Re: <nettime> Your question

[Are Flagan <areflagan@transcodex.net>]

Re: 9/18/03 23:17, "Peter Lunenfeld" <peterl@artcenter.edu>:

> Good question, wrong example. One of the things I've always liked about Lev
> Manovich's work is precisely the fact that he doesn't quote the same texts
> over and over again. There's a posse full of academics happy to download
> Benjamin, Baudrillard or Deleuze all over you at the drop of a bitform, but
> Lev's not one of them. As for self-serving agendas, love the sinner, hate
> the sin.
> 
> Transparently Yours --
> 
> Peter Lunenfeld

(received off list with CC to Lunenfeld)

Re: 9/19/03 06:55, "geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>:

> Sure, I don't see Lev doing that either. Are is unclear in what he is trying
> to say.

(received off list)

Re: 9/19/03 06:42, "_______" <______n@______.com>:

> very interested in your comment on lev manovich's
> take on ars electronica 2003. . . . but don't know
> where to find the manovich text itself, of great
> interest since i was there and shared the view,
> in some dimensions.  did i erase it thinking it
> was spam on a list that i do see (eg, nettime)?
> or was it elsewhere?


Anachronistically yours, then, since email filters in mysterious ways on and
around nettime.

I did not set the example, only reapplied it without an address (I guess
return to sender is the obstinate default). Judging by the response, also
from a rare appearance on nettime (how long has it been?), it did strike a
note among the dearly departed digirati. Lev, of course, notoriously bowed
out of nettime postings during one of the great attempts at a catfight,
initiated after soft cinema premiered at ZKM. PP quite pointedly called
the new-media-emperor's clothes then, but it was, apparently, way too much
nudity to handle. Exile was preferable. On the strangely defensive note
taken up here, then, is it possible to discuss the writings of Lev
Manovich in such general terms, talking of what he "does," his "work," as
both Ls above seem to suggest? Wouldn't we be taking on far too many
presumptive commonalities about his contribution to "discourse," which,
sort of, brings us back to the commons of his originality. My bounced
query is crucially not personal; it rather readdresses how individuals
behave and perform, and what they must become, under the profitable spell
of a field or a label. The artifice of the edifice extends much further
than the walls Lev tentatively knocks down around elevated "digital art"
at AE. Read his book-jacket gushing for Fuller and the up-and-coming
domain of software art/culture, practiced, as he says, by the very "best,"
and the ubiquitous nature of the computer as a dismantler of peoples and
categories (AE's leaky frontier) gives in to blushing, exclusionary promo
for what also happens to be the subject of his next book. Here the
up-and-coming ramparts of the budding field are protecting the category's
treasures, so the very obvious answer to the original question Lev asked,
a question, incidentally, asked around "art" countless times before, is
no, it is not possible. Something tells me he already knew that before
asking. As Deleuze plainly noted about Baudrillard's take on Benjamin,
ibid.

Just to clarify, Lev's essay was posted to Rhizome, not nettime. Which is
anecdotally interesting right now, due to a thread called News Flash
currently expanding for days on that list. The forwarded lesson is that
widely distributed rhetorical questions are best met with silence.

-af

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