It has indeed been very US-Euro centric and I had really hoped to get some
other experiences into the mix but I've failed. All throughout the month
(and for months before hand) I've been contacting people explaining the
list discussion and some of my aims and offering them low-maintenance ways
of contributing (for example rather than subscribing to the list, emailing
me an account that could be passed on with me directing questions back to
them as they arise). This has worked for many, but many more haven't had
time to contribute or, as is the nature of this type of research, I
haven't known who the right people are to contact them in the first place.
However, what I have heard, which is kind of exciting, is that there's
been lots of off-list conversation (as you mention below at Riga) and I
have had quite a few people write to me privately to inform me of the
types of discussions they've been having. I guess in that sense a
distributed and quite oral history has been articulated again and that
will have value in itself - whether all of it is written down or not.
Charlotte
On 27/10/2013 03:12, "bronac ferran" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Thanks Johannes. Glad to have been amusing! When in Riga for the Media Art
>History conference Giselle Beiguelman did say to me that she had also
>found
>it an amusing comment and also, more seriously, she did also feel the
>discussion on this list had been very US-Euro centric. I do hope she might
>be reading this and in the midst of her very busy schedule perhaps
>comment.
>
>I did find your mini-synthesis - below - very good to read. My own
>response
>has veered from happiness to read about things which have not yet been
>digested by historical processes of analysis and interpretation and some
>concern that by biting into the offered apple those very undigested,
>valuable, narratives might end up centralised and possessed in some
>privately owned academic vault, having been lured in by responding to a
>call for sharing and openness. This might seem cynical but I've been very
>much reminded of a parallel development, in 1995-1996, when i started
>working as Senior Live Art Officer at Arts Council England and one of the
>projects I inherited from my predecessor was called the National Live Art
>Archive initiative. It had involved a verbal agreement by ACE to hand over
>its archive about live and performance art - including many valuable
>documentary videos and ephemera built up over some decades and deposited
>with ACE in the expectation that they might remain there - to one
>university, which had promised to 'digitise' the database thus showing
>initiative and gain institutional leadership in a yet to be fully
>academised field. They would receive the material without payment but
>would offer zealous enthusiasm (genuine) and commitment to building the
>technical systems. They wiuld make the material to other researchers of
>course; they wished to simultaneously start to collect actual material
>collections (live and performance art being then also at the fragmented,
>boxes in various attics, not sure if its got value) or, if you like, vinyl
>record stage.
>
>The challenge for ACE was to prepare a policy framework and in the end a
>legal agreeent which would protect this distributed collection from future
>changes, ie becoming in any sense inaccessible to others - and most
>importantly not surrendering responsibility of 'ownership' to the most
>fast
>moving institution staking a claim to (in a sense) look after it. So legal
>agreements were signed allowing ACE to take the archive back at any point
>-
>but immediately it became clear that having, for eg, digitised the data
>around it, the organisation digitising it, doing the input, now had rights
>over it. I am mentioning this by way of analogy: live art is even more
>prone to time-detrimental-erasure than online lists are, much remains in
>distributed social memory, there is no repeatable source code. In the
>event, we began a publishing initiative called The Vanishing History of
>Peformance Art offering small grants to various distributed mico and
>otherwise live art archives to avoid what I saw as a death-trap, of
>monopoly by one institution. In the end, Nottingham Trent, which also ran
>the Live Art List, passed on its repositories to another university, which
>continues to conserve and use it today though the list has passed away.
>
>With apologies for not being as brief here as usual, I guess my linking
>thought is (and I am interested in other views) that it is magnificent
>that
>Charlotte's action here has flushed out of the depths hidden tales at
>least
>from some of the precursors and has been an extraordinary catalyst to make
>this valuable information visible and presumably valuable to anyone
>interested in doing scholarship around the works and initiatives exposed.
> It seems vital that the movement to centralise information doesn't negate
>the distributed and divergent nature of the material and the narratives.
> Of course having now placed this material partially in the public domain
>via publication in this list anyone can use it and that's welcome. A
>concentration in one (private?) university of follow up to this for eg by
>collecting various list archives in an exclusive way makes me very nervous
>based on previous experience, as above. This is a distributed and
>collective art history.
>
>My final observation: it was great being in Riga listening to many voices
>which don't turn up on this list who were describing projects going on in
>very specific localities and often these seemed wonderfully obscure for
>this reason all the more interesting at least to me...
>
>all the best
>
>Bronac
>
>
>On Saturday, 26 October 2013, Johannes Birringer 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!)
>> >>
>>
>
>
>--
>Sent from Gmail Mobile
