A quick reply before I catch up with some more of the email.


I did answer about the book but perhaps I haven't been clear. There is
only one book. I am working on a book tentatively titled Art History
Online and as it pulls at many different strands, I set out to pick at
many of those through out this month and stand back a bit to see what
ideas issues were forthcoming. I hoped this discussion would provide a
parallel for the print-published book when it comes out, allowing those
threads to be more complicated and collaborative than my book. I had
planned to share some sections from the research I've already completed
and written up, but discussion has been so busy I didn't want to
over-burden the list with my writing - perhaps that was the wrong
decision. Certainly colleagues at my new position advised me to allow the
discussion to take a natural course.

More soon...

On 27/10/2013 02:06, "Johannes Birringer"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>dear all
>
>Bronac's observation/comment, quoted in the header, was funny wouldn't
>you agree? 
>and yet after some pondering, I would say this month has been a
>riveting affair, if one observed the outpourings, and much much more than
>a Grateful Dead reunion tour.
>even though there was that, too.
>
>I appreciated learning much, also noting the care with which list members
>tried to remember and fill gaps or point to others, the was a real
>collective spirit amongst the showing of the personal collections.
>
>Then there were some reflective postings that I found tremendously
>thoughtful, for example Johannes Goebel's "what's art history got to do
>with it?"
>on October 10; and Tom Sherman's "Way Back in 1995!" on October 20; but
>also the critical feedback regarding differences between
>art critics, historians and theorists was very helpful - and here someone
>[Simon Biggs I think] evoked the problematic idea that new media
>artists/digital artist best write their [own] histories
>themselves or have in effect done so, well, in extension, also curated
>themselves - and then written/indexed their exhibition histories ......?
>­  
>and undoubtedly there is or has to be a link to the academy, then, and to
>places where we teach or get invited to show our work, or where requests
>may come from
>regarding our work that someone is studying as if we were already
>gratefully dead etc , and then Simon Biggs added some provocative
>comments on the conservativism of university
>art schools or art history departments or organizations (the CAA was
>mentioned a few times).
>
>Trying to look back at the "crowd-sourcing" idea behind Charlotte's "call
>for papers" this month, there are still some open questions to me (about
>Charlotte's TWO books/Arts Future Book project, which, as I had asked
>her, seemed already written-to-be-published after peer review  to be
>accompanied by a second book to be peer reviewed?  and so the Crumb
>discussion this month, how does it effectively become the second "book",
>while the very notion of book is questioned here directly using a list
>for research/writing.... ,  and what are these here collection-energies
>now manifesting, at this point?  Charlotte also mentions a list
>archivisation project as a third meta thing!  [a propos, a mentioning of
>Jon Ippolito and "Unreliable Archivist project"  - i think most archives
>are unreliable, and I love the scene in "Rollerball" where John Gielgud
>as keeper of the world's centralised computer memory bank in Switzerland
>has to confess that a slight mistake had happened and the 13th century
>got deleted).
>
>también I observed the net that was thrown by Charlotte was getting wider
>and wider and maybe
>this widening of practices, on and off line, and 'histories' (language
>stubbornly remainng english, strangely, and perimeter was USA-Europe
>largely,  I saw no posting from colleagues in Japan and S Korea for
>example, surprisingly, also very few or no reference to new media art
>history and online action in Brazil and Latin America) , is most likely
>uncontainable and unwritable.
>
>I propose this proposition (this month) cannot go anywhere except into
>countless fragmenting alleys and stories, re/collections and myths,
>incomplete just as other older "art history" ever was [whose art history?
> whose "repressed exhibition histories," to cite Beryl's comment of Oct.
>16], western, european? published in whose service?  Thanks to Sally Jane
>for mentioning some others, like the "non-cultural" world..]
>
>At one point Honor Harger says that a list (Syndicate) changed her life,
>which is an astonishing comment (and one that I could never make);  after
>noting that people have migrated to other lists or social media, Honor
>bemoans the
>discursive quality that's missing ("I think that's probably as much down
>to the way  that people's behaviour on mailing lists have changed, in the
>wake of social media" -  interesting, can you please say more about that?
>my behavior hasn't changed at all, I hope)
>
>Charlotte brings Renee McGarry's letter forward, and Renee bluntly says:
>"When I think about digital art history I'm left with a lot more
>questions than answers....".
>
>Yes, that is also the case for me.
>
>When Charlotte added questions ("what's art history got to do with it?")
>and then half way through the month again, more questions  ("Half-time
>discussion refresher"), I did think they were often of course to the
>point and well asked, such as the point about who is writing art
>criticism today (and where)["Anyone can take on the role of the critic in
>our digital age, with online art journals, blogs and other sites," Lori
>Waxman thinks) or who are the historians/forensicfactfinders (and, thanks
>Rob, why not more wheel sharers?).... but ultimately now I felt the month
>was overwhelmingly dislocating, we were turned to very many directions,
>and the debate about critics/bloggers not able to be critical of work
>created in their community is disheartening. Charlotte, had we seen your
>book we could have been more critical here.
>
>I also sensed a tremendous sense of melancholia.
>
>How do others feel about it?
>
>respectfully
>Johannes Birringer
>DAP-Lab
>http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap
>
>
>[Goebel schreibt]
>>>
>What could be a positive consequence for us little people (the ones
>without power to port what we discovered) out of this? Liberation from
>creating our own monuments and making and living time-based arts which are
>only good for the moment when they are happening. (So now we are thinking
>performing email lists!)
>>>