re>Codeworks: Netzkunst an der Grenze von Sprache und...

[Anna Balint]

Dou you remember the windows 95 OS? It would be too easy to say 
that seeing through it is like a time machine. But it is not a time 
machine, because it is now when I see now though win 95. In fact it is 
much about not seeing, in the first place. It would be too easy too say 
that many things, such as .mp3 files,  certain web pages, .htmls, flash, 
java, streamings  are not visible. Even saying these materials  simply 
do not exist is not exact enough. 
Only looking up kunstradio’s page it becomes clear that seeing through 
win95 is precisely an oulipian contrainte, more exactly a certain oulipian 
contrainte: a sometimes respected constrainment known in the oulipian 
terminology as the Beautiful Absent (Le Belle Absente). When you look 
at the codeworks page of the kunstradio transmission through win95, it 
is completely useless to imagine what the radio transmission was like, 
just as for the kunstradio it is completely useless to think about what 
the gymnasiopoetry (the visual poetry interpreted as gymnastics) of 
Arriga Lora-Totino would be like in a kunstradio transmission, since that 
is a codework that probably cannot be compressed in .mp3 format. If 
one would be so naive to presume that suggesting that win95 displays 
the Beautiful Absent is an anachronism, i have nothing to do but remind 
that superficial person  that OuLiPo defined the notion of anticipated 
plagiarism longtime before Bill Gates started his elementary studies. It 
must be a pure coincidence that seen through win95 from kunstradio’s 
codeworks page the codeworks, and the radio transmission is missing, 
all what is there is an oulipian link. 
One has not to be  an initiated OuLiPo expert to understand that there 
might be a huge difference between an OuLiPo link and an oulipian link. 
As a simple explanation i go to a single well known refererence. Some 
people might remember netochka nezvanova, and  her way to deal 
with humans. I remember her as a very friendly person, compared to 
Jacques Rubaud, a member of OuLiPo, who say that his mizantrophy is 
modest compared to his Raymond Quenau’s,  from whom he learned 
how to become  a mizanthrope. Perhaps it’s because of this declared 
mizantrophy that I suspect that nn’s pages were easy to access 
compared to the oulipian texts, and some premonitive feeling make me 
suppose that an oulipian link might expose pseudo-oulipian principles. 
But who is Raymond Quenaeu? According to the second tome of the 
OuLiPian Library (La Bibliotheque oulipenne précédé par des Deux 
Manifestes de Francois Le Lionnais. Volume II) Raymond Queneau is a 
member of OuLiPo. Also the oulipian webpage mentions Raymond 
Queneau as a member of OuLiPo. Some principles of the organisation of 
the OuLiPo community mention that none can be excluded from the 
OuLiPo, and nobody can suspend his or her OuLiPo membership. If one 
ever was a member of OuLiPo, he or she will be an OuLiPo member 
forever. There is only one exception to ameliorate the severe 
constarinment of the OuLiPo membership, only one circumstance that 
makes possible to break with the OuLiPo membership: the suicide. But 
even suicide releases one from the OuLiPo membership only  if an 
OuLiPo member declares in front of an attesting notary that the 
oulipian suicid person decided to commit suicide, s/he is  firm to  leave 
OuLiPo by sucide, and s/he definitively plans to conquere his freedom 
and independence of OuLiPo for the rest of the eternity. Knowing the 
strictness of the OuLipo membership, I don’t want to say anything 
about the equivalence of the list of the members of OuLiPo published 
on the oulipian webpage and the list of the members of OuLiPo 
published in the vol. 2 of the Oulipian Library, followed by the remarque 
saying that the number of the members of OuLiPo is a Queneau-nian 
number. 
That the Manifesto of Francois Le Lionnais was withdrawn from the 
oulipian webpage, might be an usual oulipian hazard. But there is a 
secondary thing  that I can’t deny that I have no doubts about. 
Knowing that one has to present a VALID reason in order to disturb the 
members of OuLiPo, I have to admit that I have no questions related to 
congruency of the text of the premier LIPO manifesto published on the 
oulipian webpage and the premier LIPO manifesto published in the 
oulipian Library (Bibliotheque, 1987, IV). 
Of course, the classification of the OuLiPo works is  exact, clear and 
simple, though of course this is not the only classification of such kind. I 
am particularily glad that  S + 7 is part of the list - this is one of my 
favorite lescures, i would  practice it even if it would be not part of this 
Queneleieff table. 
I know it might be somehow surprising my non-reaction to a 
transmission of the Kunstradio in February 2005. My only excuse for the 
non-action was  the inspiration given by a perhaps too rarely quoted 
oulipian reference, written once perhaps with a vague intention to carry 
on polemics with Lenin: “What to do?  - Nothing. “