Fwd: Re: [-undercuurents]Anna Balint's last post

[anna balint]

[apologies for cross posting, Frederic,
Coco Fusco was so kind to reply to my message on syndicate,
below is the posting - she is very right, it is not of her responsability
to find out the meanings of the European net.culture,
neither i was in my best form today in my reply.
but here is my answer too.] 

------- Start of forwarded message -------
From: Animas999 at aol.com
To: epistolaris at freemail.hu
Subject: Re: Anna Balint's last post
Date: 7/19/02 3:05:12 PM

Dear Anna
In a message dated 7/16/02 11:32:23 AM, epistolaris at freemail.hu writes:

<< i wonder how can happen in the United States to separate so much
social criticism and media criticism, is there no mainsteram and alternative
media construction of society, reality, history and politics?

It may come as a surprise Anna, but the mainstream media is the United States 
is deplorable, even much respected newspapers like The New York Times are 
nothing more than promotional vehicles for corporations. The Science and 
Technology sections of the NY Times read like commercials for pharmaceuticals 
and computer giants.

There is no serious interrogation of the role of the media in the mainstream 
media. All critique of the media happens within academic contexts and the 
journals have very limited circulation. Many artists are turned off by the 
use of theoretical jargon.

In terms of prodution of alternative media, of course there still are many 
people who make independent films and videos on social issues and still 
others who are using the internet for activist purposes. The main problem is 
the limited access to this work. Public venues for such work have decreased 
since the 90s as has funding for independent media production. I usually see 
this sort of work when I sit on juries or funding panels, and occasionally at 
the annual Human Rights Film Festival in New York. If any of it gets 
broadcast on public television, it won't be aired before midnight, making the 
audience tiny. The critical backlash against political art and what is now 
crudely labelled "identity politics" and "victim art" doesn't help matters. I 
often run into young students who have no knowledge of recent art history but 
who are sure that political art is terrible and that feminist art and 
multiculturalism "failed" - I am quoting them here.

<<more important is of course is there still need of alternative media and 
alternative art in Europe?>>

I don't think I should be the one to answer this question. What I can say is 
that there still is a great deal of production of alternative media and and 
art in Europe. Before the privatization of European television, there were 
many stations at least in Western Europe that commissioned and bought many 
important independent films and videos on social issues. That funding was a 
key source for many producers. I worked at the Bela Balazs Studio in Budapest 
also in 1987 and met many many filmmakers there who had been able to produce 
incredible works with state support. The more privatized the media becomes, 
the harder it is to get support to make anything that isn't commercial. In 
addition the home video market has killed the educational distribution market 
in the US, which used to be an important source of income for non-profit 
distributors and for artists. The change in the market explains to a certain 
extent why many younger video artists have moved over to gallery distribution 
of the work, making limited editions of their experimental and documentary 
video "shorts." Much of this work that I see is from a formal standpoint very 
unimaginative, but that doesn't stop the artworld from absorbing it. 
Documenta 11 is overloaded with this kind of video production, as are most 
biennials these days. Whitney Museum curator Chrissie Isles organized a very 
important exhibition of early film and video projections from the 60s and 70s 
last year called INTO THE LIGHT that demonstrate how much more interesting, 
vivid and aesthetically challenging those first art experiments were than 
what is now being made.

<<there is one source of alternativity for sure : the reception of the 
classics of avant-garde - 
- at least East European avantgarde is still subject of research,
the connection between new media art scene and pioneers of telematic arts and 
networks artist
is still waiting to be made.  >>

Anna, here is where we differ. I understand your position as someone working 
in Eastern Europe and I remember when NSK in Slovenia started to stir up 
these connections in the 80s as a way of reflecting on the political 
viability of making such links and also as a critical commentary on the 
failed utopianism of the early 20th century avant gardes. I am thinking now 
of their project of putting a black square in Moscow's Red Square in an 
ironic hommage to Malevich. Lev Manovich these days is always trying to draw 
a straight line from Eisenstein to computer imaging but he has a very 
problematic agenda. I have to argue that many important issues are being 
overlooked in doing this. I think Irina has also written about the 
manipulation of ideas about the early 20th century Russian avant garde too.

Many young net.enthusiasts in the US claim the Futurists and Fluxus and other 
avant gardes as their spiritual grandfathers. ASCII artists even have argued 
that they are latter day Lettristes. Rhizome announcements are full of this 
kind of rhetoric. But most of those artists and critics ignore the huge 
differences in political and social contexts between the past movements and 
the present. They ignore the relation between net.art and the software 
industry and the key role that corporations have played in financing digital 
art. They rarely touch upon the ways that computers were delivered to Eastern 
Europe as consumer items (rather than just for the military and state 
security) at the end of the Cold War as a welcome present to capitalism and 
how they became equated with "democracy" and "individualism" . Who in Eastern 
Europe talks about how George Soros dumped zillions of computers on Slovenia 
in the 90s and what an impact that had? Why assume that private sector 
benefactors are any less politically motivated than the totalitarian state? 
They most certainly are not!

Andreas Huyssens has written about the crucial political distinctions between 
the political visions of early modernist avant gardes and the apolitical 
approaches of Fluxus. Taking his logic one step further, we might have to 
talk about the "post-political" neo liberal libertarianism of first wave 
net.art, and the current institutionalization of technoformalist net.art and 
digital art that completely marginalizes the socially engaged uses of the 
medium, keeping them outside museums and and major venues for net.art 
distribution. 

One last point - some critics here are beginning to discuss how the 
techophilic orientation of the Futurists and other utopian modernists has 
been reconstituted by the computer industry in order to position software 
development as 
"the most important art" - conveniently serving the needs of industry. Isn't 
anyone in your part of the world addressing this? 

About not making connections between the early telematic art scene and new 
media - well, I see articles about this in Leonardo magazine often. Many 
electronic culture anthologies also have articles about this. When I go to 
conferences in Europe about electronic media, I inevitably meet up with 
pioneers of video art and sound artists from the 60s. So why assume that 
these connections are not being made?

Best
coco




-------- End of forwarded message --------

Display all headers
From: anna balint <epistolaris at freemail.hu>
To: undercurrents at bbs.thing.net
Reply-To: epistolaris at freemail.hu
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 18:26:51 +0200
Subject: Re:  east/west question about net.art politics
Many thanks for your answer, Coco,
- i did not suspect that the internet world is so small.
Of course I have not much doubt about mainstream media in th US,
and i know also about independent media production, and distribution problems,
i guess problems are similar, here and there. But with the advancement of
global culture and capitalism in East Europe there is no similar advancement
of criticsim of liberal society, and vice versa - after the end of the cold war
there is no reception of East European social criticism in West Europe
(a lot of illusion about state funding and Soros Foundation funding).
Generally there is tendency to project the better side to the opposite block,
whilst in reality there are very big difficulties in communication, for  example,
it is very diifcult to make collaborate and exhibit together for instance two  political
conceptual artists from different background as Joseph Kosuth and Ilia Kabakov  (they did once,
in Poland, and they said they are never going to do again).
There are exceptions of course. 
We call the distance of the academic discourse and social reality the new
betrayal of the intellectuals, and it is a well known problem here too.
The interdisciplinary education has just started,
and has to fill huge gaps even of mainsteram knowledge.
The alternative  media channeles - which have a very strong traditition
in East Europe - small press, zines, mailing lists, videos, appartment events,
and hand to hand distribution - are still very important,
often the only source of authentic information.
But beyond academic media criticism, there is also and independent one,
centered in the mid-90's exactly around nettime,
playing a key issue in grounding media criticism in East Europe.
It covered originally alternative media theory and medium specific art,
both from East and West Europe, and from the US as well.
There was no mass distribution of computers in East Europe,
but the Soros Foundation certainly helped a lot, and i would say
that with the distribution of copy machines and that alternative
information distribution, it seriously challeneged the Soviet Empire in the
late 80's.
there is very little recognition of net.art in East Europe, and whilst there  were oustanding
net.art pioneers from East Europe, last year happened the first time that an  East European
artist won a price at ars electronica, and the net.art scene sometimes seems to  be dead,
it is nothing but mainstream.
there is not such a hype of technology commercial utopia, that has been very  early
identified as Californaina Ideology by Raichard Barbrook and Andy Cameron,
two European white leftist analysers.  American software has been received   also very
critically, often described as Microsoft fascism.
[Apple has little influence in East Europe, because the Apple computers were
on the COCOM list, it was not allowed to distribute it in East Europe]
 When about female users of software,
specially the business man way of organizing of the interface was criticised.
Ars Electronica, and Leonardo have made a lot for integrating early medium
specific works in the contemporary art, but that has changed little in regard
of East European forerunners. What a special place had  for exemple the
rediscovery and reception of the Tesla inheritage in the mid-nineties  of the
last century.
There is little funding here for research,
and even less for representation. There has been East European Fluxus,
much underrepresented even in the alternative networks, not speaking here
about the almost total ignorance of Eastern art in the Western mainstream.
There is a struggle to change the art education, museum system in each East
European country, with different results, Slovenia is outstanding so far by s
ucceeding to start a collection of East Europeancontemporary art works.
There is very much research work to do on the East European
conceptual, performance, video art scene, theater, and avantgarde music scene  as well.
I haven't been yet at Documenta, i will go only in August. But probably you  also noticed,
that most East European artist in the show are based in West Europe,
and i know that there is not one Hungarian artist.  in the whole history of  Documenta
since 1955 there has been one single Hungarian artist in the show (at documenta  9).
(Hungary is not so far from Germany, there is only something like a 1000 km  distance).
I suppose that the bigger the geographical space is represented in an  exhibition,
the lighter the works become, that could be also the cause of the many video  works,
[but not the cause of lack of net.art]. net.art was a big chance  -
perhaps it still is - for East Europeans to be represented in the european
cultural space.
(conceptual art also was a big challenge, concept and mail art were the first
to cross the borders of the cold war. though it was a very strong and quite  massive scene,
the concept of social sculpture of Joseph Beuys was also very influential at  that time,
paradoxally - because it was not possible to commercialise it - concept it is  known now as
one of the most elite art movements.
I just read the message of Eva Rybska and Waldyslaw Kazmierczak, two well
know Polish performace artists, where in the Platform 6 entitled 'Openness'  thay state "Performers from
Central Europe thank politicians and world leading curators for ignoring and  perfect isolation".
I can forward the message, if they allow and you would like to read it.
well, in short,

greetings,
anna balint
7/19/02 3:08:18 PM, Animas999 at aol.com wrote:
>The following message was posted on the syndicate list about undercurrents by
>