Syndicate: SEAFair/Junction/Syndicate

[Melentie Pandilovski <mpandil@soros.org.mk>]

Dear All,

Even though memories are still fresh I and everyone else here from SCCA
as well as others from Skopje present on the event, feel already a
nostaligia for the JUNCTION meeting and the SEAFair gatherings. 
I hope that we didn't exhaust you too much and that you are all back to
normal. As much as you can be of course after beeing to the heart of
the Balkans.
I see some reports and impressions are already flying in. Igor, Inke and
Arthur. This is great. I hope some more reports will land on the list.
I am at this time writing a somewhat longer report from SEAFair and 
JUNCTION (which means that we have to view here around 18 tapes of
material) which I will send to the list in some days. Due to the amount
of material I think that it is more realistic to say that in a few days I
will be sending a shorter report, and be sending the longer one a 
while later.
However, as discussion ON THE LIST is picking up with some parameters
that are simply not true I feel the need to react.

	Just one remark: the problem was not the presence of the
	Syndicate itself, basically, but the fact that there was a total
	"misrelationship" in terms of size of SEAFair in comparison to
	the strong presence of the Syndicate crowd. I myself was quite
	surprised when I realized that the Syndicate meeting was taking
	all the space & the time of SEAFair. 

Dear Inke,
As first it is always good to remember that whether the Syndicate
meeting was or was not taking up all of the time of an event is in fact
a matter of judgement and a choice of the organizers of the event (In
this case SEAFair /SCCA- Skopje). 
As second it is in fact NOT TRUE that it was, as the meeting took place
outside of the main program on the 3rd (from 10.30 -13:00 and from 16.30
- 18:00) and 4th of October (from 10:00 - 12:00 and from 16:00 - 20:00),
whereas SEAFair took part from the 2nd to the 9th of October (including
the evenings of the 3rd and 4th of October). 
See http://www.scca.org.mk/SEAFair98/events.htm#program
I personally think that the proportion in this particular setting was
right. It is also true that not everybody could stay until the end of
SEAFair so that the above stated impression probably comes from being
present solely on the first two days.
However it is also true that the contributions from the Syndicalists
were very strong (perhaps even stronger than some main program speakers)
and that it gave a certain pulse to the whole SEAFair '98 Festival. This
I agree on. JUNCTION was the heartbeat of SEFair 98!

As third, I had talked about the JUNCTION in Stockholm and Tirana, with
many Syndicalists including Andreas Broeckmann, Stephen Kovatz, Eric
Kluitenberg, Geert Lovink, about a somewhat more ambitious Syndicate
meeting in Skopje, as well as about the possibilities of the publishing
of the 2nd Reader (which actually happened so that the JUNCTION SKOPJE
READER was edited as well as and promoted by your self). My thoughts as
well as thoughts of others were sent to the list. I explained in detail
the structure of the meeting and asked the Syndicalists to propose themes
for the sessions quite many times, and as I can recall I exchanged quite
a few e-mail messages with Andreas about the theme (in fact it was only
Andreas who came up with actual proposals for the meeting, with issues of
Territoriality, etc.). If interested you can see the correspondence in
the archive. All in all, we were planning this quite thoroughly.
So, I sent the list of sessions we were interested in as organizers, or
to put it more precisely as an SCCA office with particular interests in
fine arts and electronic arts. I did this quite frequently and people
sent their proposals for it. 
Where does the surprise with the structuring of the meeting as it is
come from then? 
Finally I think that the meeting was quite successful, the list of
participants* (see below) was impressive (eventhough many of the
Syndicalists we counted on and could provide for the funding such as
Alexei Shulgin, Vuk Cosic, Olia Lialina, Marina Grzinic, Caius Grozav,
Marek Tuszynski..., could not come because of various reasons), and that
the gathered material is absolutely great. The speakers in the sessions
and the free exchange of ideas that resulted from their lectures is
plenty rich and we will probably print out the proceedings from it. 
Has this happened before?

	Generally Syndicate
	meetings are not supposed to be something like "official
	conferences"; rather, they have always been "side events", or better:
	rather informal and personal (face-to-face) get-togethers of people
	who most of the time communicate via e-mail.

Inke, is this a prescription? Do we have a statut where the above said is
written or is it what you personally prefer? Please clear up this for me
as well as for the other Syndicalists. Because if this is true and has
been formalised so then we shouldn't have planned the Syndicate meeting
as we did and somebody should have reacted long ago.

If you are interested in my opinion (as an organizer of this meeting and
a partcipant of most of the past meetings) then I personally think that
this model has serious adventages compared to the meetings we have had
in the past.


	the problem also present in skopje was that the organisers had
	to deal very much with organising the syndicate junction meeting
	and they put the festival a little beside (as if the syndicate meeting
	would be the main event of the festival, which was not - so the
	meeting became public which was not the intention of the
	syndicalists; but inke will probably say more about it / i'm not
	qualified to analyse this) -

Dear Igor,

About the first notion I have already answered in my reply to Inke, but
I cannot really understand that you say that the meeting became open
contrary to the wishes of Syndicalists. Openness is one of the
principles of the group, as I have understood it so far. We have invited
guests to our meetings always in the past as well. This was true for Tirana,
and Stockholm, and Liverpool, and Rotterdam. Are you suggesting that the
meetings should not be open for the OTHERS?


So, greetings to everyone, hope to continue the discussion and of course
hope to se you all in person again.


Warm regards,

Melentie



----------------------------------------------------
*JUNCTION Participants:

Konstantin Mitenev - Russia
Suzana Milevska - Macedonia
Edi Muka - Albania
Oleg Kireev - Russia
Petko Durmana - Bulgaria
Ile Cvetkovski - Macedonia
Luchezar Boyadziev - Bulgaria
Katarina Zivanovic - Yugoslavia
Nebojsa Vilic - Macedonia
Iliyana Nedkova - Bulgaria
Alexandru Patatics - Romania
Dejan Spasovik - Macedonia
Igor Markovic - Croatia
Martin Sperka - Slovakia
Rischard Kluschynski - Poland
Irina Cios - Romania
Inke Arns - Holland
Zoran Petrovski - Macedonia
Arthur Bueno - Holland
Jaka Zeleznikar -Slovenia
Eric Kluitenberg - Holland
Nikola Gelevski - Macedonia
Nina Czegledy - Canada
Igor Stromajer - Slovenia
Sinisa Rogic - Yugoslavia
Nikola Velkov - Macedonia
Aleksandar Zdravkovski - Macedonia
Stevan Saskov - Macedonia
Lev Manovich - USA 
Melentie Pandilovski - Macedonia 
Vesna Manojlovic - Yugoslavia
Mark Dery - USA