David, I agree that it's always great to see how Brian situates ideas
with incredible breadth. Maybe you should've asked him to write an essay
about nettime for your tactical media anthology. :^)
But I want to question your account of the time. The rubble of the twin
towers was an anthill compared to the mountains of sanctimony that've
been heaped on "9/11." The least we can do is try to unearth a few ideas
that weren't crushed beyond recognition by the conversion of that Very
Large Exercise in Bad Judgment into decades of war. Recovering those
ideas will be an important part of the larger project that Eric
articulated so well.
Less than a week after the VLEBJ, I sent a message to this list
describing how 'local' experiences had already been swept aside by an
imported schmaltzy jingoism.[1] Far from 'reeling,' for many people and
purposes things in NYC were pretty much back to normal within weeks. The
N5M4 TML took place more than a year later, in December 2002.[2] By that
time Geert was able to open his essay "Tactical Media After 9-11"
bluntly: "It is tempting to portray '9-11' as a turning point" -- i.e.,
it wasn't.[3] And if you look back at nettime's archives in the months
following the VLEBJ[4] you'll see that the list's busy and brilliant
resilience was as clear as ever.
[1] http://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0109/msg00125.html
[2] http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/n5m4_journal/index7e86.html
[3] https://www.nyu.edu/fas/projects/vcb/case_911/reverberations/lovink.html
[4] http://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/
My own sense is that the NYC TML's 'VCB' (OMG WTF LOL ETC) was heavily
shaped by institutional agendas. That's not to suggest it was somehow
'bought and paid for' by the host (NYU) or the Rockefeller Foundation (a
major sponsor) or anything of the sort. Instead, I just mean that the
people and projects, as well as the overall framing, had moved a few
steps away from gritty, idiosyncratic 'activism' and closer to 'civil
society.' (That was a prominent criticism of N5M4 as a whole.) That
context, more than 'reeling from 9/11,' accounts for muffled,
arm's-length quality of the collective snapshot.
Cheers,
T
On 4 Nov 2015, at 5:07, David Garcia wrote:
Great to once again be able to tune in to Brian's imaginative sweep.
Just to add to Brian's example below important but informal
collaborations connected to nettime I would definitely add all (except
edition 1) editions of Next 5 Minutes festivals of Tactical Media.
Nettime acted like an important additional room in which the issues
that informed the content of the festival sometimes sourced, debated
and developed. In the last edition the content development was
disegregated and developed through Tactical Media labs (TML) in
various countries. I'll just recall one because it left an interesting
legacy which still feels potent. Its the NYU TML took place in the
heart of the city shortly after 9/11 and so of course the and its
organisors were still reeeling and the planned event had to (in every
sense) pivot. The result was a so called Virtual Casebook in which
many regular nettime contributors (and many more who were not)
generated a series of responces to the attack which, whatever its
limitations, still represents a collective snapshot of that moment
refracted through the subjectivities of this community (yes I dare to
use the C word). In my opinion remains a valuable way to re-connect to
that moment. Its sill worth re-visiting as a snapshot in time:
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