<nettime> Re: life and lurking in Berlin

[Kali Tal <kali {AT} kalital.com>]

As an intermittent poster who has fallen into quiet lurkerdom over  
the last several years, I have to say that nettime is still one of my  
favorite reads.  I delete most mail from other lists unread, but I at  
least skim almost everything that goes by here.

I am on the other side of a 20-year academic career and when I was in  
the Academy I found the critical work on nettime invaluable for  
thinking through the issues important to me, even if those issues  
were most marked by their absence: race/gender/class manifestations  
in cyberspace. There were and are smart people here, who seem to be  
overall motivated by what I'd call extremely good intentions even if  
I don't always think everyone is on the right track (and where would  
I find a place I thought everyone was on the right track?). I'm not a  
star of any kind, but I also must admit I completely forgot that  
nettime is moderated since I've never sent anything that didn't get  
posted or had a conversation with someone who was annoyed about not  
getting posted. I don't tend to post essays here, but my personal  
reflections on issues seem at least as welcome here as in places  
where personal reflections are encouraged.

I would like to take advantage of the current liveliness of nettime  
to ask if anyone on list is doing (or knows of people doing)  
interesting tactical media-related work in Berlin.  I moved here in  
October and my German is still sub-standard, but my technical skills  
and creativity can hopefully still be useful to someone or some  
organization during the time it takes me (the next year or so) to  
learn to communicate in a brand new language. I'd welcome some human  
contact and the opportunity to do good work at the same time. If you  
know of anything, please contact me backchannel.

About "nettime vs. The Blogosphere"... I think both spaces are  
useful, and that combining them can be quite powerful.  Actually, I  
recently did the most anti-Academy thing I could think of and built a  
home page and started blogging on MySpace (http://blog.myspace.com/ 
kalital).  My reflections about the nature of interaction (with a  
specific focus on truth and lies) in the Academy has actually  
garnered me a wider and more interesting readership than I thought  
possible--primarily the folks who mesh up with the later generation  
nettimers, the ones who will never get those plum tenure track jobs  
and funding to attend conferences.  As a space for young (I'm 46, so  
anybody under 30 to me is young) black graduate students and creative  
artists, it seems to be really taking off. The mix of music and video  
results in some fascinating projects and, for the first time in  
years, I feel like I'm actually in conversation in a virtual  
environment again.  It reminds me of the early years of the radical  
listserv, back when most of us were grad students or new faculty  
members discovering the potential and possibilities of new media.

Peace.

Kali Tal


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