dear all

thanks for these last round of postings, and Roddy welcoming us (i hope also without self/introductions)..... 
and 
I had a question about (for those who may know little or nothing about Monsieur Filliou and won't have time to read all the links provided here earlier) 
what "eternal network" means for you now, and how you use the term,
are you addressing forms of organization? what Ken called method to "build, develop, and maintain networks"?

how is this connected to the "network" as we use term regarding online communications/platforms/exchanges?  
how different are these two frameworks or where do they overlap? the attention to detail (gender; generational? the racial
relations were not addressed) intrigued me, and actually Barnaby's commentary astonished me -
Barnaby i think you are the first person here on the list to mention children, 

>>
needs of young children - sometimes this imposes a certain, shall we say, division of labour.
Its great to imagine child rearing as a fluid part of creative adult lives - and sometimes it is - but in my experience, children need their own space(s), attention, routine, peer groups. And equally the demands of a project can exclude children. Consequently, domestic creative partnerships have to decide how to share parental/artistic duties.>>

this is so very true and so seldom admitted and discussed.


Ken then suggests:

>>most of the projects, networks, and systems that artists try to build fail. I wanted to know why, and how to do better. This led me to questions in human behavior, sociology, and economics. I found general history and world history useful in examining how people have addressed different kinds of issues at other times and places.>>

nothing could be further from the truth i think, it surprises me really that
you claim this overwhelming failure, Ken, which is historically not accurate at all I'd think. 
(well, maybe i should speak from my perspective: most of the projects and networks that i tried to help build and sustain did work,
and even if there are adaptations and modifications needed, they can be accomplished). I am sure many here know examples of oraganizational networks
that worked. 

 What did you have in mind, Ken? what projects, networks and systems?

Finally, nice to hear from Randall Packer here; I also participated in Open Source Studio (OSS) with Mark, Ruth and others, but when I tried to contact afterwards
and test what you posted: << everything can be preserved (ideally): every post, discussion, comment, reply, etc. In OSS, we used a Wordpress site to aggregate discussion, research, and production. What is particularly powerful about this in terms of the network, is that everything is indexible>> 
I didn't hear back and could not follow up some traces i had become interested in.  

So it's good to learn that everything is logged and captured.

Now, how do you "curate" all this data on the clouds of the "network,"   how is it sustainable and preservable, and how is it actually used if so?
how is the data of documentation use, and I mean use value in Brechtian terms?  where does it go?    

Where did Fluxus go? 

What is a ?Mickeymaushaus?



respectfully
Johannes Birringer



[Roddy schreibt]

I’m finding the directions the discussion is taking to be revelatory and illuminating. Thank you Johannes for adding to the debate. I have much to add myself but am taking a little while personally to piece together a response.
{...

Welcome, Gary and Geert and thank you Craig for introductions.

Geert raised an interesting point in an off-list email – as others have in as many words – that ‘art’ may not be a personal area of expertise and so one might wonder how to make a meaningful contribution. My view on this is that curating ought to be an interdisciplinary creative practice and research methodology drawing on collaboration and observation from different perspectives, experiences and bodies of knowledge. I think this will be the only way to find ways to curate ‘The Eternal Network’ after globalisation.

My ambition with this current research is to create a situation in which network technologists, media theorists, artists, activists  and curators approach this discourse from their overlapping, partial perspectives. Again this brings me back to Filliou’s view that whenever ‘we are turning our attention to something that we do not know - we are doing research.’ It is our gaps in knowledge – sometimes unbridgeable - that inspire us to find out about how we are in ours and others' worlds. Let’s participate on the grounds of what we do not know and co-produce new formations in response!