[spectre] Re: media labs (fwd)

[kranenbu at xs4all.nl]

Hi all,

here is David Garcia's contribution:

earlier on this thread Geert Lovink asked:
"The question needs to be answered first if 'we' have so much in common
in the first place. But let's presume so."
The question Geert raised before moving swiftly on might be the bigger
issue that underlies this thread; which we could call the unraveling of
the "big we".

This thread shows how the institutional contraction of electronic media
art centres is challenging us to think hard about what it is that is
being lost.
Many of these organisations were not only defined by the media they
championed but by their interdisciplinary character, in short they were
favourably disposed to hybridity, to a celebration of impurity. The
period of organisational expansion and experiment, that we have
witnessed in the last decade was an institutional expression of the
post-modern impulse, to dissolve, or at least problematise, all
boundaries and boarders, (geographical, disciplinery organic non
organic, left and right in politics, human non human etc etc).
Interactive digital multi-media's and the networks had the effect of
fusing previously separated  modalities of human communication and thus
materialised and exemplified this boarder dissolving tendency.
The institutional contraction alluded to in this thread could be due in
part to the fact that this impulse is judged by some to have reached
some kind of outer limit. And the arrival at this limit is signalled by
the fact that institutional affiliations between irreconcilable
positions and values that were once overlooked or tolerated as part of
the new boarderless hybrid reality are no longer credible and are
ceasing to function. (Are you for us or against us?)
Boundaries and boarders of all kinds are reasserting themselves with a
vengeance and often with great stupidity and violence. This makes it
vital to understand the nature of what is occurring and exactly what is
at stake. These institutional developments are one of many examples of
the re-emergence of the *boundary question*, and associated questions
about the nature and limits of freedom. Fresh answers to the question:
what are boundaries are for now? and  how are they changed by the
networks? might help us reach more generative conclusions about the
organisations or "disorganisations" we need to build (or sustain) right
now.

David Garcia