Re: <nettime> Linux wins Prix Ars due to MICROSOFT INTERVENTION

[David Garcia <davidg@xs4all.nl>]

>it is probably a posthumous outrage that Einstein never _was_ awarded the
>Nobel literature prize. In >hindsight he has been a crucial influence on
>western literature ever since the publication of his relativity >theory.
>Freud should have had one too, by the way...

Sure Max this is an outrage...it reminds me of the new hit by Lauren Hill
"Everything is Everything". As one VJ on MTV said "Well that doesn't leave
much to chance does it". (a nice one line critique of post modern
relativism).

>the rather classical art-idea that
>you seem to have in mind when you refer to

No I'm not for any universalist classical nostalgia. I believe that the
discourses we inherit should be problematised, interrogated, tested, even
tested to destruction. That's why I'm part of Next 5 Minutes in which
artists work alongside campaigning activists, hackers and theorists. But
the artists who are working in this context are fully aware of the
theoretical and practical ambiguities that this kind of interdisciplinary
work implies. This kind of heightened awareness is necessary for a
meaningful encounter with modernism since Duchamp, who released artists
from the constraints of loyalty to a given medium allowing for the
possibility "art at large". So my refference to Duchamp is not just
rehtorical., the issues he raised are as probing as they were in the
1920's.  The identification of critical art with emancipatory social
movements, accompanied by the idea of artists being able to work
collaboratively with each other and alongside other disciplines, is not a
"classical" idea of what art is. But to be able to contribute as artists
depends on understanding, who we are and where we're coming from. To
understand that although art is by no means a closed system it has some
degree of autonomy and continuity, this surely is what we mean by a
discourse, a living body of ideas, stories and actions; with its own
community memory. To me this is a powerful resource not to be surrendered
lightly to the new instrumentalist culture which seeks to subsume
everything under the title "design". It is this that I see as the problem
with throwing art prizes at people who probably haven't given art a second
thought. 

This all reminds me of a project that Max an I worked on together long ago
it began by being called Artists Talking Back to the Media due to
typographic issues the designers changed the name of the project to
Talking Back to the Media. Accepting this without a fight is still
something I regret. 

By the way Max nice to think that our argument has its source in a Hoax.



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