philip pocock on Fri, 14 Feb 2003 17:26:01 +0100 (CET)


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[Nettime-bold] Re: Re: <nettime> Sorry... (FWD)


is it not time to consider or call for an embargo on australian media 
art works (as well as any stemming from uncle sam and his 'coalition of 
the willing')??

my intuitive humanist canadian nature tells me it is time to think about 
such an action. i can imagine that the high-cost high-tech 
industrialization of new media aesthetics from promoter-designer jeffrey 
shaw are acclaimed by western industrial sponsors as they glorify 
western industrial might, showing those powers-that-be how to co-opt the 
new energy of new digital media to old industry ends, only to buttress 
what charlie chaplin disparaged in 'modern times', at the cost of no 
money left in institutions shaw and company control for what young 
artists working with new media and networks are radically investigating 
and creating at low- almost no-cost. such australian-inspired cultural 
politics sends young radical media artists a discouraging message, a 
message that new media is only supported if and when it invests a 'big 
blue magic' in its submissive role extending the 'heroic' 
military-industrial complex electro-mechanical conveyor belt control 
over any radical use of media, seen as irrational when not serving what 
w. burrough's calls 'the Board' of 'Control'.

is it not time to speak out against such negative new media cultural 
politics, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions in 
support of 'picasso persiflage' complexes we are learning to call 'media 
stars' when new media collectives outside the world of the 'coalition of 
the willing' find themselves broke and in the shadow at the end of the 
'digital art pecking order' with the industrialization of works like 
'shaw's looming in the foreground, supported full force by a thinking 
process that needs rethinking?

shaw's recent material, expensive, energy-sucking inflatable nostalgic 
spin off of a 60s-style worlds fair buckie fuller 'dome' in 'future 
cinema' turns its new media participants into servo-electro mechanical 
image-gristmilling subordinates, pixel-pumping galleon slaves, pumping 
and grindin to catch bunker-window-style glimpses of improperly, 
voyeuristically mythologizing, and visually-cliché exoticized human 
beings, thev entire mechanical circus activity sending an antiquated and 
industrial-paradigm-occupied message that does not embrace cultural 
tolerance or new media as offering a collaborative 'noosphere' of 
collective understanding. the user must submit to the machinery in order 
to get the digital pay-of. is such work not questionably supporting the 
general world political stance of this artist's country of origin at the 
current moment? true, it iis difficult to equate art and nationality, 
but my intuition tells me that it is time to realize that cultural 
production is our best bet at a pan-foreign ministry and radical other 
art forms are now perhaps the best diplomat, or communicator. such 
australian aesthetics as promoted by shaw, currently a cultural 
politician in australia promoting such aesthetics worldwide,  only 
furthers the polluting idea of industrial progress into realms of new 
media which are perhaps, imho, one of the last holdouts for cultural 
diplomacy and translocal tolerance. and his expensive space-taking works 
are in essence siphoning funds from meaningful radical experimental new 
media collaborative projects. should the online community not consider 
speaking out, or are we as douglas davis wrote in the 70s still a 
'cottage industry' where to speak out is ostracizing and the prices is 
to be labeled a subversive disturbance and ignored?

this mail follows up my critique of lev manovich's 'soft' approach to 
co-opting new media, and misrepresenting current new media database 
paradigms in order to prop up, update and fog critique of any mechanisms 
perpetrated for american global media executive control. his 'soft 
cinema' work is a digital mannerist version of any cnn or western 
nightly news report. his database algorithms, 'rule-based' are even less 
imaginative than cnn editors searching for images to tack onto to an 
'approved' fixed pre-recorded soundtrack. is it not time to expose such 
tactics that try to conscript database concepts and make them backward 
compatible to tv news? what message does that send young media artists, 
whose work seems dysfunctional when works like manovich's are considered 
as a measure?

soft cinema's preset soundtrack, decorated with pretty pictures 
madison-avenue-ad-agency-styled a la piet mondrian (for no good reason 
other than cosmetic) is primarily a closed information system, the GUI 
being manovich himself he proclaims in humility. this banal product 
parades itself as a database new media cinematic work. such works as 
this which conscript the language of new media to revisit the 20th 
century american propaganda machine built from misinterpreting 
precedents in bolshevik experimental cinema (d. vertov) sends a clearly 
muddy and damaging message to young digital media artists who would 
imagine from manovich's example that a database is nothing more than a 
malleable dossier, archive or library of author-controlled and censored 
data a la fbi-goes-digital. in doing so lev manovich confuses the slogan 
of new media with old ones and helps 'The Board' to gat a database 
facelift for an ailing and credibility-losing american propaganda media 
industry, at the cost of radical alternative open, collective database 
new media initiatives which do not pander to the misunderstandings of 
new media in sponsor circle looking to get some of that 'media magic' 
into the affectivity of their military-industrial complex message, 
threatened of course by an open database algorithm which manovich either 
avoids, is unable to program or considers peripheral, when in fact it is 
the distinguishing quality of the 'language of database media'. any who 
study 'soft cinema' will soon find the single wizard behind the curtain 
in oz, and realize they are in an eye-candy-colored virtual prison that 
appears labyrinthian yet remains inalterable by users, just a regular 
penitentiary design.

is it not in new media that a cultural politic or a politic for cultures 
as pushed for by the jeffrey shaw and the lev manovich, both imho 
subliminally promoting with their ideas and designs the industrial and 
medial messages of the 'coalition of the willing'  - australia and 
america?  or am i off the deep end?

i encourage an informal communication-based non-organized movement 
supporting a full embargo and discourse concerning the current 
mechanisms and messages pushed by american and australian new media 
producers.

Am Friday den, 14. February 2003, um 04:29, schrieb Patrick Lichty:

This came through on another list. It makes me want to cry, or scream
out, or something -- to think that Australia has come to this under the
disgustingly oppressive Howard government. It's a bit long, but important
reading.

Betty Betty McLellan
P.O. Box 688
Townsville Q
Australia 4810
Phone: +61 (0)7 4772 6060
Fax: +61 (0)7 4772 6544
email: bettymc@austarnet.com.au

From: "Ron Gray / Irene Gale"
To:
Subject: Guantanamo Bay Rules used in Australian Detention Centres
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 16:41:31 +1030

Dear all, Please forward this on to your contacts - and take some action
about it!

Irene

The following is from the Victorian Greens refugee spokesperson, Pamela
Curr. It makes chilling reading. The question is whether Australia is
becoming another redneck USA, or brownshirt Germany (if, indeed, there's 
any
difference)?

Apols for x-posting. Please circulate widely.... Chris Chaplin Preston,
Guantanamo Bay Rules used in Australian Detention Centres
As if life in Australia's detention camps was not miserable enough,
DIMIA  (Depaqrtment of Immigration, Mulitcultural and Indigenous affairs)
have used the extensive powers available to them under the Migration act 
to
introduce the same rules of incarceration being employed by the United
States
on the Afghani Nationals transported to Guantanamo Bay.

Its all the way with the USA today in OZ. Not only do we have a 
Global/USA
Security company running the camps for the Australian Government-we now 
have
the same rules used on refugees/asylum seekers as are used on suspected 
Al
Qaida members.

Already measures in detention camps such as water cannon, tear gas,
electric batons and electric fences are far beyond that employed in our
highest security prisons and these are used on women and children !!!

Last Thursday 10 men were extracted from Port Hedland Detention Centre 
and
placed in the holding cells at South Hedland Police Station. The 
temperature
at at Sth Hedland yesterday at 9.30 am was 38 degreesC-by noon it will be
close to 50 degrees in these un-airconditioned cells which are supposed 
to
be
used for short-term detention.

A lawyer advised that there have been complaints made to judges resulting
inspections and condemnation of conditions. Mostly persons on charges on
vagrancy and drunkenness are held there for a few hours. There is no
internal
toilet so drunks relieve themselves in the cells. The stench of vomit and
piss is overpowering.

Di Millar (DIMIA Business Manager-title means responsible for Port 
Hedland
IDC) reports that the men have no right to legal support "because they
are not being charged-just held in Immigration Detention in an 
alternative
place of detention".
You see under the Migration Act they can be held in a hole in the ground 
if
DIMIA decide to designate that as "an alternative place of detention".
In NSW ?12c /?15 men are being held in Silverwater and another maximum
security prison-also an alternative place of detention.

These men have not been charged or gone before a court-under the 
migration
act they can go direct to jail-no crime required. Last year a young 
African
man was brutally gang raped in a NSW prison prior to be deported back to
Africa.

A lawyer has been turned away on two occasions denied access to assist
these men even though he has authorization from the wife of one man and 
from
the legal representatives in Melbourne. No phone calls from friends or
family
or lawyers are permitted. A nun has been refused access. This is the
incommunicado detention condemned under international human Rights
convention
but practiced in Guantanamo Bay and now Port Hedland Woomera Baxter and
Villawood.

The Anti -Terrorism Bill that the Coalition failed to get passed just
before Christmas would have allowed this imprisonment for all 
Australians.

Fortunately enough politicians baulked at relinquishing our civil
liberties to stop this draconian legislation from getting through. 
However
once again we see that a two tier system of rights exists in Australia 
today
- laws and rights for Aussies but none for refugees and asylum seekers.

Meanwhile collective punishment is being visited on every man woman and
child in the detention camps. Those who had nothing to do with the fires
are being punished even though ACM and DIMIA know that they are totally
innocent. Just one more breach of the international code on human rights.

This collective punishment has seen a lock-down on the camps.(Remember
Darryl
Williams statement on front page of Australian "there will be no
lockdown-detention centres are not prisons blah blah blah."
Meanwhile reality is No phone calls in or out; strip-searching by angry
and embittered ACM guards is being carried on the vulnerable residents in
the
camps including women and children. We have seen in the past that when 
there
are no ways to communicate that ACM guards have brutalized and beaten 
people
unmercifully. Guards assault children even with witnesses and get away 
with
it (Remember Kingi Kaaki Wicki tucked up in NZ despite outstanding 
warrants
in Australia's courts for beating a child at Woomera in front of a 
doctor)
so
what happens when no one is watching?

The people in Woomera were told by Management that "the party is over
for them "- what party you may ask but more importantly this is a threat 
to
impose even more harsh and abusive conditions. DIMIA want them all to 
sign
to
go back so they are now going to institute a regime in competition with 
what
our friends have fled from. It was always going to be like this and now 
it
has come and the job lot of Australians whose immunity has been built up 
by
a
steady onslaught of propaganda from Howard / Ruddock to any feelings of
compassion or recognition of common humanity don't care.

Where are the watchers? All away on holiday -uncontactable.
What can you do? Ring email fax demand that Incommunicado detention 
cease-
that people either be charged and given their day in court or released.
Demand your right to speak to your friends in the camps. The media are 
only
interested in fires and deaths. They only want to report people harming
themselves or shock horror harming property. So far most of their reports
are
coming direct from DIMIA media releases eg weapons cache found -scissors
"a"screw drivers amp; mobile phones!!!!

Plague ring media talkback/ radio/ write letters. We have to demand that
they report the human rights abuses of this Government. Let's go
overseas -use every contact you have to get the information on this
governments activities bouncing back from overseas and shame the
bastards. Write to Papers in London New York and most importantly ASIA.

Then dear friends if you feel as broken hearted, saddened and angry as I
do hug your children or pat your dog or whatever assists you to comfort 
your
spirit and strengthen your resolve in the face of overwhelming odds to 
fight
on. These are the ugliest and darkest of days but then if we look back 
and
think of those who fought against slavery another monumental abuse of 
human
beings-we can see that we are not the first nor last to face such odds.
Those
Australians who stood together crying out against the removal of little
children from their Indigenous Parents must have been few and lonely but
they
won in the end. We must stand beside our friends in the camps and fight 
with
everything we have. They need us now more than ever and we need them to
remind us our capacity to be decent heroic human beings.

Pamela Curr

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