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From: anna balint <abalint at merz.hu>
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 19:26:18 +0200
Subject: after the 'end' of syndicate, long live syndicate

Dear Andreas Broeckmann,

thank you to call attention on syndicate, it is a list where 
hundreds of net art projects, invitation of participation 
were announced, projects were documented, where interaction
of audience-initator, individual-collective 
can take place unmediated, and without control, 
and specially without the control of a mediator hostile 
to certain identities or attitudes, or a certain kind of art.
It is the list where report, comments, theory, 
carnival culture, irony, announcements, just a note that 
'i am here, i am doing this' is equally allowed and welcome. 
There are very many moments of a live list
not dedicated to announcements only, that it is a pleasure
to remember, just to name a few: the Balettikka internettika
project of Igor Stromajer, the mailing list junk texts'
setting to music by Clement Thomas, the ever changing and
allways challenging site plein-peau site of Frederic Madre,
the 1001 mails in one night by Jodi, all the projects
of Auriea Harvey - one of the most precious artistic presence
on the net -, the ZNC browser, the white spam project, or the
song recognition competion of Peter Luining, or the excellent
work of meta, another net artist previsouly known from nettime,
and many more. 
I could even mention as a certain _fun_ the 'Notes on Sovereign Media' 
by Geert Lovink pointing to independent media not submitted to
the expectations of an audience, published on syndicate in 2002.  
And yes. Netochka Nezvanova is also on syndicate.
Once, when NN claimed that 'Peter Luining is afraid', 
Peter replied with 'Yes. But who would be not afraid
knowing that NN is only at 1027 steps distance from home?'
Paraphrasing Peters word, who would be not afraid to subscribe
to syndicate where Netochka is also present? Well, we are quite many.

Besides fun, syndicate also tries cover major events in new media
art in Europe, encourages research in this field, and not just research
and curation, but the production of media art,and experiences related
to a mailing list. Besides circulating the initiatives of institutions, 
it is meant to give room to individuals and small collectives related to  
new media as well.


>ps: for the record: the referenced list is _not_ the former Syndicate
>list which the 'western korporat fascists' inke arns and myself ran,
>but one that was started when the old list was brought down by free
>minds like anna in 2001.

>(it is _very funny_ for me that anna still believes that netochka
>nezvanova is an east european artist - long live the cyborg!)

Something about this record...

Initally, neither me, neither any moderator or animator
of the syndicate list wanted to engage in any cross-lists war, or fight,
not even when you and Inke Arns stated the 'end of the syndicate list'
and you described the curator-artist relationship with the analogy of a
blessing hand - biting the hand by the artist, which i found quite disturbing.
But neither i like to stand your accusation of killing the syndicate list,
and bring it this way again to public attention. 
Neither me, nor NN deserves to be a scape-goat, a pharmakon, a medicine 
(scape-goat in old Greek) for the decline of the list and the way you have 
left it down.
Fact is the the syndicate list lost a consistent amount of its relevance
together with the change of the policy of the Soros network. Less support,
less money, less interest went together hand in hand. 
Syndicate was a mailing list that discussed art, new media art, cultural identities, 
and policy, East and West artistic contacts after the fall of the Berlin
Wall. Started as the 'East' initiative of the V2 in the Netherlands - a concept that got
contested immedietaly by the ironical proposal of Ljudmila 'West' in Slovenia - and
based on the hope to skip the central control of information by 
post-communist conservative institutions and old fashioned curators, 
syndicate became a channel of exchange, and a series of projects supported 
financially mainly by Eastern institutions. The list  circulated not only 
the pioneering net.art works, but described and promoted cultural 
initatives in Eastern Europe, views of nem media, it and it also became a 
communication bridge between even between people at many sides of the Yugoslav war. 
It strongly relied on the alternative scene in East Europe, on the Next Five Minutes
conference series, and the irregular meetings at different major new media
art events. Technology seemed to serve both Eastern and Western
new media criticism and art, and the mailing list became also a 
tool of promotion  of social initiatives as well besides arts.

I don't plan in any sense to get involved in the NN-Andreas Broeckmann conflict,
started when Netochka Nezvanova won the first prize in the software art category
at transmediale 01, and I don't feel motivated in any way to oppose opinions
like Karoly Toth's.

Nor i am willing to defend somewhat NN, nor to specially engage
in discussion on NN. I agreed with NN that i don't write about her, nor we
collaborate in any sense, though s/he is definitively an interesting subject,
and author.
I just insist that - opposite to Tilman Baumgärtel's opinion - one might see 
NN not just as he convergence in one online identity of different people as 
a reverse project, preceded by the postmodern game of the splitting of one 
person into diverse online identities. On the contrary,  
NN is much more the mediatised version of multiple identities, 
a phenomena of the avant-garde art known world-wide long before any 
online use of it.
Syndicate, and nettime also seemed to support previously these kind
of multiple identites, and partially these lists also grounded their 
reputation and establishment exactly on multiple names projects 
going all back more exactly to 1976, to the first meeting of David 
Zack and Monty Canstin in Budapest.

Besides that NN appeared on numerous mailinglist with French, English,
German text fragments (languages that almost all East European know), 
even if s/he is not alone, or s/he is a constructed identity,
s/he says that s/he is Romanian. S/he speaks Romanian also (a language
that West Europeans rarely speak),  s/he continuously brings up Romanian, 
and 'Ost Europa' cultural references, and explores East European 
identities and attitudes all the time. If s/he is a multiple identity, 
s/he is an East European one, that is something that certainly should get 
room on a mailing list dedicated to East-West artistic relationships, 
no matter how controversial her projects are.
NN is not only known for the Nato software (a software that for instance 
i don't even know), but for codeworks, for his/her inquiry about public 
and private mails, understanding of gender, identity, list culture, 
language and corporate actions in the field of new media, ASCII art, 
and more. S/he is not quiet at all, and many lists, specially those 
are related to new media art, prefer to coop with her, and i don't know
about any case where she was unsubsribed from a list without warning
the community. 


Together with appearing of new groups, new projects, new issues and new forms 
on the internet, syndicate gradually lost importance 
and relevance already in 2000. (NN said that the list was suffocated by 
the art maffia). What happened in terms of facts in 2001, was that
the moderators have suddenly unsubscribed NN from syndicate, and when 
list member asked where N.N. was, the moderators admitted the unsubscription. 
After further questions, they resubscribed NN, and without any attempt 
to regulate the list, by means of administration, moderation, mediation, discussion 
or whatever, they left the list. One day there were moderators, the next one there 
were no longer moderators. They handed the list over to people willing to continue 
it. Or that was the appearance. 

The people willing to continue an unmoderated version of syndicate,
never got the password to the listserv, and any use of the list's 
infrastructure was denied. Andreas Broackmann asked finally to restart 
everything on a new server, instead of using the old ones.
So it happened. Syndicate is now generously supported by Anart in Norway,
and running under the sympa software.

Without wishing the same faith for nettime, to give an analogý:
if one would take the 'difficult task, time and energy' 
and would open a nettime bold, as it seems to be encouraged, 
first the access to the mails and server would be denied, 
the moderators would disappear, and the next month there 
would be a good chance that Andreas Broeckmann 
would accuse nettime bolders with 'you killed nettime'. 


Andreas Broeckmann opened a new, moderated list, and out of the 504 subsribers
on the syndicate, 132 left for the new list together with Andreas, and 372 stayed. 
In the light of these figures, there is no ground to question the continuity of the
syndicate list. Ever since than, syndicate stays unmoderated on the 
consensus of self-moderation and filtering individually on the part of the
subsribers, as proposed by Amy Alexander in August 2001.
The list is interesting enough for 400 subsribers, and i have to state 
that the information overload did not break the group's cohesion either.
We still hope at least peaceful coexistence with other lists, and without
counter propaganda on the expense of syndicate.

One of the most sharp discussions between me and Andreas Broeckmann was 
about the syndicate archives. Knowing that every year 70% of the information 
on the internet disappears, knowing that if some information survived 
thousands years, that was due to the multiplicity of information supply, 
and to due to the fact that accessing large audience was possible by writing, 
printing the data in as many copies as possible, and seeing that nowadays 
everyone has access to information put on a single server, seeing also
for instance that the archives of the Next Five Minutes, or the
disapperenace of the Orange Open Audio Archives was erased, i wanted to ensure 
the preservation of the syndicate archives, and not just only on server in
West Europe.

Since syndicate was part of the East European collective memory, 
documenting projects, discussions between 1995-2001, 
i argued for a distributive archives that all the 500 subribers 
should have been provided with.
Andreas Broeckamnn refused to deal completely with this question, and...
somewhere in 2002 a considerable part of the syndicate archives - the 
period between February 2001-August 2001 -, documenting exactly also 
Netochka Nezvanova's mails and her questionning the authority of the 
moderators -, vanished. It just disappered.

Looking from another perspective, Syndicate was not alone to promote and support
East European art's in the entire European culture, but this issue there are still 
task to accomplish, there are promotion tasks of critical new
media culture as well, and this is something that Andreas Broeckmann might not have keep
in account when he left syndicate.
Manifesta was the first mainstream major art event that included East European 
artist in an international event, but Manifesta concentrates and promotes young artists
only. Thee research about major artistic works, alternative culture, new media art and 
their preservation the former East European block, and its inclusion in the European 
history of arts still continues to be a task.
Documenta 11, if it was a great and challenging exhibition presenting 
arts engagement with social issues world wide, and sporadically presented 
excellent artists from East Europe as well, it failed to give a retrospective 
view on the cold war from East European perspective, or to give a general
view on the last ten years in East Europe, and to report on major 
conflicts in that region, about the war in Chechnia, or still existing communist 
regimes in the former Soviet Union for instance.


There were objections about this issue also pronounced on syndicate, 
check it out, really, 
at www.anart.no/~syndicate


greetings,
Anna Balint


2003.06.02. 9:21:53, Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck at transmediale.de> wrote:

>folks,
>
>it is worth checking out the list that anna balint and others 
>maintain to get an idea of what kind of list she has in mind when 
>putting forward her criticism to nettime:
 <...>

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