Dear Crumbs,

I think this discussion is very interesting. Actually, we 
are having the same, here in France, in regard to  the 
Presidential Election. The socialist candidate has started 
"participative groups" that are, via online and in presence 
forums, discussions where anybody can take part so that the 
ideas of the French population can come up and not only the 
ones of the professional politicians. Equally, on TV, the 
political broadcasts (where candidates are answering 
questions on their programmes) is open to the people which 
means that it is organised by the political journalists but 
the questions are those, and asked by, the people chosen on 
a representative panel of the French society.

And the question is the same as the one which is raised here 
: professionals versus amateurs and underlying the issue of 
direct democracy in the case of our elections and direct 
knowledge in the case of Refresh and new media art history.
The problem is of course the one of populism for the 
politics and rumors more than knowledge in the case of 
history + the fantasy that regarding knowledge everyone is 
equal and has the same knowledge and understanding (why are 
the professionals so ashamed of being so ?)

In Astronomy, there are amateurs, that work along the 
professional astronomers, are equally respected and have 
contributed to the general knowledge of astronomy. Note that 
it is not "everybody" but "amateur astronomers" (they work a 
lot, and are very dedicated people) and that they follow the 
"knowledge rules" of professional astronomers to do their 
work, propose their result and beeing evaluated. Note also 
that the the professional have more means, work all day long 
on a topic and, generally speaking, provide more interesting 
discoveries and knowledge than the amateurs.

How this could be the same for the field of new media art 
history?  I don't see any network or place/space of any kind 
where their knowledge is put into the common pot. Do not 
answer me with the magic word "Wikipedia", it is not the 
answer to everything and can have totally wrong informations 
as mentionned by Jaron Lanier. The fact that we don't know 
"who" is speaking in Wikipedia (specially when it comes to 
history which is loaded with opinions of all kinds) is a 
problem for me. Knowledge is not neutral and precisely, who 
is writting the history does matter.

For me, the issue might be more to attract interested and 
interesting people in the discussion than to think that the 
discussion can be general. Patrick mentionned the slow scan 
projects in Vancouver with the Western Front. This is 
exactly history for me and not everybody can have an opinion 
about it (and to get the knowledge, you must work long hours 
to dig out the basic information).
But in history too, there are amateurs groups. In France, 
the territory is full of groups of amateur historians, 
usually working on a specific area of the territory. They 
are not necessarily well considered by professional 
historians (or by all professional historians) but they do 
contribute to histories, at least by digging out 
informations and reconstructing the puzzle of the past. They 
less provide a "narrative".

But I am struck by the "crisis of the intellectuals", who 
are afraid of their own knowledge so to speak. When Braudel 
and the other historians around him in France performed a 
revolution in the way to do history, it took a while before 
it left the Universities small groups to reach the entire 
French (and world) societies (and I am not sure it reached 
the whole world ;-). New media art history is just starting. 
The question would be more : is it providing other methods, 
etc. than traditionnal art history ? And, in my opinion, 
this new media art history is using one of the methods 
provided by the French School of History, a method that is 
common today = oral and direct history from the players (= 
the people who were part of the history that is being studied).

I also think that we should make a difference between 
history (conf like Refresh, Replace, the Langlois Foundation 
DOCAM project, etc.) and art critic and theory (conf. like 
ISEA, etc.). One is about the past, the other about the 
present and the issues and methodologies are not  the same.

Annick

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Annick Bureaud ([log in to unmask])
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