On 06/10/13 03:43 AM, Charlotte Frost wrote:
> Illustrating the huge variety of places we can discuss the arts online these
> days, an interesting thread is unfolding on my Facebook page where I tried
> to crowd-source a hook-up with a Luther Blissett or Netochka Nezvanova
> contributor:
> https://www.facebook.com/drcharlottefrost/posts/10151582649486599?comment_id
> =26711049&offset=0&total_comments=30¬if_t=feed_comment Feel free to add
> more to this strand there or hereŠ
Josephine's comment about mailing lists on that discussion chime with
Simon's "responses to two questions" on this list. Phrased strongly, the
idea that mailing lists were an open and complete discussion of and site
for the creation of art.
(That was part of my problem with artists' surf clubs, in contrast to
mailing list culture they were intentionally exclusive and silent
cliques. I'm grateful to Marisa Olson [I think it was] for explaining to
me how that related to teenage use of social media at the time.)
This idea may help explain why so little of the energy of mailing lists
spilled over to the artworld.
But however tempting it may be to see them as such and to *study* them
as such, mailing lists are an incomplete record. Off-list email
communications could become significant conversations. And people did
meet up in meatspace occasionally (not just at the historic net.art(TM)
events) where they gossiped about pseudonymous trolls' real identities...
This relates to critiques of the digital humanities and cultural
analytics. But I'm not raising this context to suggest that any of it
makes arts mailing list archives a less unprecedented resource or a less
worthy subject of study.
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