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Jeez P, that was heroic! I’ll try and produce the total Hegelian negation of
the negation tomorrow morning but it’s not feeling likely. Bravo to you!
Can’t wait to see you tomorrow night!
Xx
Sent from my iPhone
On 27 Sep 2019, at 19:20, "f...@stwst.at<mailto:f...@stwst.at>"
<f...@stwst.at<mailto:f...@stwst.at>> wrote:
----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Hi all
I want to explain why a new context is essential from the point of view of our
information society. I have been dealing with our society for 45 years. I have
created many utopias, but I have also lost many political battles. Especially
at the end of the 70s I remember a political-social struggle, but it was also
the discussion with Paul Virilio about the speed that motivated me, besides my
social commitment, to deal with machines and art. It was the variables in
kinetic art that fascinated me. Parameters that renew themselves
autopoeotically via machines. Quickly came the real-time interchangeable video
image and computer-aided interactive installations that increased speed in the
sense of Virilio.
But this "speed" could still be seen from the perspective of a single analog
world.
But the world doubled with the digital revolution. Unfortunately, artists
mostly limited themselves to surfaces and lost access to their medium. Only the
emerging hacker scene dealt with the media of the digital age in a relevant
way. My field of work shifted to this scene. Freedom of action could only work
with free software embedded in a social context. The media art groups Van Gogh
TV and STWST-TV attempted this in the early 1990s. At the same time, the hacker
scene built its own networks, free WIFI LANs and operating systems. 20 years
have passed since then. Utopias are disappearing quickly and now it's time to
get down to business. In a struggle for the supremacy of information.
The present is the machine processing of information. It is the result of
Claude Shannon's information theory, which put us on the wrong path. It is not
a theory that takes us further in dealing with media, it is simply a technology
for transmitting information. For me, an information theory would be an
examination of evolution. Because life is negentropy and it developed our
information. To the present day, where the analogue world is reflected in the
digital world. Information has become our working material. We don't know what
information is, but we work with it. That is very dangerous. I cannot blame the
economy if it only wants to profit from information. However, I would like to
reproach my fellow artists for working with information in an unreflected way.
I see a new context in an analysis of this information. A new approach does not
have to become religious or esoteric again. We must incorporate the continuity
of our media criticism of the last decades into a new genuine information
theory. Only through art do we have the opportunity to view information in a
new and different way. The information of the sand hole is not a result of our
evolution, but originates from a time before life (=information) developed on
earth. We should see Virilio's speed in a new information context. Information
does not come from evolution but evolution originated from information and time.
Virilio:
"Acceleration is the end - goal of the world.”
-------- Originalnachricht --------
Betreff: Fwd: Re: [-empyre-] NEW ART CONTEXTS
Von: Shu Lea Cheang
An: Franz Xaver
Cc:
dear empyres
here tanja from stadtwerkstatt. many thanks for shu lea's introduction!
i am posting now a conversation between franz xaver and myself on the [loch]
(the hole), which was published in STWST's newspaper versorgerin, september
2019 issue #123. (http://versorgerin.stwst.at/). It is an excerpt of a longer
conversation.
we understand the project idea we are talking about as a current exemplary
approach for new art contexts, and for an art that remains programmatically
unfinished. the dialogue makes brief reflections: on a hole that should remain
without deeper reason. and that - and moreover! - was not even dug. the text
was published on the occasion of the showcase extravaganza STWST48x5 STAY
UNFINISHED.
here below now the excerpt on [loch] (hole).
hope you enjoy digging the non-existent
and hope to hear from your unfinished contexts.
tanja
EXCERPT [LOCH]
Tanja Brandmayr: At the beginning of the planning of STWST48x5 STAY UNFINISHED
we wanted to dig an actual, oversized hole - as an unfinished project. We
wanted to invite as many people as possible: from STWST people to a whole scene
that perhaps no longer fully understands what regular cultural activity and art
production still mean in times of cutbacks and shifts to the right. We also had
the idea of inviting an international Ars audience, who might have been
interested in a really different program at the so-called interface of art,
technology and society. Despite many efforts, it failed on the spot where this
project of an oversized hole could have been possible. We have played through
some approaches. Within the framework of STWST48x5 STAY UNFINISHED, two
projects were actually created that resulted from these fundamental
considerations - I'm only touching on it, because it can be read through in the
program itself: My "Deep Drilling for Contracts" goes into the symbolic depth
of the agreements, your "Sandhole" is a concave hollowed out sand hole, which
finally goes up - in other words, the concave hole receives hydrogen radiation
from the universe. And so back to the original idea of the hole: I like the
idea of the hole as an irrational act, as geometry directed into the depths, as
an unpurified silt of meaning, as an unfinished sub-project, as a zero zone in
which things connect differently than on the surface. What is now a reference
to the theory that I like to reflect for Quasikunst ... ... What fascinates you
about this idea of a hole that remains without a deeper reason? Do we perhaps
even call it the idea of an anti-negative space?
Franz Xaver: By the anti-negative space you mean perhaps the "nothing" that
connects Quasikunst with Infolab here. Behind this is a recurring thought: in
order to create something with a sculpture, it is necessary to include the
negative form, the "non-existent". First you have to create space and think the
"nothing" - to get space for the "something". The surface becomes the
transition, the outermost shell, the interface. It thus becomes the most
important element of a sculpture. It is the slow emergence of the "nothing"
that comes to meaning in the elaboration of the "hole". In the sense of
"Unfinished" it is the process in which the hole is created and produces an
ever-increasing "nothing". The hole must never be finished. It must be dug
deeper and deeper. It is like a recurring dream. I see an incredibly huge hole
in which artists stand with shovels and wheelbarrows and transport away
material to create something. Why we work physically in the age of machines is
still unclear to me. I see the shape of the hole as a large parabola. Because
only with a parabolic shape of a hole is it possible to continue digging and
transport the material on spiral-shaped paths out of the hole without any aids
or supporting formwork. The fact that there is an automatic focal point in a
concave hole is a side effect. In this focal point the radiation of the
universe can be bundled very easily and thus the past can be brought into the
present. The "nothing" in the form of a hole, or the transition, becomes a time
machine.
Another meta-level of an unfinished hole is the interpretation of terms.
Something/nothing, inward/outward, life/death, etc. We live in fields with
opposite terms. The fields are mostly very subjective and mean different things
to different people. With "culture" we try to agree on the meaning of these
terms. We look for common denominators. These terms become more and more
objectified, which facilitates the communication between individuals. 1 and 0,
the something and the nothing, are very objectified concepts. They are also the
smallest unit of computer science. In order to enable machine information
processing, however, as many terms as possible must be standardized. We are
thus in a great upheaval of our culture resulting from the digital age. The
progressive objectification of our everyday life counteracts the individual and
subjective feelings of people. Unfortunately, there is very little interest in
critically questioning this development. In the flood of information, personal,
individual points of view no longer get through. Unfortunately, we as society
as a whole do not ask ourselves whether we want this development at all. In
STWST this leaves us with nothing else to do but to continue to shape the
NOTHING, to dig and to hope that the hole will get bigger and bigger in order
to have room for something new at some point.
Zitat von Shu Lea Cheang <shu...@earthlink.net><mailto:shu...@earthlink.net>:
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