JISCMail - NEW-MEDIA-CURATING Archives

Thanks Patricia for the great gathering of several lines running though the feb discussion so 
far and thanks for 
the elaborate posts. . . Maybe this diversity and “thickness” also points to the theme 
discussed, that only a 
poly-vocal approach can grasp any subject?! Rhizomatic. 

There is something I am wondering about though, and it has to do with the understanding of 
an “original” or 
something authentic as being almost something “negative”, something that does not seem to 
fit in our culture 
that constantly claims flows, migration, crossings. 
I am wondering if the “original”, understood as something that also gives ground to some 
degree, that has a 
stable (fixed?!) content, shape, linearity, place, can take on something valuable. \
In times where everything seems FLEETING I am interested in what resists these flows. Is 
there a residual????? 
And what is it?   

I am thinking for example of what Richard Sennet critically described in relation to work and 
labour. The affects 
of nomadic work that always includes a kind of “drifting”, sensation of placelessness and lack 
of a ground. 
I am also thinking about Miwon Kwon’s suggestion of the concept of “difference” that is 
already inscribed in 
capitalism. - Difference as a very product of capitalism.

If the poly-vocal, the mulitlayered, and distribution of a “source” is demanded in 
contemporary culture, and 
conforms perhaps to this idea of difference --- what are its consequences for the archive 
and its discourse?

Patricia suggested that the artefact as a “concept that migrates” has RE-placed the artefact as 
a physical object 
that migrates --- but can it be that the artefact as a physical object has actually been DIS-
placed?

I would like to think about the authentic, for example expressed by the artist’s initial 
intention and per/forming 
of a work, as something that – as residue – certainly does in-form what comes after, or out 
of it. As a practising 
artist I might be concerned that the migratory effect can take over everything. 

It’s still early morning, writing this post on a train, landscape passing by.

verina


PS
In relation to the overall discussion Jacques Ranciere's definition of the "distribution of the 
sensible" might be 
also worthwhile not to forget. having a voice, having no voice. who writes the text, who does 
not write the text. 
who is reading it, who does not read it. . . 





----- Original Message -----
From: Patricia Zimmermann <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, February 25, 2008 7:15 pm
Subject: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Writing about the ephemeral...

> Dear all--
> 
> First, thanks to Beryl for convening all of us to ponder and unpack 
> theidea of "writing about the ephemeral."  Reading over the posts 
> for the
> last month, I am struck by the urgency of this issue as it responds to
> significant shifts in media arts practices, both digital and analog 
> and in
> between that require new theorization, new models. It's a paradigm 
> shiftthat throws all of the old ways of deconstructing media texts 
> into new
> architectures.
> 
> Secondly, in reading through these incredibly insightful and 
> probing posts
> from Beryl, Kristoffer, Verina, Maeve, Jorn, Elena, some patterns are
> emerging for us to consider as historiographic issues, meaning, 
> questionsabout the nature of evidence, the question of abscenes and 
> gaps in
> evidence, the explanatory models invoked, and the epistemological 
> claimsabout how our explanatory models are structured.  
> Ephemerality, in many
> ways, is not new to new media and performance, but is in fact a 
> centralquestions of historiography and archival practices:  as 
> historians, we
> assume all is lost and the central historiographic issue is not so 
> simplyan act of recovery, but also an act of imagination of the 
> possibilities in
> these very absences.
> 
> As Kristoffer notes, Wendy Chun argues that digitality can not so 
> easilybe located as an archival element, but as a degenerative 
> function.  Film
> archives, for example, (just to get concrete for a moment...), 
> assume all
> material is in a constant state of degeneration and decay--the act of
> preservation is not a restoration to an original, but a restoration to
> some kind of public recirculation and exhibition.
> 
> The original can never be found, can never be retrieved, and in 
> fact, what
> is historiographically ethical is to assume that all archival 
> materialswill move forward and take on new lives within new 
> contexts and uses. 
> Therefore, as Kristoffer points outs, the issue of how to consider the
> "generative" and the "opening up of space for thought rather than a
> conclusive statement" is for all intents and purposes the function 
> of the
> archival.  When the archival is configured as a place where what is
> ephemeral becomes reduced to a holy, sanctified object that replicated
> some notion of the "authentic" and the "original", then the disruptive
> potential of the migratory inherent in the ephemeral is amputated. 
> Stasis,fixed objects, fixity, narrativity, conclusive findings--
> these are the
> strategies of confinement.
> 
> So this question of the ephemeral raises significant--and urgent,
> necessary, and compelling--questions of historiography.  Instead of
> thinking of art works, ephemeral media, new media, even films, as 
> fixedobjects, we need to move more towards a notion of the 
> migratory archive,
> where all works are in endless circulation, endlessly moving in and 
> out of
> different social, economic, reception contexts.
> 
> Verina mentioned in one of her posts the idea of "the plurality of
> audiences," and the differences between practitioners, artists, 
> curators,writers, approaching these ephemeral texts. I agree with 
> her, this issues
> of plurality is central--what is a radical intervention now is to 
> refusemonologue, the monological, the fixed, and invoke 
> pluralities.  All of the
> above--practitioners, artists, curators, writers--contribute to this
> migratory zone for ephemeral works.  I think that Ken Friedman 
> raised an
> excellent, consice point in his suggestion that Zen can be helpful in
> thinking about the ephemeral--it is not so much about all is lost and
> fleeting, but that all objects are located in actions, which are 
> part of
> larger flows.
> 
> This question of flows, migrations, movements, recirculations from the
> initial act --whether performance, locative media, live DJ 
> remixing, and
> on and on--can be considered through Kristoffer's points about how new
> media works are often about rerouting on-going information 
> processes.  In
> this context, then, writing about the ephemeral is, in an 
> epistemologicalway, a continuation of this rerouting, and a new 
> pathway into new sets of
> social, economic, political, audience relations, which Maeve has 
> suggestedare necessary to consider.
> 
> This very exciting question of writing the ephemeral dives deep 
> into the
> heart of contemporary debates in critical historiography (writers 
> such as
> Chikrabarty, Ankerschmidt, White, Guha, Berkhoffer).  In these 
> debates,the question for historical writing, which, after all, is 
> behind this
> issue of "writing the ephemeral", is about rejecting linear causality,
> rejecting any notion of the authentic, and questioning whether any
> artifact can be understood without a larger matrix.
> 
> These theorists offer instead a model of historiography--history
> writing--that instead offers ideas of not of non-linearity (which Jorn
> rightly points out is a bit of a misnomer) but of polyvocality and
> polyphony, many voices, many layers, at ones, which are multilinear 
> andspatial.  In place of the "authentic", this school of thought 
> offers the
> idea that the archive and the artifact are always in formation, never
> finalized, never finished, always a linguistic construct that is
> iterative, moving, generative, opening up in its gaps and fissures. 
> And
> in place of the fixity of the artifact, these writers and theorists 
> offerthe idea of sets of relations that are often discounted, as in
> Chakrabarty's invocation of ghosts and dreams as historical forces.
> 
> As Jorn points out, in his writing about the ephemeral for various
> constituencies, description is necessary.  Maeve discusses the 
> texturesand materialities of acoustic, space, journey, design, 
> closeness. Elena
> has described in great detail her wonderful projects.  The thread 
> runningthrough these posts evokes critical ethnography, in the 
> writings of Davd
> MacDougall, Faye Ginsburg, George Marcus, Michael Fisher, Michael 
> Taussig,and going all the way back to Clifford Geertz, is that of 
> thickdescription.  Thus, the thickness and specificity of the 
> descriptionbecomes the next iteration, the next platforms, that the 
> performative can
> move through and on.
> 
> In writing about the ephemeral, those locative media projects, SL
> investigations, DJ works, performance pieces, what we might all be 
> engagedin is a new versioning of critical historiography, where 
> what is an
> artifact is now no longer a physical object, but a concept that 
> migrates,moves, travels--and thus actually forms some new 
> conceptual zones of
> action.
> 
> Patty Zimmermann
> Patricia R. Zimmermann, Ph.D.
> Professor
> Department of Cinema and Photography
> Codirector, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
> Ithaca College
> Ithaca New York 14850 USA
> Phone: 607 274 3431    FAX  607 274 7078
> http://faculty.ithaca.edu/patty/
> http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff
>