dear all 
brief insertion re 'in the name of action' also touching on Dorothee's
previous mail. 

As much as it has seemed important to question how relations are
organised, I guess this is also symptomatic for our engagement here and
elsewhere in various discourses, it strikes me that we actually do seem
to “shift” into another mode of making/thinking. If organising relations
and reflecting on this organisation has implied a sort of demand for an
action, or agency, what are the ways one can make agency realisable in
the everyday? Does art/education has a real potential to think about
different in relation to Repetition? 


----- Original Message -----
From: Danny Butt <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 5:51 am
Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] hello

> 
> These strike me as being firstly and foremostly, a kind of "unhappy 
> performative", a move to characterise certain kinds of discourse as 
> "productive" and a certain kind not; in other words, an attempt to 
> suppress some kinds of discourse in the name of "action", which is 
> still, in the end, only talk. It seems to me that whatever ethics 
> we might bring to this remarkable forum for dialogue and 
> reflection, it should first of all seek to recognise plurality of 
> participation if we seek to enable space for diverse practices 
> against bureaucratisation and institutionalisation.
>

Can 'actual action' or rather ACTING be extracted from this flattening
and widening of practice? Can we think of a constitution of action (in
relation to art and related subjects)? Mark Cousins, in a lecture on
neighbourhood, talks about the nature of community and how it is
intrinsically bound with regulating processes, stating that community
poses a problem for a progressive theory. A community needs a
representative, a level of the authorative, in order to be recognised.
But accepting an authority means accepting hierarchy instead of
being/acting democratic. 
I wonder where 'acting' lies in participatory modes of practices that
inform all our works and lives? Is there perhaps also a turn in thinking
that acting?! is more justifiable than institutional critique,
exhibitions, theories, or text? In what way is action and its
mis-interpretations always already embedded in one's practice? Coming
back to the political, which is always also a political
subject/expresses a subjectivity, and at the same time a multiplicity. 
 
 
verina


Claire Bishop: the more a project is participatory, the less it is open
for future manifestations.