<nettime> FW: Re: what is going on, on nettime?

["Ana Buigues" <abuigues@wanadoo.es>]

     [also To: "wryting" <wryting-l@listserv.utoronto.ca>,
      "rhizome" <list@rhizome.org>, 
      "webartery" <webartery@yahoogroups.com>]

Also see:

Josephine Bosma, "Text for Moscow: Between moderation and extremes. The
tensions between net art theory and popular art discourse,"  Switch v6 n1
[art journal of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media of the School of Art and
Design at San Jose University] Date of on line publication not available. 9
April 2001 <http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v6n1/article_b.htm>





-----Original Message-----
From: WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines
[mailto:WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA]On Behalf Of Vincent Fourier
Sent: domingo, 15 de agosto de 2004 11:10
To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA
Subject: Re: what is going on, on nettime?


Hi, this is Vincent Fourier speaking, and this is a
response to Alan Sondheim's post --
in Vincent Fourier's typical style.

Supportively,

Vincent


--
[from "vincent fourier's metapolitical meditations;
beyond good and evil"]


_net.tribes_, 2002

http://www.geocities.com/supermiembro/vincent_fourier/net.tribes.html


As known, the Internet is just a microcosm of what we
find in the off-line world.  The elitist, exclusive
and restrictive practices of joining socio-cultural
tribes is just as strong on the Web as it is in Real
Life.  Some Web art mailing lists want to know what is
my involvement with the art of the Web.  Art History
lists need to know my academic affiliation and
geographical location, because they like to keep
everything taxonomically organized and tidy.  Women's
issues lists request that one defines whether one is a
feminist, postfeminist, cyberfeminist, third wave
feminist, a cybergrrl, a woman, one's sexual
orientation, and other important details. Other lists
feel it is their mission to eradicate the anonymity
practices inherent in the Web and have asked me for my
real name and a short bio to post on their lists.



One of the most bizarre mailing lists I am subscribed
to, and whose name I seem to have forgotten,
constitutes the paradigm of absurdity in their
subscriber's search for a sense of community.
Although there are no restrictions, or questionnaires
to join this list, all sorts of tribulations portray
that space as "un folladero de pavos" --  very coarse
peninsular Spanish expression to refer to a place
where turkeys congregate to engage in copulation.
Springing from their matrix mailing list -– whose name
I do not seem to recall either -– its latino
subscribers share an interest for net.politics,
net.culture and net.art, and propose functioning
within a less Anglophone Internet.



After going through a moderation discontent debate in
the Spring of 2002, very similar to the one that took
place in the 'mother' list some years ago, sometime in
May 2002 a call for entries from Barcelona
institutions was sent to the list, and it was not well
received by a couple of subscribers. This
"convocatoria" was restricted to peninsular Spaniards
and European Community citizens.  And the absurdity of
language and culture uniting people in a incongruent
mailing list seemed more evident than ever before.
Numerous Spanish speakers on that list are from Latin
America, or Hispanics living in North America.  To top
it off there are Portuguese speakers too (from
Portugal and its former colonies).  If the Internet
and the art circles were not complicated enough, the
paradoxical love-hate relationship between Latin
American and Iberian Spaniards, and the nightmares of
cultural neo imperialism-colonialism (either coming
from the U.S. or from Spain) keep adding conflicts to
the Internet arts community of Spanish speakers.  When
that "convocatoria" from Barcelona was distributed
through the list, a subscriber complained about the
fact that language does not unify us at all, that we
belong to that list as a contestation for this our so
Anglophone Internet.  His sentiments were seconded by
another subscriber as many others might have agreed in
silence -– in their awareness that the complaints were
not so much directed to the requirements of that call
for entries _per se_, but rather to the almost
non-existence of opportunities for digital artists in
the South Cone of the globe populated by Spanish &
Portuguese speakers . . . sadly enough.  I guess the
Catalan question was also at stake, but I would not
want to start talking about that now.



One is not sure whether to resort to the phenomenology
of perception in Virtual Reality environments, to
Latin American Magical Realism, to the
paranoic-critical method of Dalí or to Jamesionian
analysis of Third World countries cultural status to
understand why that zoo-grouping of people (including
myself) in that latino list came to exist.  One also
wonders why the 'latino' label has been chosen to
title this list.  Are we using the 'word' to lesser
its somehow pejorative overtones? Are we going through
a 'latino power' hip hop reivindicating
_Risorgimento_?  The population in this e-space is
composed by digital artisans, postmodern philosophers
and politically committed altruist heroes.  If we are
latinos, what are the Francophones?  Where are the
Italians?  If we are a Romance languages mailing list,
why aren't the Romanians with us?  Where do the
Hispanics living in the U.S. and Canada fit in, in a
list where peninsular Spaniards are also considered
cultural imperialists?  Perhaps it is time to found
more lists.  I propose a European PIGS list for
net.workers.  We know that for the Northern members of
the European Community the PIGS are: Portugal, Italy,
Greece, and Spain, and that perhaps would be a good
alternative for another interesting discussion
platform when it is net time.



http://www.geocities.com/supermiembro/vincent_fourier/net.tribes.html



Post Scriptum, August 2004:
the aforementioned 'latino' e-space entered its
comma-limbo phase in May 2004


--


> -----Original Message-----
> From: WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across
Disciplines
> [mailto:WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA]On Behalf Of
Alan Sondheim
> Sent: domingo, 15 de agosto de 2004 3:20
> To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA
> Subject: what is going on, on nettime?
>
>
> nettime-l seems increasingly closed off; numerous
voices aren't heard any
> more, for example nn, mez, Talan - I wrote them
asking why the list is
> turning from cultural politics to more or less
straight political economy,
> which can be found anywhere - the post was censored.
Florian Cramer just
> stopped the Unstable Digest - there's no more
codework there at all - he
> left his co-editors more or less in the lurch, not
answering email, then
> disappearing, now back on nettime with politics. So
that venue's gone and
> apparently at this point one can't even question the
list direction
> onlist.
>
> I certainly can understand nettime not posting me
for any number of
> reasons - but the discourse is far more uniform now
than ever. And since
> there's no discussion on nettime about this, as far
as I can tell, I
> thought I'd open this up on other lists - (mez by
the way suggested I do
> so).
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> - Alan, watching the net narrow a bit
>
> recent http://www.asondheim.org/
> http://www.asondheim.org/portal/.nikuko
> WVU 2004 projects
http://www.as.wvu.edu/clcold/sondheim/files/
> Trace projects
http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
> partial mirror at
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt




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