[syndicate] Subject: Re: From:

[Neoposthypebuster]

On s'en tape de l'admimistration.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fr. M." <fmadre at free.fr>
To: <syndicate at anart.no>
Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 11:05 PM
Subject: [syndicate] Subject: Re: From:


> To: ?
>
> It has come to my attention that some posts are collated on the Nettime
> mailing list under the monicker of "Unstable Digest", well yes I admit
that
> i've been aware of this because Netochka objected to it a while ago but
> then again I am not subscribed to nettime and have stopped looking at the
> archives years ago too.
>
> Still I have several objections to make which are not aimed at
> discontinuing this service that Florian, Beatrice and Alan are providing
to
> the Nettime community but rather would hopefully lead to explain how some
> of those objections can benefit _our communities instead. This is namely
> why I choose the Syndicate list to voice my concerns, because it is
> currently one of my preferred out/inlet and is where I see that this
debate
> can be fruitful; also because some (most ?) of the thruput to the UD comes
> from Syndicate, our list.
>
> First, here's an example of this UD:
> http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0301/msg00086.html
>
> Of course, in this particular edition there is a post by me, in response
to
> August Highland cross posting twice a day here as you might remember. I
> chose this example because I specially want to point out that I am not
> opposing redistribution of mail even in this case where no permission is
> asked to the original sender of the message. After all, as far as I know,
> they have been published on mailing-lists for all subscribers to see and
> some of those MLs have archives which can be accessed w/o subscription.
> This could lead us into a probably more tiring than tired debate about
> private vs. public and I expect the Unstablists to have thought long and
> hard about those issues in relation to their digestion and regurgitation
> over Nettime.
>
> As I believe they have thought long and hard about the way their
production
> (for it is theirs and only theirs ultimately) is formatted. For this is my
> main theoretical gripe about UD and frankly when I noticed this it gave me
> an irresistible _physical pain in the thorax: the posts chosen for
whatever
> reason they were chosen by our determined and relentless readers have been
> stripped off the "To:" header. The only remaining "To:" being, of course,
> not "us" but the nettime mailing list - in this case, again this is not
> about or against nettime this is about understanding, yup, email . Because
> what remains of an email which has been sent "To:" no one ? Even Nettime
is
> aware that spammers are in the business of pretending to send personalized
> one-to-one communications
> http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0301/msg00146.html
> so what to make of this deliberate castration ? I do not claim to know
what
> was the  purpose of this decision but can put forward two interpretations
> for it and will let the perpetrators answer (because those are merely
> questions), if they wish to do so, "To: syndicate at anart.no"
>
> One is that the Unstable Digest is a piece of artwork in itself, a collage
> which like all collages is not the mere sum of its parts but subsumes
them.
> Which leads to the fact that the actual makers of the artpiece are not the
> expeditors of the "original" mails but the collagists themselves; in
> that  frame of mind the "From:" header should have been removed as well
and
> this is not the case; The UD is not a piece of artwork, a collage, it is a
> Digest but a digest which is very different in nature to all the moderated
> digests that make  their way to Nettime; it is a digest of posts that were
> not  sent "To:" Nettime but elsewhere, a digest of posts that  would (I
> suspect that policy over there has not changed a  lot) have been rejected
> if sent directly, or cross-posted to,  the list. It is a digest of the
> foreign. Unlike Netochka's messages which are in fact very much collagist
> taking bits and pieces of mail received privately and publicly and turning
> them into something new, all the same highlighting that communication by
> email is always a collage.
>
> so, if it is not a piece, not a collage, this digest is what it seems at
> first a collection of pieces that use the email medium as a genre within
> art and also some other pieces which are reflections on that genre, hence
> the inclusion of my post, perhaps. And this is where the exclusion of the
> "To:" appears to me to be at best a failure and at worst a dangerous
> decision which would encourage unthoughtful misuse of mailing lists as
> springboard for abusive promotion instead of communities. A failure,
first,
> because an important aspect of mail - and it is somewhat sad to have to
> state the obvious - lies in the context where they are bred and of course
> much of this context is made of who you are talking to, or at least with.
A
> mail with no recipient, no "To:", is a void. It is a sheep that is lost
and
> will be eaten whole by the preying wolf that grabs it and adds his own
> "To:" making it entirely his own. A dangerous decision because it indeed
> validates the degrading practice of cross posting, a practice that many of
> the specialists of the genre we are adressing here have adopted,
> shamelessly trampling over the context that we are trying to build here,
by
> assuming that all the oulets they use is ultimately the same: a certain
> number of subscribers, an audience that adds up numerically.
>
> In fact, after that particular email to august on the list, we tried to
> discuss this offlist and at some point august asked me what posting
> something specific to syndicate would be.  Well, I would say that this is
> mostly very fragile and intangible, that this is something we will always
> be trying to define by not constricting it, and that this fragility we
will
> try to protect and also cherish, that this specificity will not be
digested
> or cross posted to hell.
>
> ok, I'm sick and tired, physically again as well. You can always write
back
> to me on this, I'm on syndicate.
>
> f.