Hi List

As a quick follow on to Verina's perceptive reflections on Re:place, I just want
to contribute some observations of my own of what was, overall, a very
successful and useful conference.

Firstly, Verina pinpoints the formatting of the event as an issue worth
considering. One of the things that struck me was the structure of the
conference, following as it did an extremely scholarly format. By this I mean
that most of the papers were academic in their conception: they reflected the
narrow and deep research of what is a very standard academic approach. Not
surprisingly they were often either the outcome of PhD research or of ‘senior
level’ academics. This isn’t a criticism at all – some wonderful research into
media histories was revealed and some glorious golden nuggets presented [my
favourites are below]. But it did mean that less conventionally scholarly
presentations either weren’t apparent or were scheduled around the edges, such
as at poster presentations. So for example, I didn’t hear any papers that were
general reflections on broad themes areas of creative practice, or musings upon
issues of experimental methodology involved in practice or in study. But in
comparison I did hear two (fascinating) highly detailed papers on a cultural/
philosophical writer living in Brazil in the post-war period.

Where the issue of format become pertinent for me is that one of the points that
repeatedly arose in conversation was about the role of the artist (and sometimes
of the curator) in articulating histories. Sometimes through self reflection,
sometimes through the way they re-invent themselves and their own work. In
other words constant exploration and re-appraisal through practice. But this
kind of conference format doesn’t have much space for that kind of practice
based work, or for reflections that come out of practice. I think that’s
unfortunate because real energy lies in that sort of presentation.

There was some of this at the borders of the conference, however (and one of the
reasons why I really liked the event was because there was such a huge amount
going on that was not only planned but also opportunistic or co-incidental).
Ernest Edmonds, for example gave a presentation at an ‘artists’ salon’ where he
reflected on the history of his practice, and his reactive sound/image works,
within the tradition of constructivist painting. Another example as
demonstrated through curation, was a huge exhibition at the Martin Gropius
House ‘From Spark to Pixel’ curated by Richard Castelli. It drew together an
extraordinary range of large–scale installations all of which used, or played
with, light in different forms; it wasn’t historicised but was partly
structured around technologies – which sometimes I found annoyingly reductive
but that’s a small bugbear. (Its worth checking out this exhibition – the
overview is at http://www.gropiusbau.de/ and there is a PDF educational guide
at www.berlinerfestspiele.de/media/en/
2007/gropiusbau/downloads/mgb_07_pressemappe_funken.pdf . The catalogue also
looked sumptuous but I don’t read German.)

My (personal choice of) golden nuggets includes:
~ Wendy Hui Kyong Chun talking about the difference between storage and memory
and why our culture belies the importance of degeneration but without it memory
cannot operate; that memory is ephemeral and that computing is grounded in
erasure not in permanence.
~ Jussi Paikka talking about the way that insect biology and behaviour has been
used a an analogy for technology and the similarity between entomological and
technological discourses; how accidents are often seen as part of the insect
evolutionary process but in technology are more often seen as a ‘glitch’ in the
system.
~ Antony Hudek (and this was a paper particularly appropriate for CUMB list-ers)
on an exhibition co-curated at the Pompidou Centre in 1985 by Lyotard which
looked at the effect of new technology and the information society on the human
spirit. The exhibition has become a footnote in media arts history and in
Lyotard’s output. The paper and following discussion covered issues such as the
role of curator in this context - when the curator is making a philosophical
enquiry through the form of an exhibition; what gets written up – or forgotten
- within different historical contexts; the role of the curator as a ‘rational’
investigator; the role of experimentation within exhibitions.

If anyone is interested in following up on any of these, the abstracts are all
online at http://mediaarthistory.org/ and are impressively comprehensive.

A last observation is that Andreas Broeckman, as conference convenor, made it
very clear, as he had on a posting to this list, that the conference had an
extra comma: it was about the “histories of media COMMA art, science and
technology”. At first I thought, ‘fair enough; broadening the frame of
reference can only be useful’. But after the conference I changed my mind. The
sector duth protest too much. Essentially the community that was present was
there for a specific reason: that it was concerned with developing the
discourse around an emergent practice. Of course media arts operates within the
context of broader debates and with interdisciplinary approaches, no-one
disputes that. But I am constantly bemused by the determination of emergent
practices (in the arts at any rate) to eat themselves at birth and to deny
their own presence.

Lastly, I cant think of a better or more apposite location for a conference that
dealt with the way that histories can be written than Berlin. From the finger
trace through the streets along the line of the former Berlin Wall, to urban
planning statement of Potsdammer Platz, to the Leibskind design of the Jewish
Museum with its ‘central voids, I don’t think I have ever been to a city where
the history is performed by and for the inhabitant quite as much. It was the
perfect demonstration for the conference that histories can be lived out as
well as academicised.

Peter Ride
Centre for Arts Research, Technology and Education, University of Westminster,
& DA2


Quoting Verina Gfader <[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear List
>
> A few notes post re:place, Berlin, reflecting on what I experienced
> there as an audience and what has stimulated my interest to explore with
> other members of the list and hopefully participants at re:place. Having
> had some inspiring days in Berlin I am happy to be back to London,
> despite the rain and usual chaos, hoping to share and also exchange some
> critical thoughts around some issues that emerged there... One of the main
> things that I think was interesting and would be great to explore
> further on the list were questions around how to initiate a space for
> "formatting an event" ? And in what way is the theme of a conference
> reflected in its format, e.g. "the histories/media - question. Which to
> me seemed rather dis-placed during the last few days in Berlin.
> Alternative ways of addressing what informs current debates (both in
> theory and practice) seemed to underlie, ex- and implicitly, several of
> the discussions.
>
> To open out my post with a reference to panel 8: Russia / Soviet Union
> and the introduction by Inke Arns who also moderated this panel: it is
> particularly interesting to me to think the dynamics at play in work
> when it consists of "non-realised aspects" (the non-realised aspects are
> the work)' there is a force described by Inke in her talk as something
> that constitutes itself "against a 'completed materiality'". Alongside
> this thinking the work describes a potential, and it articulates an
> envision what it not becomes.
>
> Several different "happenings" contribute to these questions and
> thoughts about im/possible histories:
> _ Connecting time structures in a more concrete way to how an exhibition
> works with documents, but also possibly as a document. When I visited
> the 9 evenings reconsidered: art, theatre, and engineering, 1966
> exhibition at tesla I was surprised how the format of presenting
> (pre-serving? or re-enacting?) a certain event in art that took place in
> 1966, operated in some cases as a process itself. On the TV monitors the
> films of the performances that took place, the documentation material,
> was divided into audio and visual which allowed one to perceive each
> channel individually but also to re-construct the "complete experience"
> in a rather 'new' way/.
> Is "pre-serving" obsolete and substituted by "re-enacting"?
> _ Previously I had visited KW, institute for contemporary art Berlin,
> which just opened the exhibition "History will repeat itself. Strategien
> des reenactment in der zeitgenoessischen Kunst" with work such as
> Greenwich Degree Zero by Rod Dickinson and Tom McCarthy, or The Third
> Memory by Pierre Huyghe.
>
> As an artist and reseacher working with and on the theme of animation I
> am interested in questions of time-structures both inherent in specific
> works (ephemeral, performative, discreet objects) as well as how such
> time-structures enable different modes of perception (e.g. in an
> exhibition space, on/offline, in a shop, a home, on variable screens
> placed on different sites (conference room; personal computers)) and,
> most importantly, enable its own discursivity.
>
> Does one need an experimental form of presentation in order to produce
> migrational knowledge, knowledge that "moves form one place to another"?
> What is a successful format of an event (exhibition, conference, seminar
> and so on)? What experiences did the visitors have encountering
> "time-economies" in re:place and the exhibitions at tesla and KW?
>
> Some thoughts on a monday afternoon.
>
> Verina
>
> CRUMB web resource for new media art curators
> http://www.crumbweb.org
>
>