dear kevin, folks,
thanks for these interesting thoughts and your
description of the academic validation aspects. a
crucial problem seems to be that at ISEA two
different types meet: the academic e.a. people
who can raise money to speak at a conference
(unlike at cultural events, you pay to be on
stage, whereas in istanbul the people in the
audience get in for very little money), and the
independent art people who (rightly) expect to
get rewarded for presenting their work. how to
reconcile these different reward expectations?
even though i think kevin's proposals are partly
unrealistic (this is speaking as someone who has
been involved in the organisation and fundraising
for quite a number of events of different scale),
they are also a refreshing shake-up to the debate
and, in my eyes, well worth considering.
(however, for instance: the conference has around
100-150 speakers in every ISEA edition - how do
you get all those presentations into the annual
journal? and isn't Leonardo that journal, with
its own editorial and economic particularities?)
the internet and relatively cheap flights have
created the desire and the possibility to move
and meet friends and colleagues across the globe;
even though this practice is unsustainable in the
long run, we are yet enjoying it naively. how can
the desire for a complex exchange be regionalised
(?) and made less costly (money-wise, and
ecologically)? (and what do we learn from the
failure of the ElectroSmog festival that eric
mentioned? keep on trying?!)
greetings,
-a
ps: what i find most curious is the total absence
in this debate of the ISEA Foundation Board that
is responsible for the continuity of the
symposium. it is, i guess, one of the strange
peculiarities (maybe virtues?) of ISEA that it
has a weak, slow and virtually invisible 'core'.
pps:
Kevin writes: What none of us need, I would
argue, is participation in the
conference/festival/tourism market of hotels and
conference centers.
???
kevin, in what kind of venues do the conferences
take place that you go to? who organises those
conferences? and where do you sleep when you go
to a city where you don't have friends or family?
- your claim reminds me of the wise graffiti on
one of the Yorckbrücken (bridges) in berlin,
under which in the 80s there was always heavy
traffic: "You're not standing _in_ the traffic
jam, you _are_ the traffic jam." by analogy:
"kevin, you're not _participating in_ the
conference market, (if you go) you _are_ the
conference market."
ppps:
i confess: i like the big conventions with
excessive programmes of varying quality and a
totally unlikely mix of people getting together,
exchanging ideas and having fun together. i'm
convinced that, like other communities, the
people in this one need bodily proximity from
time to time.
My suggestions for how to productively preserve,
with great care and caution, both the academic
and spectacular dimensions of ISEA:
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