Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Hi Simon, Just catching up, Good to read a contextual and historical side about you. I find it fascinating how people's creative ventures are influenced by their past experiences, and how this can produce unique selves, that (thankfully) define our differences, whether our accumalted influences are formal, not formal or both. I have always been drawn to those who think differently - as in, not fitting into mainstream behaviours - I suppose engaging in art or related contexts is an inevitable place or space to exist in. Finding alternative ways to think and different paths to wander, this brings about valuable resources for self-learning. And how we manage to incorporate this 'stuff', nourish our imagination(s) is part of a never ending struggle. I also think it's equally interesting that, even though we need things which stimulate us, or at least encourage us to make and explore creative and imaginative territories. We also need the bland other, the backgorund where our art and related activities and ideas rests upon or against - a contrast which in some way is different from the everyday, even when art blurs it is still separate due to the relational aspects and intentions behind creating such things. Life can be a meme, but can art be meme non-intentionally? wishing you well. marc I am with Marc on this, in more ways than one. I come from what could be considered a privileged background, compared to what Marc describes. Mine was a middle class academic family growing up on a beautiful wild beach in Australia (as different from Southend on Sea as you could get, except for the presence of the sea). However, like Marc, I didn’t school well. I ran away from home at 15, living on communes and in surfer communities around the country (this was the beginning of the 70’s, so that wasn’t that unusual then). My parents, being liberals, could not find any way of dealing with this. The result was I never acquired a school or University qualification and am effectively self-taught. Hippy life can burn you out. Too many drugs and too much disorder eventually get to you. I went off to live on my own, quietly, to concentrate on what I felt I could do well – painting. I was again lucky, as in my childhood the family friends were mostly artists (my mother was a poet) so I learned both technical knowledge from a young age and also an appreciation of what the artist’s life can be. It was an easy thing for me to slip into being. I never went to art college. So, it is strange for me that throughout my professional life I have often found myself working in art colleges and other academic environments. They are not alien to me, as I grew up in a studious context, with books and art. But it can be weird to teach when you can only imagine what it is like to be a student. However, one advantage I have is that I can argue, with conviction, that a degree is not a pre-requisite to being an artist. I can describe education as being about a personal journey into knowledge and creativity, not a piece of paper that will eventually validate you. My own experience can stand as evidence that you do not need to fulfil other people’s expectations to achieve what you want. Education is the most effective force for social change I have come across and it should be the right of every individual to have as much of it as they want (or can stand). Education can (should) be a primary resource for transformation. It does not need to be formalised, but to create substantial resource infrastructure you sometimes need large institutions. When I argue the case for artists working in academic environments I do so from a conviction concerning education’s transformative capacity, not from some idea that everyone needs to be appropriately validated. That validation is part of the problem with education. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.biggs@ eca .ac.uk www. eca .ac.uk C reative I nterdisciplinary R esearch into C o L laborative E nvironments CIRCLE research group www. eca .ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: marc garrett marc.garr...@furtherfield.org Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:44:25 + To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) Hi Curt all, As someone who mainly comes from a self-education position, or rather from a place where I come from a very poor and violent working class family - which spent most of the time either being put in social care, whether this be in borstals and prison, plus family members vanishing because of the failures of 70's social (un)care systems. Just think of 'Cathy Come Home' by Ken Loach - http
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Hi Marc Thanks, your comments wrap it up well. Right now I am up to my ears in the down-side of academia, dealing with course development, associated bureaucracy, institutional politics and ridiculous deadlines. My reply is therefore very short. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.bi...@eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: marc garrett marc.garr...@furtherfield.org Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:38:24 + To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) Hi Simon, Just catching up, Good to read a contextual and historical side about you. I find it fascinating how people's creative ventures are influenced by their past experiences, and how this can produce unique selves, that (thankfully) define our differences, whether our accumalted influences are formal, not formal or both. I have always been drawn to those who think differently - as in, not fitting into mainstream behaviours - I suppose engaging in art or related contexts is an inevitable place or space to exist in. Finding alternative ways to think and different paths to wander, this brings about valuable resources for self-learning. And how we manage to incorporate this 'stuff', nourish our imagination(s) is part of a never ending struggle. I also think it's equally interesting that, even though we need things which stimulate us, or at least encourage us to make and explore creative and imaginative territories. We also need the bland other, the backgorund where our art and related activities and ideas rests upon or against - a contrast which in some way is different from the everyday, even when art blurs it is still separate due to the relational aspects and intentions behind creating such things. Life can be a meme, but can art be meme non-intentionally? wishing you well. marc I am with Marc on this, in more ways than one. I come from what could be considered a privileged background, compared to what Marc describes. Mine was a middle class academic family growing up on a beautiful wild beach in Australia (as different from Southend on Sea as you could get, except for the presence of the sea). However, like Marc, I didn¹t school well. I ran away from home at 15, living on communes and in surfer communities around the country (this was the beginning of the 70¹s, so that wasn¹t that unusual then). My parents, being liberals, could not find any way of dealing with this. The result was I never acquired a school or University qualification and am effectively self-taught. Hippy life can burn you out. Too many drugs and too much disorder eventually get to you. I went off to live on my own, quietly, to concentrate on what I felt I could do well painting. I was again lucky, as in my childhood the family friends were mostly artists (my mother was a poet) so I learned both technical knowledge from a young age and also an appreciation of what the artist¹s life can be. It was an easy thing for me to slip into being. I never went to art college. So, it is strange for me that throughout my professional life I have often found myself working in art colleges and other academic environments. They are not alien to me, as I grew up in a studious context, with books and art. But it can be weird to teach when you can only imagine what it is like to be a student. However, one advantage I have is that I can argue, with conviction, that a degree is not a pre-requisite to being an artist. I can describe education as being about a personal journey into knowledge and creativity, not a piece of paper that will eventually validate you. My own experience can stand as evidence that you do not need to fulfil other people¹s expectations to achieve what you want. Education is the most effective force for social change I have come across and it should be the right of every individual to have as much of it as they want (or can stand). Education can (should) be a primary resource for transformation. It does not need to be formalised, but to create substantial resource infrastructure you sometimes need large institutions. When I argue the case for artists working in academic environments I do so from a conviction concerning education¹s transformative capacity, not from some idea that everyone needs to be appropriately validated. That validation is part of the problem with education. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.biggs@ eca .ac.uk www. eca .ac.uk C reative I nterdisciplinary R esearch into C o L laborative E nvironments CIRCLE research group www. eca .ac.uk/circle/ si
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Hi Curt, Sorry for the slow response, much happening lately with projects etc... More than any craft (including artmaking, including writing) teaching is a bottomless pit. You could devote an entire life to mastering the craft and you would still have barely begun to scratch the surface. But we scratch on. I agree, if I lose the will to learn I 'will' die inside - I'm sure... Much of the knowledge or data/noise I have aquired through the years, that stuff which is collected and lodged deep in my cranium is, taking years to unfold. It's great to find out that you are home-teaching your children, and four of them. Wow, that's a responsibility which I personally am glad is not part of my current, life experience. Although, one of my sister's has children and I regularly try to introduce them to special more creative experiences with art and similar activities, in contrast to the blandness they are continuously bombarded with - the complexity and pathos of it all, hurts. Anyway, this subject could go many different ways, so I'll rest it here... Also, respect due that you are near the Black Mountain College and doing things there. I remember watching your collaborative live, networked twin-broadcast, from the college itself for Double Blind (Love), with Annie Abrahams - http://aabrahams.wordpress.com/tag/curt-cloninger/. Perhaps my favorite pedagogical texts are Paul Klee's Bauhaus notebooks: The Thinking Eye and The Nature of Nature, just because they are so rigorously exhaustive. Classics that I have read repeatedly for years :-) Wishing you well. marc Thanks Marc, I would say that explains a lot, and I mean that as a compliment. In addition to Illich and Friere, I would add Ranciere's The Ignorant Schoolmaster. We homeschool four children with a fifth on the way, so teaching, art making, and writing are increasingly intertwined in my life. I myself have had a largely positive experience with institutional education, probably because some of the institutions I attended were very experimental, and even within the less experimental institutions, some of the teachers I had were radically experimental. I admire Beuys and Cage as experimental educators, and Black Mountain College (very near here) continues to inform my pedagogical aspirations. Perhaps my favorite pedagogical texts are Paul Klee's Bauhaus notebooks: The Thinking Eye and The Nature of Nature, just because they are so rigorously exhaustive. More than any craft (including artmaking, including writing) teaching is a bottomless pit. You could devote an entire life to mastering the craft and you would still have barely begun to scratch the surface. But we scratch on. Best, Curt Hi Curt all, As someone who mainly comes from a self-education position, or rather from a place where I come from a very poor and violent working class family - which spent most of the time either being put in social care, whether this be in borstals and prison, plus family members vanishing because of the failures of 70's social (un)care systems. Just think of 'Cathy Come Home' by Ken Loach - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Come_Home and may get some idea of my own personal history. Moving on from that I wish to mention that, for me education is one of the most important aspects of human development and a human right. Because I was not fortunate when younger to be able to experience a decent education, I had to discover various sneaky ways in finding information that the terrible school I was at, was not teaching me. My passion to discover what was going in the world beyond the chaos of my everyday circumstance was strong - even obsessed, whether it was in science, politics, technology, history, philosophy or art, I would bunk school regularly and spend an awful lot of my time in the Essex Library, which thankfully was in Southend-on-Sea, a town 50 miles from London. Some examples of what I read from the age of 12 and 13 and (of course) onwards, were books such as the The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich, The Divided Self by R. D. Laing, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Carl Jung, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong, Herbert Read - especially Education Through Art and The Paradox of Anarchism, loads of art books. I am not saying that I understood these publications, but I am saying that it encouraged me to learn more and I have not stopped since. So, when I think of education I do not immediately think of official education as in universities or colleges. For I am a strong advocate of self-education, which also involves one being self critical as well. There is larger and broader context where individuals have the choice to explore life, art and all the other equally important subjects outside institution environments as well. One of my personal worries in respect of UK culture, which may be also the same regarding USA, although
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Hi Curt, You're course sounds fascinating. I wish I could enroll! It is my fervent wish that this book will become obsolete becaues the world will have changed so dramatically that this study of art-activism could only appar as a quaint historical artifact, its latent pessimism misguided, its failure to imagine otherwise indicative of the author's poverty of imagination. Until such a point, I will continue to look to tactical media artists for inspiration and guidance. (xii) Good to read the Raley quote... Although I know her writing from other contexts, I didn't realize she'd written a book on tactical media. Not that I myself look to tactical media artists for much inspiration or guidance, and probably by the end of the course we will have critiqued their approaches from contradictory perspectives -- the work is too didactic/hamfisted/pragmatic; the work is too disengaged/esoteric/impotent. (Throw a critical stone in the air and you will hit a tactical media artist.) Since the mid nineties, I was involved in one way or another with the Next 5 Minutes, a tactical media conference which happened every few years Amsterdam. Through that event which was a convergence of art and activism, I met some pretty amazing artists/activists/tactical media practitioners (some known and others more obscure). While I understand your cynicism, it feels strange to generalize about these practices in that they are quite diverse. So can you talk a little more about the kind of work you're referring to? I'm thinking here of the difference between let's say the sanctioned practices of Superflex or maybe N55 versus the more grass roots work (not sure if this is right word) of RepoHistory, Paper Tiger or Deep Dish Television. Btw: I'm asking this out of curiosity, not in an adversarial you-gotta- defend-yourself-way... it's more that I think about these issues myself :-) It is always amusing to me when artists and/or educators try to out-ethicalize each other, as if any of us are all that directly, pragmatically, quantitatively, measurably changing anything. For me, art and teaching are a gamble -- a gamble that some kind of abstract affective agency will eventually modulate actual aspects of the world in some way that will matter. Consequently, I admire others who are making similar wagers. I agree with you that art and teaching are a gamble also it's a slow cooking process, the impact is often difficult to see, measure or register. But I don't ever fool myself into believing that I'm on the street feeding the poor. Because I've done that kind of work as well, and it's quite a different thing. I wonder if you're trying to make a distinction between direct and indirect action. Feeding the poor on the street is immediate; give someone food, and their belly is full. Education is very indirect; educate someone, and they will make of it what they will (or not). In other words, these are two types of digestion with different rates of ingestion. (btw: as I'm writing this, it strikes me that somewhere buried in here is that quote about teaching a man to fish ;-) all the best, Renee www.geuzen.org www.fudgethefacts.com Rock Roll Ain't No Pollution, Curt There's more irony to be had in the quotes, that's why I posted them. That and, as Michael points out, they are funny. Art Language are anti-academic but started and have often ended up in academia. They are politically committed but show at a gentrifying, market-leading gallery. Despite protests to the contrary they are radical artists who have artworld careers. I like them. It's very easy to criticise academia, artistic careerism, the art market, politically/socially committed art etc. from the security of one's own, virtuous, position outside of them. But there's no point outside the world where we can stand and point and laugh at it. We all need to be careful about glass houses, or at least work on smashing our own windows, whether our teaching means we are objectively in academia or our radical socially committed artistic practice means we are objectively part of gentrification. The most important criticism is self-criticism, although this may sometimes mean that we have to admit we are not criticising others enough. ;-) I've taught, I've wired up abandoned warehouses, I've attended private views, I write reviews for a techno-art-and- society web community. We are all guilty... - Rob. ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Hi Renee, I found the post from Curt very interesting, as well as your own post mentioning your own experience about being part of The Next 5 Minutes in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. I went to the Next 5 minutes in 96 - http://www.n5m.org/n5m2/ and even though there were a couple of issues I had at that time which are perhaps not worth mentiong here right now, I found on the whole thing pretty amazing and inspiring. The term 'tactical media' arose in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall as a renaissance of media activism, blending old school political work and artists' engagement with new technologies. The early nineties saw a growing awareness of gender issues, exponential growth of media industries and the increasing availability of cheap do-it-yourself equipment creating a new sense of self-awareness amongst activists, programmers, theorists, curators and artists. Media were no longer seen as merely tools for the Struggle, but experienced as virtual environments whose parameters were permanently 'under construction'. This was the golden age of tactical media, open to issues of aesthetics and experimentation with alternative forms of story telling. However, these liberating techno practices did not immediately translate into visible social movements. Rather, they symbolized the celebration of media freedom, in itself a great political goal. The media used - from video, CD-ROM, cassettes, zines and flyers to music styles such as rap and techno - varied widely, as did the content. A commonly shared feeling was that politically motivated activities, be they art or research or advocacy work, were no longer part of a politically correct ghetto and could intervene in 'pop culture' without necessarily having to compromise with the 'system.' With everything up for negotiation, new coalitions could be formed. The current movements worldwide cannot be understood outside of the diverse and often very personal for digital freedom of expression. http://www.n5m4.org/journald8be.html?118+575+2372 There were a few things happening at the same time then in the UK which, seemed to fit well with the context of what was also being explored at The Next 5 Minutes also. There were disturbing situations in the artworld, stemming from the early 80s, and well into the 90s, when UK art culture was hijacked by the marketing strategies of Saatchi and Saatchi, a formidable force in the advertising world. The same company had been responsible for the successful promotion of the Conservative party (and conservative culture) that had led to the election of the Thatcher government in 1979. Saatchi and Saatchi promoted art products from their own gallery under the populist brand of BritArt. Applying their marketing techniques and corporate power, the company accomplished a parallel coup within the British art scene, creating an elite of artists who embraced the commodification of their personalities alongside depoliticized artworks. BritArt’s dominance of the 90s UK art world-its galleries, markets and press-with a small number of high profile artists, delighted nouveau toffs but disempowered the majority of artists. It degraded and smothered artistic discourse by fueling a competitive and divisive attitude towards a shrinking public platform for their practice and the representation of their work. http://www.a-n.co.uk/publications/article/422251 Many of us in the UK had been working with art and technology from the late eighties in various ways, and in the mid-nineties. a lot of net art was around at the time - but there were groups, collectives forming togeher. For instance, Backspace (1996-99), an informal production space, sited on the Thames at London Bridge. The Backspace cyberlounge was open to people at all levels of technical experience and encouraged the sharing of ideas and technical resources, both in the physical space and across the globe via the Internet. It also acted as a venue for events and mini-conferences advocating a DIY consciousness and encouraging users to get their hands dirty with technology and its culture. The unspoken challenge to its members was that they should create something alternative to the dominant commercial culture on the Internet. It drew on the experience and involvement of its members (including the authors’) in pirate radio and pirate television, digital bulletin boards and use of the streets as a canvas and art platform. It connected with the work of groups like I/O/D, Irational, Mongrel and Mute magazine to hack around everyday culture using public communication platforms to create independent art works and publications. Most of the UK groups I have mentioned above were at The Next 5 Minutes festival (of course many more I have no time to mention). I was not actually invited to the festival, due to not having the correct credentials at that time, as in not being featured by the likes of Lovink, Stalibras and Manovich,
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Hi Curt all, As someone who mainly comes from a self-education position, or rather from a place where I come from a very poor and violent working class family - which spent most of the time either being put in social care, whether this be in borstals and prison, plus family members vanishing because of the failures of 70's social (un)care systems. Just think of 'Cathy Come Home' by Ken Loach - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Come_Home and may get some idea of my own personal history. Moving on from that I wish to mention that, for me education is one of the most important aspects of human development and a human right. Because I was not fortunate when younger to be able to experience a decent education, I had to discover various sneaky ways in finding information that the terrible school I was at, was not teaching me. My passion to discover what was going in the world beyond the chaos of my everyday circumstance was strong - even obsessed, whether it was in science, politics, technology, history, philosophy or art, I would bunk school regularly and spend an awful lot of my time in the Essex Library, which thankfully was in Southend-on-Sea, a town 50 miles from London. Some examples of what I read from the age of 12 and 13 and (of course) onwards, were books such as the The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich, The Divided Self by R. D. Laing, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Carl Jung, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong, Herbert Read - especially Education Through Art and The Paradox of Anarchism, loads of art books. I am not saying that I understood these publications, but I am saying that it encouraged me to learn more and I have not stopped since. So, when I think of education I do not immediately think of official education as in universities or colleges. For I am a strong advocate of self-education, which also involves one being self critical as well. There is larger and broader context where individuals have the choice to explore life, art and all the other equally important subjects outside institution environments as well. One of my personal worries in respect of UK culture, which may be also the same regarding USA, although influenced through different historical, political situations is that, my own class - as in, working class has turned into a mass of gibbering X Factor driven bimbos. Of course, this is not a universal issue, but the consumer orientated mediation of our cultures via neo liberal agendas have not helped. I personally do not think that individuals themselves should deny any official forms of education. For there are some good educators here and there who are decent and authentic in appreciating how to learn themselves, and are active in the process of engaging with students in ways that attempt in spirit, to transcend beyond the bland and over-efficient trappings of slack management structures that manner are dealing with. Not just this, economics is factor in the real world and gaining degrees and learning via institutional means gets you a job. From that, if you are artist you get some proper money to fund your own projects on your own terms etc... The irony of learning outside of my school environment at that age was that, at 14 I was asked to go to college at weekends by the Essex council. Which was strange because all the other students were on average 17-20 years of age. I was told to go back to school or they would put me in a Borstal, so I did in the end. From this experience ideas around education have also been informed by writers such as 'Deschooling Society' by Ivan Illich, and other works such Pedagogy of the Oppressed' by Paulo Friere. Yet, in contrast to all of this art (whatever medium) as a from of creative expression has always been my main agenda and always will be :-) wishing you well. marc Hi Rob (and all), Fun quotes (for the prose alone). Yes. stones, glass houses, logs in eyes and specks in eyes. The following quote is from the acknowledgements of Rita Raley's 2009 Tactical Media book (which I will teach this semester in a freshman liberal studies introductory colloquium course called Tactical Media / D.I.Y. Anarchy): It is my fervent wish that this book will become obsolete becaues the world will have changed so dramatically that this study of art-activism could only appar as a quaint historical artifact, its latent pessimism misguided, its failure to imagine otherwise indicative of the author's poverty of imagination. Until such a point, I will continue to look to tactical media artists for inspiration and guidance. (xii) Not that I myself look to tactical media artists for much inspiration or guidance, and probably by the end of the course we will have critiqued their approaches from contradictory perspectives -- the work is too didactic/hamfisted/pragmatic; the work is too disengaged/esoteric/impotent. (Throw a critical stone in the air and
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
I am with Marc on this, in more ways than one. I come from what could be considered a privileged background, compared to what Marc describes. Mine was a middle class academic family growing up on a beautiful wild beach in Australia (as different from Southend on Sea as you could get, except for the presence of the sea). However, like Marc, I didn¹t school well. I ran away from home at 15, living on communes and in surfer communities around the country (this was the beginning of the 70¹s, so that wasn¹t that unusual then). My parents, being liberals, could not find any way of dealing with this. The result was I never acquired a school or University qualification and am effectively self-taught. Hippy life can burn you out. Too many drugs and too much disorder eventually get to you. I went off to live on my own, quietly, to concentrate on what I felt I could do well painting. I was again lucky, as in my childhood the family friends were mostly artists (my mother was a poet) so I learned both technical knowledge from a young age and also an appreciation of what the artist¹s life can be. It was an easy thing for me to slip into being. I never went to art college. So, it is strange for me that throughout my professional life I have often found myself working in art colleges and other academic environments. They are not alien to me, as I grew up in a studious context, with books and art. But it can be weird to teach when you can only imagine what it is like to be a student. However, one advantage I have is that I can argue, with conviction, that a degree is not a pre-requisite to being an artist. I can describe education as being about a personal journey into knowledge and creativity, not a piece of paper that will eventually validate you. My own experience can stand as evidence that you do not need to fulfil other people¹s expectations to achieve what you want. Education is the most effective force for social change I have come across and it should be the right of every individual to have as much of it as they want (or can stand). Education can (should) be a primary resource for transformation. It does not need to be formalised, but to create substantial resource infrastructure you sometimes need large institutions. When I argue the case for artists working in academic environments I do so from a conviction concerning education¹s transformative capacity, not from some idea that everyone needs to be appropriately validated. That validation is part of the problem with education. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.bi...@eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: marc garrett marc.garr...@furtherfield.org Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:44:25 + To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) Hi Curt all, As someone who mainly comes from a self-education position, or rather from a place where I come from a very poor and violent working class family - which spent most of the time either being put in social care, whether this be in borstals and prison, plus family members vanishing because of the failures of 70's social (un)care systems. Just think of 'Cathy Come Home' by Ken Loach - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Come_Home and may get some idea of my own personal history. Moving on from that I wish to mention that, for me education is one of the most important aspects of human development and a human right. Because I was not fortunate when younger to be able to experience a decent education, I had to discover various sneaky ways in finding information that the terrible school I was at, was not teaching me. My passion to discover what was going in the world beyond the chaos of my everyday circumstance was strong - even obsessed, whether it was in science, politics, technology, history, philosophy or art, I would bunk school regularly and spend an awful lot of my time in the Essex Library, which thankfully was in Southend-on-Sea, a town 50 miles from London. Some examples of what I read from the age of 12 and 13 and (of course) onwards, were books such as the The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich, The Divided Self by R. D. Laing, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Carl Jung, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong, Herbert Read - especially Education Through Art and The Paradox of Anarchism, loads of art books. I am not saying that I understood these publications, but I am saying that it encouraged me to learn more and I have not stopped since. So, when I think of education I do not immediately think of official education
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Ah! I knew some of Marc's history but not yours Simon - this is fascinating and really helps to put into context some of the things you have argued here. There's nothing I'd disagree with here. It's often (well it is for me) nerve racking to post something more personal, especially when a lot of heat has been generated in a discussion, but I'm glad you have. regards michael --- On Sun, 1/10/10, Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk wrote: From: Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sunday, January 10, 2010, 3:35 PM Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) I am with Marc on this, in more ways than one. I come from what could be considered a privileged background, compared to what Marc describes. Mine was a middle class academic family growing up on a beautiful wild beach in Australia (as different from Southend on Sea as you could get, except for the presence of the sea). However, like Marc, I didn’t school well. I ran away from home at 15, living on communes and in surfer communities around the country (this was the beginning of the 70’s, so that wasn’t that unusual then). My parents, being liberals, could not find any way of dealing with this. The result was I never acquired a school or University qualification and am effectively self-taught. Hippy life can burn you out. Too many drugs and too much disorder eventually get to you. I went off to live on my own, quietly, to concentrate on what I felt I could do well – painting. I was again lucky, as in my childhood the family friends were mostly artists (my mother was a poet) so I learned both technical knowledge from a young age and also an appreciation of what the artist’s life can be. It was an easy thing for me to slip into being. I never went to art college. So, it is strange for me that throughout my professional life I have often found myself working in art colleges and other academic environments. They are not alien to me, as I grew up in a studious context, with books and art. But it can be weird to teach when you can only imagine what it is like to be a student. However, one advantage I have is that I can argue, with conviction, that a degree is not a pre-requisite to being an artist. I can describe education as being about a personal journey into knowledge and creativity, not a piece of paper that will eventually validate you. My own experience can stand as evidence that you do not need to fulfil other people’s expectations to achieve what you want. Education is the most effective force for social change I have come across and it should be the right of every individual to have as much of it as they want (or can stand). Education can (should) be a primary resource for transformation. It does not need to be formalised, but to create substantial resource infrastructure you sometimes need large institutions. When I argue the case for artists working in academic environments I do so from a conviction concerning education’s transformative capacity, not from some idea that everyone needs to be appropriately validated. That validation is part of the problem with education. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.bi...@eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: marc garrett marc.garr...@furtherfield.org Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:44:25 + To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) Hi Curt all, As someone who mainly comes from a self-education position, or rather from a place where I come from a very poor and violent working class family - which spent most of the time either being put in social care, whether this be in borstals and prison, plus family members vanishing because of the failures of 70's social (un)care systems. Just think of 'Cathy Come Home' by Ken Loach - http://en.wikipediaorg/wiki/Cathy_Come_Home and may get some idea of my own personal history. Moving on from that I wish to mention that, for me education is one of the most important aspects of human development and a human right. Because I was not fortunate when younger to be able
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
From: Michael Szpakowski szp...@yahoo.com Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 09:31:50 -0800 (PST) To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) Ah! I knew some of Marc's history but not yours Simon - this is fascinating and really helps to put into context some of the things you have argued here. There's nothing I'd disagree with here. It's often (well it is for me) nerve racking to post something more personal, especially when a lot of heat has been generated in a discussion, but I'm glad you have. regards michael --- On Sun, 1/10/10, Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk wrote: From: Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sunday, January 10, 2010, 3:35 PM Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) I am with Marc on this, in more ways than one. I come from what could be considered a privileged background, compared to what Marc describes. Mine was a middle class academic family growing up on a beautiful wild beach in Australia (as different from Southend on Sea as you could get, except for the presence of the sea). However, like Marc, I didn¹t school well. I ran away from home at 15, living on communes and in surfer communities around the country (this was the beginning of the 70¹s, so that wasn¹t that unusual then). My parents, being liberals, could not find any way of dealing with this. The result was I never acquired a school or University qualification and am effectively self-taught. Hippy life can burn you out. Too many drugs and too much disorder eventually get to you. I went off to live on my own, quietly, to concentrate on what I felt I could do well painting. I was again lucky, as in my childhood the family friends were mostly artists (my mother was a poet) so I learned both technical knowledge from a young age and also an appreciation of what the artist¹s life can be. It was an easy thing for me to slip into being. I never went to art college. So, it is strange for me that throughout my professional life I have often found myself working in art colleges and other academic environments. They are not alien to me, as I grew up in a studious context, with books and art. But it can be weird to teach when you can only imagine what it is like to be a student. However, one advantage I have is that I can argue, with conviction, that a degree is not a pre-requisite to being an artist. I can describe education as being about a personal journey into knowledge and creativity, not a piece of paper that will eventually validate you. My own experience can stand as evidence that you do not need to fulfil other people¹s expectations to achieve what you want. Education is the most effective force for social change I have come across and it should be the right of every individual to have as much of it as they want (or can stand). Education can (should) be a primary resource for transformation. It does not need to be formalised, but to create substantial resource infrastructure you sometimes need large institutions. When I argue the case for artists working in academic environments I do so from a conviction concerning education¹s transformative capacity, not from some idea that everyone needs to be appropriately validated. That validation is part of the problem with education. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.bi...@eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: marc garrett marc.garr...@furtherfield.org Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:44:25 + To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) Hi Curt all, As someone who mainly comes from a self-education position, or rather from a place where I come from a very poor and violent working class family - which spent most of the time either being put in social care, whether this be in borstals and prison, plus family members vanishing because of the failures of 70
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
I've really enjoyed this discussion - and learned a lot from what others are doing. It's really helpful to know how others work, survive, live, make art - this way I can learn about options. I'm still trying to find my way - and quite lost most of the time! thanks, dave 2010/1/10 Michael Szpakowski szp...@yahoo.com: Ah! I knew some of Marc's history but not yours Simon - this is fascinating and really helps to put into context some of the things you have argued here. There's nothing I'd disagree with here. It's often (well it is for me) nerve racking to post something more personal, especially when a lot of heat has been generated in a discussion, but I'm glad you have. regards michael --- On Sun, 1/10/10, Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk wrote: From: Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sunday, January 10, 2010, 3:35 PM Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) I am with Marc on this, in more ways than one. I come from what could be considered a privileged background, compared to what Marc describes. Mine was a middle class academic family growing up on a beautiful wild beach in Australia (as different from Southend on Sea as you could get, except for the presence of the sea). However, like Marc, I didn’t school well. I ran away from home at 15, living on communes and in surfer communities around the country (this was the beginning of the 70’s, so that wasn’t that unusual then). My parents, being liberals, could not find any way of dealing with this. The result was I never acquired a school or University qualification and am effectively self-taught. Hippy life can burn you out. Too many drugs and too much disorder eventually get to you. I went off to live on my own, quietly, to concentrate on what I felt I could do well – painting. I was again lucky, as in my childhood the family friends were mostly artists (my mother was a poet) so I learned both technical knowledge from a young age and also an appreciation of what the artist’s life can be. It was an easy thing for me to slip into being. I never went to art college. So, it is strange for me that throughout my professional life I have often found myself working in art colleges and other academic environments. They are not alien to me, as I grew up in a studious context, with books and art. But it can be weird to teach when you can only imagine what it is like to be a student. However, one advantage I have is that I can argue, with conviction, that a degree is not a pre-requisite to being an artist. I can describe education as being about a personal journey into knowledge and creativity, not a piece of paper that will eventually validate you. My own experience can stand as evidence that you do not need to fulfil other people’s expectations to achieve what you want. Education is the most effective force for social change I have come across and it should be the right of every individual to have as much of it as they want (or can stand). Education can (should) be a primary resource for transformation. It does not need to be formalised, but to create substantial resource infrastructure you sometimes need large institutions. When I argue the case for artists working in academic environments I do so from a conviction concerning education’s transformative capacity, not from some idea that everyone needs to be appropriately validated. That validation is part of the problem with education. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.bi...@eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: marc garrett marc.garr...@furtherfield.org Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:44:25 + To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) Hi Curt all, As someone who mainly comes from a self-education position, or rather from a place where I come from a very poor and violent working class family - which spent most of the time either being put in social care, whether this be in borstals and prison, plus family members vanishing because of the failures of 70's social (un)care systems. Just think of 'Cathy Come Home' by Ken Loach - http://en.wikipediaorg/wiki/Cathy_Come_Home and may
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Hi Renee, I'm just playing devil's advocate with those potential critiques of tactical media. You are absolutely correct to point out that tactical media is anything but monolothic and homogenous -- by definition, because to be tactical is to be supple. The work we will discuss in class is the work Raley includes in her book. Her three main genres are border disruptions, allegorical gaming (my term, not hers), and data (re)visualizations (mosty regarding capital). I teach at a public liberal arts university in southern Appalachia in the US, and this particular course is outside of my new media department. So these will be freshman students, 80% from North Carolina, and probably none who will go on to major in new media, or even art. I have no agenda to sell them the work or to undermine it. I am genuinely interested to see their response to it. Personally, I myself am one to push tactical into even less overtly political realms (referencing de Certeau's original use of consumer tactics vs. institutional strategies.) True de Certeauean tactics are more like reading and walking. Someone like CAE or The Yes Men are really employing techniques that are closer to institutional strateiges (although to obviously more disruptive ends). So for instance, here I theoretically embrace artistic web surfing as a kind of legitimate tactic: http://lab404.com/articles/commodify_your_consumption.pdf Ranciere makes a similar move, basically arguing that the litmus test of ethical art is not simply that it overtly addresses political themes. Ranciere's argument hinges on his understanding of ethical education and ethical theater -- presenting something without overdetermining it, allowing the learner/viewer to make their own sense of the experience. This approach seems similar to de Certeau's original understanding of consumer tactics. All that to say, my own aesthetic critique is that the work of someone like The Yes Men might be too overtly political. To me, art is better suited for other less didactic, more abstract moves. But honestly, I like The Yes Men (mostly because of their humor, and because their criticality is hopeful). Fortunately I can enjoy genres of art that I myself am not personally compelled to make. But I'm guessing (some of) my students will likely critique (some of) the work in Raley's book from the opposite perspeective -- namely that the work is not really changing anything. This is a standing critique of all art (tactical, new media, old media, whatever) leveled from extra-art circles. In the class we will go on to consider situationist texts, culminating with Public Image Limited's appearance on American Bandstand in 1980 [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdYevkJf--M ]. Then Hakim Bey's TAZ, Baudrillaud's simulacrum. And I hope to end on the Bergson/Whitehead/Deleuze/Latour thread -- philosophers considering the nature of change at all -- what real change is and how it might be affected. + Regarding giving a man a fish vs. teaching a man to fish, if we are teaching new media art/theory, we're not really teaching anybody to fish. Teaching database programming at a technical college or plumbing at a trade school is more like teaching somebody to fish. We are doing something even more abstract and indirect than that. Best, Curt Hi Curt, You're course sounds fascinating. I wish I could enroll! It is my fervent wish that this book will become obsolete becaues the world will have changed so dramatically that this study of art-activism could only appar as a quaint historical artifact, its latent pessimism misguided, its failure to imagine otherwise indicative of the author's poverty of imagination. Until such a point, I will continue to look to tactical media artists for inspiration and guidance. (xii) Good to read the Raley quote... Although I know her writing from other contexts, I didn't realize she'd written a book on tactical media. Not that I myself look to tactical media artists for much inspiration or guidance, and probably by the end of the course we will have critiqued their approaches from contradictory perspectives -- the work is too didactic/hamfisted/pragmatic; the work is too disengaged/esoteric/impotent. (Throw a critical stone in the air and you will hit a tactical media artist.) Since the mid nineties, I was involved in one way or another with the Next 5 Minutes, a tactical media conference which happened every few years Amsterdam. Through that event which was a convergence of art and activism, I met some pretty amazing artists/activists/tactical media practitioners (some known and others more obscure). While I understand your cynicism, it feels strange to generalize about these practices in that they are quite diverse. So can you talk a little more about the kind of work you're referring to? I'm thinking here of the difference between let's say the sanctioned practices of
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Thanks Marc, I would say that explains a lot, and I mean that as a compliment. In addition to Illich and Friere, I would add Ranciere's The Ignorant Schoolmaster. We homeschool four children with a fifth on the way, so teaching, art making, and writing are increasingly intertwined in my life. I myself have had a largely positive experience with institutional education, probably because some of the institutions I attended were very experimental, and even within the less experimental institutions, some of the teachers I had were radically experimental. I admire Beuys and Cage as experimental educators, and Black Mountain College (very near here) continues to inform my pedagogical aspirations. Perhaps my favorite pedagogical texts are Paul Klee's Bauhaus notebooks: The Thinking Eye and The Nature of Nature, just because they are so rigorously exhaustive. More than any craft (including artmaking, including writing) teaching is a bottomless pit. You could devote an entire life to mastering the craft and you would still have barely begun to scratch the surface. But we scratch on. Best, Curt Hi Curt all, As someone who mainly comes from a self-education position, or rather from a place where I come from a very poor and violent working class family - which spent most of the time either being put in social care, whether this be in borstals and prison, plus family members vanishing because of the failures of 70's social (un)care systems. Just think of 'Cathy Come Home' by Ken Loach - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Come_Home and may get some idea of my own personal history. Moving on from that I wish to mention that, for me education is one of the most important aspects of human development and a human right. Because I was not fortunate when younger to be able to experience a decent education, I had to discover various sneaky ways in finding information that the terrible school I was at, was not teaching me. My passion to discover what was going in the world beyond the chaos of my everyday circumstance was strong - even obsessed, whether it was in science, politics, technology, history, philosophy or art, I would bunk school regularly and spend an awful lot of my time in the Essex Library, which thankfully was in Southend-on-Sea, a town 50 miles from London. Some examples of what I read from the age of 12 and 13 and (of course) onwards, were books such as the The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich, The Divided Self by R. D. Laing, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Carl Jung, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong, Herbert Read - especially Education Through Art and The Paradox of Anarchism, loads of art books. I am not saying that I understood these publications, but I am saying that it encouraged me to learn more and I have not stopped since. So, when I think of education I do not immediately think of official education as in universities or colleges. For I am a strong advocate of self-education, which also involves one being self critical as well. There is larger and broader context where individuals have the choice to explore life, art and all the other equally important subjects outside institution environments as well. One of my personal worries in respect of UK culture, which may be also the same regarding USA, although influenced through different historical, political situations is that, my own class - as in, working class has turned into a mass of gibbering X Factor driven bimbos. Of course, this is not a universal issue, but the consumer orientated mediation of our cultures via neo liberal agendas have not helped. I personally do not think that individuals themselves should deny any official forms of education. For there are some good educators here and there who are decent and authentic in appreciating how to learn themselves, and are active in the process of engaging with students in ways that attempt in spirit, to transcend beyond the bland and over-efficient trappings of slack management structures that manner are dealing with. Not just this, economics is factor in the real world and gaining degrees and learning via institutional means gets you a job. From that, if you are artist you get some proper money to fund your own projects on your own terms etc... The irony of learning outside of my school environment at that age was that, at 14 I was asked to go to college at weekends by the Essex council. Which was strange because all the other students were on average 17-20 years of age. I was told to go back to school or they would put me in a Borstal, so I did in the end. From this experience ideas around education have also been informed by writers such as 'Deschooling Society' by Ivan Illich, and other works such Pedagogy of the Oppressed' by Paulo Friere. Yet, in contrast to all of this art (whatever medium) as a from of creative expression has always been my main agenda and always will be :-) wishing you well. marc
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Like so many of the what's the problem? posts this treats the language associated with art theory ( and indeed cultural social ideas in general) as if it is transparent and uncontested which of course, even on a daily basis ( think party politics, war and peace, healthcare, popular culture), it is absolutely not. It's a particularly bizarre blindness coming from the very folk who seem to be most enthusiastic about academia* whom one would have thought would have welcomed a question everything approach. Essentially the argument seems to be that Martin is stupid which strikes me as rude, deeply condescending and untrue. Awkward, yes, and not always entirely clear but let him/her that is without sin... michael * and by academia let me say what I mean -I don't mean teaching in whatever context -like Renee I'm utterly in favour. Nor do I mean the art school tradition at least up to the 70s. I'm referring particularly to developments over the last 30 years or so. I'm amazed that people can be so sanguine about the university research culture ( which has swallowed the art schools) when it is being constantly more colonised by the market market values - again there are surely deep issues here in the way this affects what constitutes research and indeed art as defined within the academy, which doesn't of course float Zeppelin-like above the rest of society ( and I'm very grateful to Rob for the Art and Language quotes which I previously knew nothing about and which both made me laugh and struck me as enormously pertinent). And I'm *not* trying to make some easy or pat argument - I'm saying there are *unanswered and legitimate questions* and there is *room for discussion*... --- On Sat, 1/9/10, mark cooley flawed...@yahoo.com wrote: From: mark cooley flawed...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) To: netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Saturday, January 9, 2010, 1:45 AM Helen, Thank you for the generous restatement of a perfectly understandable original. Frankly, I wouldn't have had the patience. It always amazes me just how bold idiocy can be. One would think that an unfamiliar language might spark one's curiosity to well... want to learn something rather than be offended at your audacity of straying from a 5th grade vocabulary. what excitement a few well placed words can create! i've found it interesting that there is often a violent reaction to the language of cultural studies or art criticism on some lists, but techno jargon is used with a badge of pride. i can't imagine that if every time i heard some tech speak that i didn't understand that i accused the authors of being elitist technocrats. btw. sounds like an interesting show. -Inline Attachment Follows- ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Michael Szpakowski wrote: Like so many of the what's the problem? posts this treats the language associated with art theory ( and indeed cultural social ideas in general) as if it is transparent and uncontested which of course, even on a daily basis ( think party politics, war and peace, healthcare, popular culture), it is absolutely not. It's a particularly bizarre blindness coming from the very folk who seem to be most enthusiastic about academia* whom one would have thought would have welcomed a question everything approach. Essentially the argument seems to be that Martin is stupid which strikes me as rude, deeply condescending and untrue. Awkward, yes, and not always entirely clear but let him/her that is without sin... michael This is a good old fashioned bit of shit-stirring. Martin has clarified his position on this which is great. Given the dogmatic nature of his original comments, it's hardly a surprise he got the response he did, although I agree we could have done without the graphics. * and by academia let me say what I mean -I don't mean teaching in whatever context -like Renee I'm utterly in favour. * and by academia let me say what I mean -I don't mean teaching It's convenient for your argument to separate the two, but not reasonable. Academia produces human and intellectual capital. This occurs through teaching and research ( or studio practice) carried out by academics... Nor do I mean the art school tradition at least up to the 70s. Yup great for tiny elite that actually managed to get into these paragons of art pedagogy. I find the romanticisation of the old art school system hard to stomach. Was it really so much better than we have now from a students perspective? Aren't we better off now that we have more going to art schools despite the obvious resourcing issues? I'm referring particularly to developments over the last 30 years or so. I'm amazed that people can be so sanguine about the university research culture ( which has swallowed the art schools) when it is being constantly more colonised by the market market values - again there are surely deep issues here in the way this affects what constitutes research and indeed art as defined within the academy, which doesn't of course float Zeppelin-like above the rest of society ( This is a separate argument. Nobody is denying there are issues in academia about how research is framed. Many ongoing lively debates around this issue are directly contributed to by members of this mailing list (e.g. simon, corrardo) It's the relentless misrepresentation and frankly lazy, yes and *condescending* characterization (to use your term), of the academy that gets peoples goat. and I'm very grateful to Rob for the Art and Language quotes which I previously knew nothing about and which both made me laugh and struck me as enormously pertinent). And I'm *not* trying to make some easy or pat argument - I'm saying there are *unanswered and legitimate questions* and there is *room for discussion*... As pointed out by Simon, I found the art and language quotes deeply ironic given that their practice was largely nourished (and financed) within the University of Leeds. Ahem. --- On Sat, 1/9/10, mark cooley flawed...@yahoo.com wrote: From: mark cooley flawed...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) To: netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Saturday, January 9, 2010, 1:45 AM Helen, Thank you for the generous restatement of a perfectly understandable original. Frankly, I wouldn't have had the patience. It always amazes me just how bold idiocy can be. One would think that an unfamiliar language might spark one's curiosity to well... want to learn something rather than be offended at your audacity of straying from a 5th grade vocabulary. what excitement a few well placed words can create! i've found it interesting that there is often a violent reaction to the language of cultural studies or art criticism on some lists, but techno jargon is used with a badge of pride. i can't imagine that if every time i heard some tech speak that i didn't understand that i accused the authors of being elitist technocrats. btw. sounds like an interesting show. -Inline Attachment Follows- ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
I am not wearing rose tinted spectacles here, particularly at a time when the UK higher education sector is witnessing its resource base shrink by 25% over the next three years. Even though these changes are only just beginning I¹ve already witnessed brutal management tactics, at a number of institutions, being implemented in order to save costs. That means people losing their jobs and, ultimately, many of them losing their homes and the means to care for themselves and their families. They can also lose their sense of value. The main problem in academia is not the academics. It is management culture. A few institutions have sustained governance structures that are founded on collegiality and transparency amongst academics. Most others have brought in or created professional managerial layers in their organisations. This has also happened at the critical interface between government and education, the funding councils and policy institutes. The result of this is an instrumentalisation of knowledge and creativity, which is arguably what is at the core of Michael¹s critique. Knowledge or art for its own sake? No! We are now required to evidence the social and economic value of everything we do. How does an artist articulate this, or an astronomer or philosopher? In many cases it cannot be... This has also happened in the art world. Want money from the Arts Council? You will be required to justify the social and economic value of your proposed activities. Want to make it without state support you will need to satisfy the demands of the commercial market. There are those who think these are good things, whether they be patrician socialists or free-marketers. Whatever, instrumentalisation is not constrained to education it is a cultural trope. Academics are teachers and researchers. They have to be both if they are to contribute to knowledge and be able to transfer it as it is developed. These are highly creative activities, arguably as creative as the activities of many artists (I know academics who are more creative and innovative that a some artists I know). My experience of HE has been marred by management and also by certain conservative forces that remain within the academy, who do not want to see the role or value of knowledge change, who want to manage access to knowledge and the means to creating knowledge as an arbiter of power. I have observed this within the now largely defunct art school system and within the university system that has consumed those art schools. However, I have also experienced an intellectual fervour and openness to other ways of seeing that is heartening in how it challenges the dogmatic and blinkered thinking that underpins instrumental approaches to creativity and the making (and destroying) of knowledge. Education is a good thing. It has been observed many times, in places of conflict and suffering, that it is education that can make the long term difference; not food aid, drugs or weapons. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.bi...@eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: Michael Szpakowski szp...@yahoo.com Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 02:46:06 -0800 (PST) To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) * and by academia let me say what I mean -I don't mean teaching in whatever context -like Renee I'm utterly in favour. Nor do I mean the art school tradition at least up to the 70s. I'm referring particularly to developments over the last 30 years or so. I'm amazed that people can be so sanguine about the university research culture ( which has swallowed the art schools) when it is being constantly more colonised by the market market values - again there are surely deep issues here in the way this affects what constitutes research and indeed art as defined within the academy, which doesn't of course float Zeppelin-like above the rest of society ( and I'm very grateful to Rob for the Art and Language quotes which I previously knew nothing about and which both made me laugh and struck me as enormously pertinent). And I'm *not* trying to make some easy or pat argument - I'm saying there are *unanswered and legitimate questions* and there is *room for discussion*... Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
It has been a bit of a difficult initiation to this list for me but I'm grateful to those who have welcomed me or acknowledged my original post about the screening programme. Thanks. I think Michael has a point here - the troubling language does permeate into everything and many of us are complicit in allowing it. I apologise for causing any offence around the tone of my original call. Rob's quotes from Art and Language were great and, although I take Simon's point about 'stones and glasshouses', they are pretty relevant in the context of this strand which seems to be making quite a lot of assumptions about the nature of art, academia/teaching and research. One of the things that has not been addressed really are the further changes that we are about to experience. Whilst creative practice has been embraced, there is a worrying 'enterprise' culture in academia in UK that looks like there will be favour the creative industries above artistic practice and approach (yes I know Creative Industries are supposed to embrace the arts but..). This has been prevalent elsewhere for some time and would love to know others' experiences of this. In UK, the annual budget for universities is to be slashed by £400m and Research Councils are going to fare no better. Universities are being encouraged to align with industry and to restructure their courses to be shorter and more 'vocational'. Most worrying for me is that my areas of interest fall under what is being termed by research here as Digital Economy and Green Knowledge Economy. Given the definitions and approach to the creative industries, in UK at least, this is going to make artistic practice, research and approach as some of us understand it rather tricky. We really should be fighting back on this (rather than with each other) or the arts might become a duller place to occupy - we've already seen it as Rob's quotes pointed out - in the use of the arts for social and urban regeneration (I'm not saying it's all bad but there are a lot of ill thought through projects in this context). On the other hand, this kind of adversity does bring invention but it seems a shame that all we've fought for and is positive feels like it's being eroded. On an up note, I like Dave's hairdresser and the ZIP_SOUNDS. Thanks :) H On 9/1/10 10:46, Michael Szpakowski szp...@yahoo.com wrote: Like so many of the what's the problem? posts this treats the language associated with art theory ( and indeed cultural social ideas in general) as if it is transparent and uncontested which of course, even on a daily basis ( think party politics, war and peace, healthcare, popular culture), it is absolutely not. It's a particularly bizarre blindness coming from the very folk who seem to be most enthusiastic about academia* whom one would have thought would have welcomed a question everything approach. Essentially the argument seems to be that Martin is stupid which strikes me as rude, deeply condescending and untrue. Awkward, yes, and not always entirely clear but let him/her that is without sin... michael * and by academia let me say what I mean -I don't mean teaching in whatever context -like Renee I'm utterly in favour. Nor do I mean the art school tradition at least up to the 70s. I'm referring particularly to developments over the last 30 years or so. I'm amazed that people can be so sanguine about the university research culture ( which has swallowed the art schools) when it is being constantly more colonised by the market market values - again there are surely deep issues here in the way this affects what constitutes research and indeed art as defined within the academy, which doesn't of course float Zeppelin-like above the rest of society ( and I'm very grateful to Rob for the Art and Language quotes which I previously knew nothing about and which both made me laugh and struck me as enormously pertinent). And I'm *not* trying to make some easy or pat argument - I'm saying there are *unanswered and legitimate questions* and there is *room for discussion*... --- On Sat, 1/9/10, mark cooley flawed...@yahoo.com wrote: From: mark cooley flawed...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) To: netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Saturday, January 9, 2010, 1:45 AM Helen, Thank you for the generous restatement of a perfectly understandable original. Frankly, I wouldn't have had the patience. It always amazes me just how bold idiocy can be. One would think that an unfamiliar language might spark one's curiosity to well... want to learn something rather than be offended at your audacity of straying from a 5th grade vocabulary. what excitement a few well placed words can create! i've found it interesting that there is often a violent reaction to the language of cultural studies or art criticism on some lists, but techno jargon is used
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Ah, Simon I¹ve just sent something similar. H On 9/1/10 12:00, Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk wrote: I am not wearing rose tinted spectacles here, particularly at a time when the UK higher education sector is witnessing its resource base shrink by 25% over the next three years. Even though these changes are only just beginning I¹ve already witnessed brutal management tactics, at a number of institutions, being implemented in order to save costs. That means people losing their jobs and, ultimately, many of them losing their homes and the means to care for themselves and their families. They can also lose their sense of value. The main problem in academia is not the academics. It is management culture. A few institutions have sustained governance structures that are founded on collegiality and transparency amongst academics. Most others have brought in or created professional managerial layers in their organisations. This has also happened at the critical interface between government and education, the funding councils and policy institutes. The result of this is an instrumentalisation of knowledge and creativity, which is arguably what is at the core of Michael¹s critique. Knowledge or art for its own sake? No! We are now required to evidence the social and economic value of everything we do. How does an artist articulate this, or an astronomer or philosopher? In many cases it cannot be... This has also happened in the art world. Want money from the Arts Council? You will be required to justify the social and economic value of your proposed activities. Want to make it without state support you will need to satisfy the demands of the commercial market. There are those who think these are good things, whether they be patrician socialists or free-marketers. Whatever, instrumentalisation is not constrained to education it is a cultural trope. Academics are teachers and researchers. They have to be both if they are to contribute to knowledge and be able to transfer it as it is developed. These are highly creative activities, arguably as creative as the activities of many artists (I know academics who are more creative and innovative that a some artists I know). My experience of HE has been marred by management and also by certain conservative forces that remain within the academy, who do not want to see the role or value of knowledge change, who want to manage access to knowledge and the means to creating knowledge as an arbiter of power. I have observed this within the now largely defunct art school system and within the university system that has consumed those art schools. However, I have also experienced an intellectual fervour and openness to other ways of seeing that is heartening in how it challenges the dogmatic and blinkered thinking that underpins instrumental approaches to creativity and the making (and destroying) of knowledge. Education is a good thing. It has been observed many times, in places of conflict and suffering, that it is education that can make the long term difference; not food aid, drugs or weapons. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.bi...@eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: Michael Szpakowski szp...@yahoo.com Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 02:46:06 -0800 (PST) To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) * and by academia let me say what I mean -I don't mean teaching in whatever context -like Renee I'm utterly in favour. Nor do I mean the art school tradition at least up to the 70s. I'm referring particularly to developments over the last 30 years or so. I'm amazed that people can be so sanguine about the university research culture ( which has swallowed the art schools) when it is being constantly more colonised by the market market values - again there are surely deep issues here in the way this affects what constitutes research and indeed art as defined within the academy, which doesn't of course float Zeppelin-like above the rest of society ( and I'm very grateful to Rob for the Art and Language quotes which I previously knew nothing about and which both made me laugh and struck me as enormously pertinent). And I'm *not* trying to make some easy or pat argument - I'm saying there are *unanswered and legitimate questions* and there is *room for discussion*... Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Apologies if this comes through twice... It has been a bit of a difficult initiation to this list for me but I'm grateful to those who have welcomed me or acknowledged my original post about the screening programme. Thanks. I think Michael has a point here - the troubling language does permeate into everything and many of us are complicit in allowing it. I apologise for causing any offence around the tone of my original call. Rob's quotes from Art and Language were great and, although I take Simon's point about 'stones and glasshouses', they are pretty relevant in the context of this strand which seems to be making quite a lot of assumptions about the nature of art, academia/teaching and research. One of the things that has not been addressed really are the further changes that we are about to experience. Whilst creative practice has been embraced, there is a worrying 'enterprise' culture in academia in UK that looks like there will be favour the creative industries above artistic practice and approach (yes I know Creative Industries are supposed to embrace the arts but..). This has been prevalent elsewhere for some time and would love to know others' experiences of this. In UK, the annual budget for universities is to be slashed by £400m and Research Councils are going to fare no better. Universities are being encouraged to align with industry and to restructure their courses to be shorter and more 'vocational'. Most worrying for me is that my areas of interest fall under what is being termed by research here as Digital Economy and Green Knowledge Economy. Given the definitions and approach to the creative industries, in UK at least, this is going to make artistic practice, research and approach as some of us understand it rather tricky. We really should be fighting back on this (rather than with each other) or the arts might become a duller place to occupy - we've already seen it as Rob's quotes pointed out - in the use of the arts for social and urban regeneration (I'm not saying it's all bad but there are a lot of ill thought through projects in this context). On the other hand, this kind of adversity does bring invention but it seems a shame that all we've fought for and is positive feels like it's being eroded. On an up note, I like Dave's hairdresser and the ZIP_SOUNDS. Thanks :) H On 9/1/10 10:46, Michael Szpakowski szp...@yahoo.com wrote: Like so many of the what's the problem? posts this treats the language associated with art theory ( and indeed cultural social ideas in general) as if it is transparent and uncontested which of course, even on a daily basis ( think party politics, war and peace, healthcare, popular culture), it is absolutely not. It's a particularly bizarre blindness coming from the very folk who seem to be most enthusiastic about academia* whom one would have thought would have welcomed a question everything approach. Essentially the argument seems to be that Martin is stupid which strikes me as rude, deeply condescending and untrue. Awkward, yes, and not always entirely clear but let him/her that is without sin... michael * and by academia let me say what I mean -I don't mean teaching in whatever context -like Renee I'm utterly in favour. Nor do I mean the art school tradition at least up to the 70s. I'm referring particularly to developments over the last 30 years or so. I'm amazed that people can be so sanguine about the university research culture ( which has swallowed the art schools) when it is being constantly more colonised by the market market values - again there are surely deep issues here in the way this affects what constitutes research and indeed art as defined within the academy, which doesn't of course float Zeppelin-like above the rest of society ( and I'm very grateful to Rob for the Art and Language quotes which I previously knew nothing about and which both made me laugh and struck me as enormously pertinent). And I'm *not* trying to make some easy or pat argument - I'm saying there are *unanswered and legitimate questions* and there is *room for discussion*... --- On Sat, 1/9/10, mark cooley flawed...@yahoo.com wrote: From: mark cooley flawed...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) To: netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Saturday, January 9, 2010, 1:45 AM Helen, Thank you for the generous restatement of a perfectly understandable original. Frankly, I wouldn't have had the patience. It always amazes me just how bold idiocy can be. One would think that an unfamiliar language might spark one's curiosity to well... want to learn something rather than be offended at your audacity of straying from a 5th grade vocabulary. what excitement a few well placed words can create! i've found it interesting that there is often a violent reaction to the language of cultural studies or art criticism
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
It¹s the zeitgeist. Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.bi...@eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: Helen Sloan he...@scansite.org Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:02:35 + To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) Ah, Simon I¹ve just sent something similar. H On 9/1/10 12:00, Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk wrote: I am not wearing rose tinted spectacles here, particularly at a time when the UK higher education sector is witnessing its resource base shrink by 25% over the next three years. Even though these changes are only just beginning I¹ve already witnessed brutal management tactics, at a number of institutions, being implemented in order to save costs. That means people losing their jobs and, ultimately, many of them losing their homes and the means to care for themselves and their families. They can also lose their sense of value. The main problem in academia is not the academics. It is management culture. A few institutions have sustained governance structures that are founded on collegiality and transparency amongst academics. Most others have brought in or created professional managerial layers in their organisations. This has also happened at the critical interface between government and education, the funding councils and policy institutes. The result of this is an instrumentalisation of knowledge and creativity, which is arguably what is at the core of Michael¹s critique. Knowledge or art for its own sake? No! We are now required to evidence the social and economic value of everything we do. How does an artist articulate this, or an astronomer or philosopher? In many cases it cannot be... This has also happened in the art world. Want money from the Arts Council? You will be required to justify the social and economic value of your proposed activities. Want to make it without state support you will need to satisfy the demands of the commercial market. There are those who think these are good things, whether they be patrician socialists or free-marketers. Whatever, instrumentalisation is not constrained to education it is a cultural trope. Academics are teachers and researchers. They have to be both if they are to contribute to knowledge and be able to transfer it as it is developed. These are highly creative activities, arguably as creative as the activities of many artists (I know academics who are more creative and innovative that a some artists I know). My experience of HE has been marred by management and also by certain conservative forces that remain within the academy, who do not want to see the role or value of knowledge change, who want to manage access to knowledge and the means to creating knowledge as an arbiter of power. I have observed this within the now largely defunct art school system and within the university system that has consumed those art schools. However, I have also experienced an intellectual fervour and openness to other ways of seeing that is heartening in how it challenges the dogmatic and blinkered thinking that underpins instrumental approaches to creativity and the making (and destroying) of knowledge. Education is a good thing. It has been observed many times, in places of conflict and suffering, that it is education that can make the long term difference; not food aid, drugs or weapons. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.bi...@eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: Michael Szpakowski szp...@yahoo.com Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 02:46:06 -0800 (PST) To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) * and by academia let me say what I mean -I don't mean teaching in whatever context -like Renee I'm utterly in favour. Nor do I mean the art school tradition at least up to the 70s. I'm referring particularly to developments over the last 30 years or so. I'm amazed that people can be so sanguine about the university research culture ( which has swallowed the art schools) when it is being constantly more colonised by the market market values - again
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Hi Helen I apologise for causing any offence I absolutely don't think you need to apologise for *anything* - it must be odd to post something that feels entirely uncontroversial raise such a storm. I think you've done everyone here a service in (inadvertantly!) starting a interesting discussion when things get a little fiery it's usually an indication that there are important issues at stake. I agree entirely with your points below particularly that when it comes to cuts/attacks on funding whether in arts or education it should be shoulder to shoulder first and foremost. Doesn't shouldn't stop us arguing the detail, though, as we head for the barricades... michael --- On Sat, 1/9/10, Helen Sloan he...@scansite.org wrote: From: Helen Sloan he...@scansite.org Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Saturday, January 9, 2010, 12:01 PM It has been a bit of a difficult initiation to this list for me but I'm grateful to those who have welcomed me or acknowledged my original post about the screening programme. Thanks. I think Michael has a point here - the troubling language does permeate into everything and many of us are complicit in allowing it. I apologise for causing any offence around the tone of my original call. Rob's quotes from Art and Language were great and, although I take Simon's point about 'stones and glasshouses', they are pretty relevant in the context of this strand which seems to be making quite a lot of assumptions about the nature of art, academia/teaching and research. One of the things that has not been addressed really are the further changes that we are about to experience. Whilst creative practice has been embraced, there is a worrying 'enterprise' culture in academia in UK that looks like there will be favour the creative industries above artistic practice and approach (yes I know Creative Industries are supposed to embrace the arts but..). This has been prevalent elsewhere for some time and would love to know others' experiences of this. In UK, the annual budget for universities is to be slashed by £400m and Research Councils are going to fare no better. Universities are being encouraged to align with industry and to restructure their courses to be shorter and more 'vocational'. Most worrying for me is that my areas of interest fall under what is being termed by research here as Digital Economy and Green Knowledge Economy. Given the definitions and approach to the creative industries, in UK at least, this is going to make artistic practice, research and approach as some of us understand it rather tricky. We really should be fighting back on this (rather than with each other) or the arts might become a duller place to occupy - we've already seen it as Rob's quotes pointed out - in the use of the arts for social and urban regeneration (I'm not saying it's all bad but there are a lot of ill thought through projects in this context). On the other hand, this kind of adversity does bring invention but it seems a shame that all we've fought for and is positive feels like it's being eroded. On an up note, I like Dave's hairdresser and the ZIP_SOUNDS. Thanks :) H On 9/1/10 10:46, Michael Szpakowski szp...@yahoo.com wrote: Like so many of the what's the problem? posts this treats the language associated with art theory ( and indeed cultural social ideas in general) as if it is transparent and uncontested which of course, even on a daily basis ( think party politics, war and peace, healthcare, popular culture), it is absolutely not. It's a particularly bizarre blindness coming from the very folk who seem to be most enthusiastic about academia* whom one would have thought would have welcomed a question everything approach. Essentially the argument seems to be that Martin is stupid which strikes me as rude, deeply condescending and untrue. Awkward, yes, and not always entirely clear but let him/her that is without sin... michael * and by academia let me say what I mean -I don't mean teaching in whatever context -like Renee I'm utterly in favour. Nor do I mean the art school tradition at least up to the 70s. I'm referring particularly to developments over the last 30 years or so. I'm amazed that people can be so sanguine about the university research culture ( which has swallowed the art schools) when it is being constantly more colonised by the market market values - again there are surely deep issues here in the way this affects what constitutes research and indeed art as defined within the academy, which doesn't of course float Zeppelin-like above the rest of society ( and I'm very grateful to Rob for the Art and Language quotes which I previously
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Hi Helen Glad you liked the hairdresser! I really share your worries about higher arts education, and creative industries taking over from arts. I have direct experience of this myself. I feel the enterprise culture thing in art education, which currently seems to be in vogue, is both good and bad, and gives students false hopes. You're right we should be fighting back. And in many areas of life! dave 2010/1/9 Helen Sloan he...@scansite.org: It has been a bit of a difficult initiation to this list for me but I'm grateful to those who have welcomed me or acknowledged my original post about the screening programme. Thanks. I think Michael has a point here - the troubling language does permeate into everything and many of us are complicit in allowing it. I apologise for causing any offence around the tone of my original call. Rob's quotes from Art and Language were great and, although I take Simon's point about 'stones and glasshouses', they are pretty relevant in the context of this strand which seems to be making quite a lot of assumptions about the nature of art, academia/teaching and research. One of the things that has not been addressed really are the further changes that we are about to experience. Whilst creative practice has been embraced, there is a worrying 'enterprise' culture in academia in UK that looks like there will be favour the creative industries above artistic practice and approach (yes I know Creative Industries are supposed to embrace the arts but..). This has been prevalent elsewhere for some time and would love to know others' experiences of this. In UK, the annual budget for universities is to be slashed by £400m and Research Councils are going to fare no better. Universities are being encouraged to align with industry and to restructure their courses to be shorter and more 'vocational'. Most worrying for me is that my areas of interest fall under what is being termed by research here as Digital Economy and Green Knowledge Economy. Given the definitions and approach to the creative industries, in UK at least, this is going to make artistic practice, research and approach as some of us understand it rather tricky. We really should be fighting back on this (rather than with each other) or the arts might become a duller place to occupy - we've already seen it as Rob's quotes pointed out - in the use of the arts for social and urban regeneration (I'm not saying it's all bad but there are a lot of ill thought through projects in this context). On the other hand, this kind of adversity does bring invention but it seems a shame that all we've fought for and is positive feels like it's being eroded. On an up note, I like Dave's hairdresser and the ZIP_SOUNDS. Thanks :) H On 9/1/10 10:46, Michael Szpakowski szp...@yahoo.com wrote: Like so many of the what's the problem? posts this treats the language associated with art theory ( and indeed cultural social ideas in general) as if it is transparent and uncontested which of course, even on a daily basis ( think party politics, war and peace, healthcare, popular culture), it is absolutely not. It's a particularly bizarre blindness coming from the very folk who seem to be most enthusiastic about academia* whom one would have thought would have welcomed a question everything approach. Essentially the argument seems to be that Martin is stupid which strikes me as rude, deeply condescending and untrue. Awkward, yes, and not always entirely clear but let him/her that is without sin... michael * and by academia let me say what I mean -I don't mean teaching in whatever context -like Renee I'm utterly in favour. Nor do I mean the art school tradition at least up to the 70s. I'm referring particularly to developments over the last 30 years or so. I'm amazed that people can be so sanguine about the university research culture ( which has swallowed the art schools) when it is being constantly more colonised by the market market values - again there are surely deep issues here in the way this affects what constitutes research and indeed art as defined within the academy, which doesn't of course float Zeppelin-like above the rest of society ( and I'm very grateful to Rob for the Art and Language quotes which I previously knew nothing about and which both made me laugh and struck me as enormously pertinent). And I'm *not* trying to make some easy or pat argument - I'm saying there are *unanswered and legitimate questions* and there is *room for discussion*... --- On Sat, 1/9/10, mark cooley flawed...@yahoo.com wrote: From: mark cooley flawed...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) To: netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org Date: Saturday, January 9, 2010, 1:45 AM Helen, Thank you for the generous restatement of a perfectly understandable original. Frankly, I
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
On 09/01/10 11:43, tom corby wrote: This is a good old fashioned bit of shit-stirring. I can't really imagine Michael shit-stirring... As pointed out by Simon, I found the art and language quotes deeply ironic given that their practice was largely nourished (and financed) within the University of Leeds. Ahem. There's more irony to be had in the quotes, that's why I posted them. That and, as Michael points out, they are funny. Art Language are anti-academic but started and have often ended up in academia. They are politically committed but show at a gentrifying, market-leading gallery. Despite protests to the contrary they are radical artists who have artworld careers. I like them. It's very easy to criticise academia, artistic careerism, the art market, politically/socially committed art etc. from the security of one's own, virtuous, position outside of them. But there's no point outside the world where we can stand and point and laugh at it. We all need to be careful about glass houses, or at least work on smashing our own windows, whether our teaching means we are objectively in academia or our radical socially committed artistic practice means we are objectively part of gentrification. The most important criticism is self-criticism, although this may sometimes mean that we have to admit we are not criticising others enough. ;-) I've taught, I've wired up abandoned warehouses, I've attended private views, I write reviews for a techno-art-and-society web community. We are all guilty... - Rob. ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Hi Rob (and all), Fun quotes (for the prose alone). Yes. stones, glass houses, logs in eyes and specks in eyes. The following quote is from the acknowledgements of Rita Raley's 2009 Tactical Media book (which I will teach this semester in a freshman liberal studies introductory colloquium course called Tactical Media / D.I.Y. Anarchy): It is my fervent wish that this book will become obsolete becaues the world will have changed so dramatically that this study of art-activism could only appar as a quaint historical artifact, its latent pessimism misguided, its failure to imagine otherwise indicative of the author's poverty of imagination. Until such a point, I will continue to look to tactical media artists for inspiration and guidance. (xii) Not that I myself look to tactical media artists for much inspiration or guidance, and probably by the end of the course we will have critiqued their approaches from contradictory perspectives -- the work is too didactic/hamfisted/pragmatic; the work is too disengaged/esoteric/impotent. (Throw a critical stone in the air and you will hit a tactical media artist.) It is always amusing to me when artists and/or educators try to out-ethicalize each other, as if any of us are all that directly, pragmatically, quantitatively, measurably changing anything. For me, art and teaching are a gamble -- a gamble that some kind of abstract affective agency will eventually modulate actual aspects of the world in some way that will matter. Consequently, I admire others who are making similar wagers. But I don't ever fool myself into believing that I'm on the street feeding the poor. Because I've done that kind of work as well, and it's quite a different thing. Rock Roll Ain't No Pollution, Curt There's more irony to be had in the quotes, that's why I posted them. That and, as Michael points out, they are funny. Art Language are anti-academic but started and have often ended up in academia. They are politically committed but show at a gentrifying, market-leading gallery. Despite protests to the contrary they are radical artists who have artworld careers. I like them. It's very easy to criticise academia, artistic careerism, the art market, politically/socially committed art etc. from the security of one's own, virtuous, position outside of them. But there's no point outside the world where we can stand and point and laugh at it. We all need to be careful about glass houses, or at least work on smashing our own windows, whether our teaching means we are objectively in academia or our radical socially committed artistic practice means we are objectively part of gentrification. The most important criticism is self-criticism, although this may sometimes mean that we have to admit we are not criticising others enough. ;-) I've taught, I've wired up abandoned warehouses, I've attended private views, I write reviews for a techno-art-and-society web community. We are all guilty... - Rob. ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan)
Helen, Thank you for the generous restatement of a perfectly understandable original. Frankly, I wouldn't have had the patience. It always amazes me just how bold idiocy can be. One would think that an unfamiliar language might spark one's curiosity to well... want to learn something rather than be offended at your audacity of straying from a 5th grade vocabulary. what excitement a few well placed words can create! i've found it interesting that there is often a violent reaction to the language of cultural studies or art criticism on some lists, but techno jargon is used with a badge of pride. i can't imagine that if every time i heard some tech speak that i didn't understand that i accused the authors of being elitist technocrats. btw. sounds like an interesting show. ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
