Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 18:10:44 +0200
From: diana@dial.isys.hu (Diana McCarty)
Subject: Nettime history for gomma
Scenario: 1
A simple table in a house somewhere in the forest near (Frankfurt):
gathered around it, a small group of men with great minds sampling each
other's ideas, eating, talking - the language is German. The hours pass and
the table disappears under a mass of papers, notes, books, scribbles.
The men clear the table, taking different sheets of paper than they brought
and return to their own tables, scattered from Amsterdam to Budapest. The
months pass, emails are exchanged.
Another table is planned. Another table is realized: Venice, in late
Spring, the floating city during the Biennale, in the Teatro (Malibran)
where the Berlin club scene is imported by night - by day in a small room
with a table: gathered around it, a group of men and a few women - the
languages are English, fast and slow, sometimes broken, and Italian. The
days pass, and once again the table is lost under the papers, notes, books,
scribbles. Finally, sheets of paper are passed around, a manifesto an
exquisite corpse of the net, a list of names and addresses. The group
clears the table and depart for tables and screens that wait at the other
end of long journeys. The passing days turn into weeks, then a month -
emails are exchanged. The flat surface of the table has been replaced by a
screen that illuminates rather than disappears behind the papers, notes,
books, scribbles. The group grows and meets next in Budapest around another
table. The group grows and meets in Amsterdam, sitting on the floor of an
old castle. The table is gone. Now the collected papers, notes, books,
scribbles are together, bound with heavy red paper. The group talks, the
hours pass - the language, English, Englishes. Slowly the group collects
its red bound collections, heading back to distant screens.
The group continues to grow, continues to meet: Madrid, Budapest, London,
Ljubljana.... The red bound collections appear, becoming a collection of
collections.
Scenario: 2
The Nettime mailing list was originally conceived of during the second
meeting of the Medien Zentral Kommittee which took place in the Spring of
1995, at the Venice Biennale. The Medien Zentral Kommittee (ZK), organized
by Nils Roeller and Pit Schultz, took place in a secluded room in the
Teatro Malibran (which has since been destroyed) where the Club Berlin was
held for three nights as an artclub event. The ZK itself was a parasite of
the event, and had a budget to invite a select group of international
activists, artists, organizers, theoreticians and writers, all involved
with the net, for an intense three-day, closed meeting.
The group included Heath Bunting, Vuk Cosic, David D'heilly, David Garcia,
Paul Garrin, Kathy Rae Huffman, Geert Lovink, Allessandro Ludovico, Diana
McCarty, Nils Roeller, Gereon Schmitz, Pit Schultz, Dejan Stretanovic,
Tommaso Tozzi, and Siegfried Zielinski, as well as several members of
Italian FIDO net and Strano Network.
The topics covered included developing a _gift economy_, a critique of
WIRED magazine, networking and strategies for activists on the net. The
center of the ZK was the table, which was covered with different material
from the participants and served as the model for the mailing list that was
planned as a means of furthering all of the discussions that had begun.
Thus the creation of the Nettime mailing list.
The list was established a short time later, moderated by Pit Schultz and
Geert Lovink, with 20 subscribers. The list grew slowly, mostly by
invitation and word of mouth. Nettime provided an channel for the
MetaForum II conference that took place in October of that year and hosted
the third ZK. New faces included Mitja Doma, Matthew Fuller, Luka Frelih,
Rop Gongrip, Debra Guzman, Daniel Molnar, Janos Sugar, Peter Lamborn
Wilson and Walter Van Der Cruisjen. The topics discussed were tribalism,
independence, and a publication of texts from the list, which was realized
in the ZKP (Zentral Kommittee Proceedings).
ZKP1 was published on the occasion of the Next Five Minutes Tactical Media
Conference in January of 1996 in Amsterdam, where the third ZK was also
held. The ZKPs which are low-budget, Xeroxed, readers with red covers and
prominent logos have been published at several different events, including
CyberConf 5, MetaForum III, and have gone into reprint at Ars Electronica
96, and at the _V2_ Organization in Rotterdam.
The Nettime Spring Meeting "Beauty and the East", hosted by Ljudmila, took
place in May of this year in Ljubljana and was an important shift as the
first Nettime meeting to not simply parasite another, larger event and
included over 100 international activists, artists, theoreticians, and
writers. The topics included net.art, the role of NGO's in post government
society, and the future of publishing. In conjunction with this meeting,
ZKP4 was published. ZKP4 is a 36 page newspaper with a print run of 10,000
and is now in a process of global distribution.
Since its inception, Nettime has grown to over 500 subscribers and there
have been five ZKP publications, which are also available on-line.
(www.desk.nl/~nettime).
Scenario: 3
In the short history of the net, time has a different role. A few months
can equal a year - developments in software, hardware and protocols keep
users in a constant flux. Until the introduction of the World Wide Web in
late 1993, the net was a fairly quiet communications technology, with
pockets of alternative user groups like FIDO, The THING and the WELL. The
Americans dominated (and still do) the cyber discourse, with WIRED,
selling sexy images of digital technology to the masses and defined what
directions popular discourse would take. The Nettime mailing list, which
was established in the summer of 1995 presented a European platform for
NetzKritik. This began with a critique of WIRED and often put Nettime at
odds with the American, Neo-Liberal techno-elite, or as Richard Barbrook
and Andy Cameron so succinctly phrased it "the Californian Ideology".
John Perry Barlow's "Declaration for the Independence of Cyberspace*"
sparked a heated debate about the future of the net and the continued
American (elite, white male) dominance of the media. This was finally
laid to rest in real space at Cyberconf 5 in Madrid, with a dramatic
debate between Nettimers and Barlow, and with Guiermillo Gomez-Pena
putting in the last word - Barlow's We was not inclusive, and reeked of
the techno elite's belief in their own right to power.
As Nettime grew from 15, to 100 to 300 to its present number of over 500
subscribers from the east, far east, the Americas, and Europe - the dialogs
and critiques took on many different directions: net.art, Name.Space,
public space. What began as a simple mailing list has become something
more, sometimes called a movement or a classical case of the European Avant
Garde, the list appears in many contexts - from the Venice Biennale to
Documenta X, from fat, Xeroxed publications to nearly professional
newspapers.
* Barlow's declaration was in response to the CDA which was recently
struck down by the US government's Supreme Court.