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 _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold