[spectre] quick

[Sally Jane NORMAN]

Hello

This has been piling up fast, a few reactions which as usual sometimes
overlap with others already expressed, with apologies again for delayed
response:

- announcements - part of the noise which I've also valued despite
systematically scrapping lots of them, simply because they've always felt as
though they were fairly directly linked to the senders. Not just a passive
bandwagon but translation of many different kinds of involvement in many
different kinds of activity. If at times it's felt (to me also) as though
there's been too much announcing, it's come across more as lack of a
counterweight, than as an inherent problem with the actual announcements.
Perhaps sticking the word announcement at the top helps but surely we're
capable of sorting sheep from goats. For me the real issue is building up
stuff along with and other than announcements so that this sense of
contextualising, anchoring in real ongoing activity is upheld.

- deep europe I'm also deeply attached to - like Honor, I've felt as an
"outsider" that it opened up a chink in the mindset that let in strays like
us. The 28 numbered countries I find frankly disturbing. How many tomorrow?
Do we have to show passports? Can we build an Edi / Documenta refugee centre
for those who don't belong? The whole feeling for deeper europe for me is
also strongly related to the fact that in both my homes, west european and
south pacific, this vast part of the world - central and eastern europe - so
often traditionally appeared as a bland anonymous mass. The Block - even
though of course it obviously couldn't really be so. And something as
humanised and alive as syndicate brought to light features and realities and
specificities in a very graspable way, that could be assimilated quite
spontaneously, because the input was coming through a smallish group of
fairly identifiable people. Something one-to-one about it. Not nostalgia,
nor desire to go on futilely trying to do the same thing.

- I'm a starter for trying to analyse this "ruin for archeological studies"
(Janos), the changes that have occurred if this can be tackled in the
context of a front-on, risk-taking exchange about what this non-direct
mediated communication support is / brings about. Rethinking cultural
(re-)definitions of communication also. How a community like this maybe
inevitably leads to dissolution/ reformulation of borders, conceptually/
rhetorically/ physically east-west or wherever. Because a lot of borders
have come and gone since the list began, issues of filtration and redefining
belonging and allegiance (!) have changed metaphorically and in terms of
physical territory. Sorry it's not very clear but surely a list like this is
capable of and hopefully interested in coming up with some original ideas
about reconfiguring one's vital space and about how incursions into other
lesser known (deeper) spaces can catalyse that process. The new proxemics
born of a newly constituted/ distributed community. But none of these hopes
makes sense if my passport doesn't work here. And perhaps my rhetoric just
pisses people off anyway.

- one of the things i got most out of syndicate was the pleasure of
listening, hearing, especially with the sensation of being a kind of
outsider. Hoping that it's not going to turn into some awful list of really
smart people all using the same jargon - particularly since it's all in
english. Ideological bulldozer. I enjoyed the differences and heteroclite
feel of syndicate. Even if there were irritants they testified to
difference. The deep europe flavour for me means the privilege of being able
to listen to the many tongues (fortunately again for me translating
themselves into english but even so...) and ways of thinking that emerge
through and around a very large part of the world that I don't know much and
want to learn about, and that I have an irrational conviction about,
regarding its cultural importance on the planet. Makes difference appear as
a valuable counterweight to our over-normed globalised normality. Idolatry
of difference is dangerous too, sure. But can we discuss these things
please? I don't want to end up in some goddam rut talking to excessively
similar people with the same viewpoints. Hey you others, where are you? Or
if you don't want to talk, please say so and I'll stop harrassing and go
find another playpen. Or salon. Or list. Boils down to the same thing if you
don't watch out. Even if you do.

Confirm presence in Linz alongside co-New Zealand and co-French
participants, with an Italian to really make things exotic. Big difference!
Anybody else?

best

sjn