lama is spamming? Good that somebody reminds
me the question of who the Dalai Lama is! Integer was banned from the
syndicate, nettime, rhizome and infowar list at the same time? First of all
we all learn that these lists were connected, their moderators control (too
much) and they lack humour. Her messages are overwhelming? Did we know
before  that messages can mix private and public, did we know so much about
private and public feed-back, did we question content, language, filtering
before? Didn't we learn something about hidden and visible aspects of the
email? Did some mailing lists die out? Great! New ones come, and we will
find out what is eternal.
There is already much said about spatiality of the net, many people explore
utopia and atopia, virtual space, spatiality in general. Much less is
discussed the notion of temporality, though some artists, theoreticians
already struggle with this concept. At this moment my personal time
perceiving is very much determined by the commercial s/censors of
net-works, as the Hungarian Telecomunication Company lets me to work in the
night with less costs.  Robert Filliou did not wait the raise of the
internet to formulate his theories, maybe we still need time, to properly
understand his notion of time with the help of the new medium. Eternity is a
religious notion? Which concept is not?
bests regards,
Anna Balint



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