Re: [-empyre-] netopticon and personal culture
Cynthia's and Simon's posts seem to interweave a little. We are of course, thinking this from our own perspective as artists, who want to make art works and show them to people alongside other artists in a dialogical community of related practitioners. But we, like anyone in our position, have to negotiate the myriad conditions of the world in order to achieve this; gallery systems, the need to pay the rent, the art world, the netopticon (?), prevalent web-platforms of the moment, political thinking, government policy, global business, the passing fashions and tastes of contemporary culture, economic health, strokes of luck etc. Often, it's all weather to an artist, passing over our heads, raining on us or shining on us as we try our best to get what we need to do done... Cynthia said: In my experience, however, when offered the opportunity to participate in something truly meaningful, something that truly operates outside of the art world, significant numbers of artists will embrace the opportunity The most recent example of this we have seen is how the student movement in the UK responded last year, to impending radical reformation of Higher Education in the UK in the name of our economic crisis, and how a group of previously politically apathetic art students all woke up in the space of a week or so in a valiant bid to defend the right to affordable education in UK (well England really). In doing so, they surprised and rattled the political classes, hijacked national media, and disrupted the daily flow of British cities on almost a weekly basis for a couple of months, and made artworks (performances, banners, teach-ins, installations, videos) that facilitated and synthesised this new found political engagement. It was and remains inspiring to see young artists leading the way in this burgeoning movement of resistance. Cynthia also said: That the same individuals might also jump at the chance to show in a high profile commercial setting is an indication of the complexity of the situation, because if no one knows who you are or ever sees your work, how meaningful is your resistance? Well the art students' resistance here was seen more widely through national media than through any art world channel, but their aims were also ultimately dashed in so far as the policies they are objecting to continue to be implemented. It is also true of the art students comprising The Slade occupation, that some already have professional relationships with Charles Saatchi, popular artists like Ryan Gander, the art press, and a whole range of other galleries and artists that more or less face the commercial arm of our international contemporary art world. It's quite understandable that many artists would wish to reach a wide audience by what ever means necessary, not least because the implicit logic of art making suggests a viewer/audience most of the time. More generally, a message of resistance whether art or not, would also logically need to reach the right people in some shape or form for resistance to take any effect, and then probably as many people as are prepared to listen. One question though, is what effect that then has on the 'resistor'? Some politicians and prison guards for example may enter their professions because they have the best of intentions, or the good of society at heart, but anecdotally on more than one occasion, we have heard both professions as being described as jobs that change you -damage you in some irrevocable way that compromise your intentions in the first place. Whether you believe this to be true or not, the question remains; how are artists' work, or messages of resistance distorted by the mechanisms that convey them? Perhaps this is one reason why artists become so pre-occupied by context when discussing work amongst themselves? Simon said: I would therefore like to add to or return to the image of the optic of a netopticon its carceral characteristic, and call it in view of the prison which we are not said to be trying to escape only resist: Stockholm Syndrome. The other side of the optic is obviously the desire to submit oneself to it. In its carceral incarnation as a gaze of permanent and global surveillance to which we apparently all fall victim, what else could the willing prisoner be said to be feeling but love for his guard? The re-mentioning of Stockholm Syndrome is a powerful, seductive and illuminating companion to the 'Panopticon [as] a metaphor for the way that culture operates', and perhaps can be used to explain some of the students' almost opposing tendencies, although that does mean we have to cast the 'high profile commercial setting' as carceral in this instance and the question is raised about who the guard is (because in the netopticon's hall of mirrors it might be us, or rather each other). In conjunction with Simon's sad and vivid story of addiction, the idea is
Re: [-empyre-] vigilar y castigar
Hi Davin all, Sorry for not getting back earlier, it has been rather busy here... I think it is easier to see that art from a blank anthropological view, over our lifetime, has expressed an ironically posthuman set of priorities--the service of markets, the expression of those markets, and the general reification of market mythology. Posthumanism is an interesting element which I feel can be included in the larger context of what is being discussed. If we include the netopticon, neoliberalism and postmodern marketing appropriations and its techniques as well, we see a vista so profound and absolute in its influence on our world; surely then 'as you suggest', we are unable to build alternatives as 'equally' powerful. Rather than surrender to the bleak view that resistance is futile or flee to the false view that resistance is inevitable, I hope to join my voice with the growing chorus of people who are saying that a better world is possible, but we have to work for it. We need critical thinking. We need aesthetic practices. We need each other. Universal change from the bottom up seems like an impossibility. Universal change may be misdirected desire, serving a lack of personal growth intuitively and psychologically. Perhaps It would be more appropriate to introduce small, human-scale initiatives which include individuals and groups, according to their own needs and shared resources, and then build from there. As far as I am concerned (personally with others), this has already been happening in regard to furtherfield and other forms of networked peer production, and independent community ventures, on-line and off-line. Peer production is based on the abundance logic of digital reproduction, and what is abundant lies outside the market mechanism. It is based on free contributions that lie outside of the labour-capital relationship. It creates a commons that is outside commodification and is based on sharing practices that contradict the neoliberal and neoclassical view of human anthropology. Peer production creates use value directly, which can only be partially monetized in its periphery, contradicting the basic mechanism of capitalism, which is production for exchange value. So, just as serfdom and capitalism before it, it is a new hyperproductive modality of value creation that has the potential of breaking through the limits of capitalism, and can be the seed form of a new civilisational order. An interview with Michel Bauwens founder of Foundation for P2P Alternatives By Lawrence Bird. http://www.furtherfield.org/interviews/interview-michel-bauwens-founder-foundation-p2p-alternatives A term I've come across is 'Zipperheads', which draws on the vocabulary of hacker culture - Zipperhead is a term for a person with a closed mind. I consider that various systems in place reflect a 'Zipperhead' mentality as default, in many different places - family, our everyday media and in our institutions etc. We can re-imagine perspectives and processes of changing our behaviours in how we engage with the art world, if we wish to and if it deserves it that is ;-) Wishing you well. marc ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] vigilar y castigar
Marc, I think you hit the nail on the head: Perhaps It would be more appropriate to introduce small, human-scale initiatives which include individuals and groups, according to their own needs and shared resources, and then build from there. As far as I am concerned (personally with others), this has already been happening in regard to furtherfield and other forms of networked peer production, and independent community ventures, on-line and off-line. I think that the hope for a successful, mass, grassroots awakening seems to be a remote one (mainly because most people in the world are already awake to the need for change, but lack power). If being aware of inequity was enough, the billions would have changed the world already. But the possibility of localized interventions is incredibly appealing to me. It's hard not to find little bundles of people working together, sharing skills, providing goods, etc. that create their own currents. Where I live and work... a small town in an economically depressed region there are many, many troubling facets of existence. But there are also networks of people growing, sharing, producing, trading food. There are people making objects and art. There are various cooperative endeavors taking place that aren't built around a culture of economic predation. This doesn't solve all the problems in our community, but if these patterns of activity are nurtured and the ethos of mutual support spreads, then the ability for these simple solutions to offer at least partial alternatives to the monolithic Super Wal*Mart at the edge of town. Alongside these almost intuitive practices, however, there needs to be a philosophical basis for action, and this philosophy should be engaged in dialog with the practical, not simply imposed upon it. Aside from the practical matter of keeping one's hands busy or putting food in one's belly a way of thinking needs to accompany these practices. And that, I think, is the greatest obstacle. We have no patience for dialogic cultural processes. We are in the habit of consuming things as they appear and forgetting them when they go away. And, while certain models of community necessitate more long term thinking, we also need theories that encourage us to think about history and the future, to plan, to reflect, to be human. In turn, it is the ability to slow down and think, which enables more productive forms of organization. If we want a historical parallel, it might be something along the lines of a transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society that we are looking for. The widespread proletarianization of the world's people has robbed us of our ability to build culture. But, if we are able to, locally and efficiently, provide or supplement basic human needs we carve out space and provide the fuel for enriched consciousness if we cooperate, we not only have more time as individuals to think, but we are in cooperation with others, and thus have more opportunities to network our consciousness via culture. If we have more opportunities to think better collectively, we can, in turn, create more time for cultural activity, which is tied very closely to practical production (here, I am very interested in the break between Techne and Poesis, which Cynthia points to, as craft is increasingly independent from concept). My worry about strictly web-based models of community is that they use time and allow for thinking. but they don't necessarily create more time for thinking by producing tangible goods of the sort that can provide material sustenance for the community. (Though, programming cultures are an exception to this general observation, as are established institutions which deal primarily in intellectual property). Which is why your point about the small scale (especially offline and/or intellectually-committed) ventures is a real occasion for hope. Davin On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 7:15 AM, marc garrett marc.garr...@furtherfield.org wrote: Hi Davin all, Sorry for not getting back earlier, it has been rather busy here... I think it is easier to see that art from a blank anthropological view, over our lifetime, has expressed an ironically posthuman set of priorities--the service of markets, the expression of those markets, and the general reification of market mythology. Posthumanism is an interesting element which I feel can be included in the larger context of what is being discussed. If we include the netopticon, neoliberalism and postmodern marketing appropriations and its techniques as well, we see a vista so profound and absolute in its influence on our world; surely then 'as you suggest', we are unable to build alternatives as 'equally' powerful. Rather than surrender to the bleak view that resistance is futile or flee to the false view that resistance is inevitable, I hope to join my voice with the growing chorus of people who are saying that a better world is possible, but
Re: [-empyre-] netopticon and personal culture
Jon and Alison, how far can the metaphor of the Panopticon go and still seem intact as it travels towards to the surface of the many-layered onion that is our collective understanding of things? In the Netopticon, is it the browser? or internet protocols? In our culture, is language our (panoptic) prison (Jameson's 'The Prison house of Language')? Or can we think of the speed of light as a panoptic prison, or mortality, or the idea of the Panopticon/Netopticon itself etc. My thought is that we want metaphors of this nature to go as far as they possibly can in pursuit of a limit that cannot realistically be achieved. In other words, the panopticon is a great metaphor for enculturation because it highlights the ways that we internalize social pressures and apply them to ourselves, not only in superficial ways, but in the most intimate reaches of our psyche. In an earlier era, God was sufficiently awe-inspiring for some people that they would discipline their thoughts and behavior to conform to God's watchful eye Foucault provides a secular and thoroughly modern metaphor of the bureaucratic observer who might catch us being indecent. The social network, after neoliberalism, steps in for a state bureaucracy which nobody believes in and replaces the watchful eye with that of your fellow citizen, not citizen, I mean, your social competitor, your friend. It rather nicely conforms to Thatcher's glib statement on the non-existence of society. Underlying all this is the reality that things like light speed and mortality apparently DO, as far as we are able to realistically know, pose limits to the spatiotemporal existence of humans. If we find a way out of the panopticon, we still have to confront this thing called culture or, retreating from it, we face alienation (which is also, in its way, a cultural phenomenon). Lurking at the periphery, there is the very strict limitation to human existence posed by biological things like eating, shitting, drinking, breathing, and death. (Which, incidentally, are the means by which proletarianized populations are kept in line). At the same time, the connotations of imprisonment can only carry us so far. Language (and culture) make some courses of thought easier to follow than others, but if we compare the relative elasticity afforded by culture to the rather cut and dried restrictions imposed by a raw biological existence Language and culture can as something other than a prison house but as a refuge from a rather rigid existence dictated by its absence, which is difficult to even conceive of, where daily life is similar to breathing. In other words, when we step into culture, we step into temporality. When we step out of culture, we step into something that resembling raw gestures in service of metabolic processes. In other words, just as Foucault paints a rather oppressive picture in Discipline and Punish, he also offers an obverse view in the History of Sexuality, suggesting that this prison house can also be produce desire. In regards to digital culture and the netoptic, then, we can think about the prison house of these panoptic social media practices. but we can also think about the profound desire that this panopticism might lead to. I was listening to my radio and heard Sherry Turkle on NPR talking about robots that need our love... and she mentioned that in her research she has met a number of young people who have grown up within a digital culture, who are actually seeking out more authentic experiences by leaving things like Facebook behind. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1122816 Of course, we all know that this type of nostalgia is not an objective thing, but the fact that people can form desire for more visceral forms of contact is very interesting. I was part of a generation that got swept up in the romance of new media. To see people (including Turkle) pierce through this romance is a very welcome development. But the question is not a simple one: some are pro-technology and some are anti- (as the luddites are mischaracterized), the question is about how humans can make decisions that serve a set of priorities that cannot be simply answered by the adoption of new technology or the function of markets. Again, these little pockets of resistance will not inevitably lead to a better world. What is needed is cooperation, cultivation, thinking, etc. Davin ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] vigilar y castigar
Marc, Peer production is based on the abundance logic of digital reproduction, and what is abundant lies outside the market mechanism. It is based on free contributions that lie outside of the labour-capital relationship. It creates a commons that is outside commodification and is based on sharing practices that contradict the neoliberal and neoclassical view of human anthropology. Peer production creates use value directly, which can only be partially monetized in its periphery, contradicting the basic mechanism of capitalism, which is production for exchange value. So, just as serfdom and capitalism before it, it is a new hyperproductive modality of value creation that has the potential of breaking through the limits of capitalism, and can be the seed form of a new civilisational order. An interview with Michel Bauwens founder of Foundation for P2P Alternatives By Lawrence Bird. http://www.furtherfield.org/interviews/interview-michel-bauwens-founder-foundation-p2p-alternative s After reading this great quote, we wonder whether there is anything worthwhile to be had by laying it alongside Christina's notion of art and inefficieny? Or even how it relates to such a notion of efficiency? We mention it because the idea of peer production has the potential to straddle different value systems i.e. being partly inside and partly beyond the 'labour-capital relationship (or is peer-production completely beyond?). And if the reality of peer production in today's world is partly visible in these distinct ways (a peer production model is certainly something we feel a part of as artists who participate in our own human-scale offline p2p network), then maybe their efficiency can be judged according to different criteria? (Sorry this is typed out quickly because we've got to rush out in a minute -hope you catch the drift) So, keeping art here as the example; while we agree wholly and endorse Christina's position that art is, in some ways, about as inefficient as something can get (and all the better for it), we're also struck by how little art tends to cost, while still stimulating large scale urban regeneration in various cities around the world and creating surprising amounts of predominantly non-mineral based monetary wealth for a few through the art market. Also how small arts organisations often mix peer-production strategies with funding, so delivering cultural 'value' far beyond what it may have cost the public purse or other benefactors in any given organisation's salaries and overheads in the first place. Seems pretty efficient to us, at least depending on from what rock you're sitting on. best wishes, Jon Alison ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] vigilar y castigar
Davin's point about material objects touches on something I have been discussing with some friends recently. Davin said: *My worry about strictly web-based models of community is that they use time and allow for thinking. but they don't necessarily create more time for thinking by producing tangible goods of the sort that can provide material sustenance for the community.* * * This is, in part, a response to Cynthia's observation that *artistic conception is not as tied to the process of a technical craft as it once was *. I must say, however, that Cynthia's affirmation goes against a trend I have observed: practitioners carrying around and reading Richard Sennett's The Craftsman. I think, paradoxically, the immateriality of new media artistic production has driven some practitioners to immerses themselves in craft and the careful production of artesanal objects. One of my friends, in what may appear a curmudgeonly assessment of material vs. immaterial communities, made the following observation: Some of these younger artists approach the physical world as a grandmother would approach writing her first email. Perhaps there is a parallel between the artistic and the economic: in both instances, we lament that (in the United States) 'no one makes anything anymore.' In the ephemeral swirl of financial services and digital renderings, it seems there is an economic and aesthetic hunger for the material. zz 2011/1/19 davin heckman davinheck...@gmail.com Marc, I think you hit the nail on the head: Perhaps It would be more appropriate to introduce small, human-scale initiatives which include individuals and groups, according to their own needs and shared resources, and then build from there. As far as I am concerned (personally with others), this has already been happening in regard to furtherfield and other forms of networked peer production, and independent community ventures, on-line and off-line. I think that the hope for a successful, mass, grassroots awakening seems to be a remote one (mainly because most people in the world are already awake to the need for change, but lack power). If being aware of inequity was enough, the billions would have changed the world already. But the possibility of localized interventions is incredibly appealing to me. It's hard not to find little bundles of people working together, sharing skills, providing goods, etc. that create their own currents. Where I live and work... a small town in an economically depressed region there are many, many troubling facets of existence. But there are also networks of people growing, sharing, producing, trading food. There are people making objects and art. There are various cooperative endeavors taking place that aren't built around a culture of economic predation. This doesn't solve all the problems in our community, but if these patterns of activity are nurtured and the ethos of mutual support spreads, then the ability for these simple solutions to offer at least partial alternatives to the monolithic Super Wal*Mart at the edge of town. Alongside these almost intuitive practices, however, there needs to be a philosophical basis for action, and this philosophy should be engaged in dialog with the practical, not simply imposed upon it. Aside from the practical matter of keeping one's hands busy or putting food in one's belly a way of thinking needs to accompany these practices. And that, I think, is the greatest obstacle. We have no patience for dialogic cultural processes. We are in the habit of consuming things as they appear and forgetting them when they go away. And, while certain models of community necessitate more long term thinking, we also need theories that encourage us to think about history and the future, to plan, to reflect, to be human. In turn, it is the ability to slow down and think, which enables more productive forms of organization. If we want a historical parallel, it might be something along the lines of a transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society that we are looking for. The widespread proletarianization of the world's people has robbed us of our ability to build culture. But, if we are able to, locally and efficiently, provide or supplement basic human needs we carve out space and provide the fuel for enriched consciousness if we cooperate, we not only have more time as individuals to think, but we are in cooperation with others, and thus have more opportunities to network our consciousness via culture. If we have more opportunities to think better collectively, we can, in turn, create more time for cultural activity, which is tied very closely to practical production (here, I am very interested in the break between Techne and Poesis, which Cynthia points to, as craft is increasingly independent from concept). My worry about strictly web-based models of community is that they use time and allow
