[spectre] Juxtaposium

[Josephine Bosma]

hello al,


I would like to second Susanne's call for some self-reflection on the  
side of the authors of the juxtaposium proposal. I respect and admire  
the work of most of you (juxtaposium authors, I just don't know  
Baruch Gottlieb), but I think this proposal completely misses its  
mark. Let me try to explain why.

When the juxtaposium proposal came in my mailbox I was a little  
surprised by the contrast between the content and the style. Then  
what caught my eye were the names at the bottom. Three well known  
critics and three artists that all seem to come from very different  
directions and backgrounds drop a harsh criticism and radical (?) new  
presentation format onto our laps, completely out of the blue. If it  
would have been posted today (april 1st) I might have thought it was  
a hoax. Where does this come from? How was it created? How did the  
writers come together? Have 'social media' so undermined our  
communication skills that it is easily forgotten we are posting into  
each others private email boxes/homes and that addressing the mailing  
list members as a mass instead of possibly smart individuals is not  
the way to go? Don't get me wrong, I like a manifesto from time to  
time, but this seems to miss the mark by not having any clear context  
but the writers' personal experiences, which are barely explained.  
More info needed urgently please!

Like many working in the field of art and (what was formerly known  
as) new media I am aware of the problems with symposium formats.  
Everybody complains about them from time to time, like one complains  
about the weather. It is good to criticize them. There have however  
been plenty of experimental formats going around in the past 15 years  
if not more. What bothers me a little about the juxtaposium proposal  
is that this is completely ignored. It does not help to negate one's  
own history. The problem with polemics like this is that it turns  
what is a very diverse field into a black and white situation, even  
retroactively. Institutional and corporate phenomena are placed on  
the one side, and the victims of it on the other. This way you  
actually become part of the problem. The reality of the past 15 years  
is different and I personally feel very happy to have witnessed some  
of it. I know that many on Spectre must feel the same way.

What we also do not need I think is a return to the polemics that  
destroyed for example net.art. The claim that "Our field is all about  
hacking, deconstructing and reformatting existing formats" is just  
nonsense, sorry to say. Misinterpretation is actually a rather  
standard approach of new media art that needs heavy criticism, if I  
may be polemic a bit myself. If anything our field is about a  
diversity of practices and exploration of new materials, hard, soft  
and wet. I welcome a call for a renewed criticism, but only from an  
awareness of and respect for past failures and successes, and from an  
acknowledgment of existing constructive and/or interesting practices.


With respect,




Josephine

On 1 Apr 2011, at 13:33, susanne jaschko wrote:

> Dear friends,
> you have made an interesting proposition that I would like to  
> comment on. Let's leave the provocation aside with which you  
> apparently tried to get our attention and stir up some debate and  
> let's try to be a bit more objective in favour of a serious  
> discussion. I totally understand that you are tired of traditional  
> symposium formats. We all have been there. We all have attended and  
> participated in conferences and panels that went nowhere, at which  
> the speakers did nothing but present themselves in the ordinary,  
> boring way and were often not able/ not willing to respond to each  
> others' ideas, concepts, works or to discuss a subject  
> sufficiently. People who just read out their paper, speakers of  
> whom you get the impression they have not considered the subject of  
> the symposium, theoreticians repeating themselves, artists not  
> going beyond the information that they provide on their website.  
> Moderators who fail to generate something like an interesting  
> debate, because the presentations are so disparate.
> There are a number of reasons why this is so. Lousy speakers' fees  
> don't explain everything. Laziness might be one of the factors.  
> Laziness of the organisers to find speakers who actually – in  
> theory – have something to say to each other, laziness to take the  
> effort to communicate with all participants in the panel about  
> their individual contribution in advance and making them understand  
> what the context is in which they speak. But also laziness of the  
> speakers to think of something different than the usual  
> presentation. In all those years that I am organising these kind of  
> events, I was rarely surprised by someone making the effort to come  
> up with something fresh, something extraordinary, although there  
> the space for it was there.
> I don't want to play the ball back to you (or eventually myself – I  
> have played all positions in this game: curator, moderator,  
> speaker) asking you to be more inventive and responsive to each  
> other, even after delivering your speech. Maybe we need a change, a  
> challenge, to refresh. Maybe we should just stop trying to offer  
> topic-driven conferences to a larger public and just do little,  
> informal conversations like for example Andreas did at Tesla or  
> create workshop like situations in which real exchange is easier.  
> Which all really work well, we know. Since real and debate is so  
> difficult to achieve in larger groups, why not give up on that in  
> general, or do it in the way we do it here, have a remote, but  
> focussed discussion?
> But let's look at what you proposed here. Artists talking about  
> each others' work, not their own. I have seen that, but not too  
> often at symposiums, granted. However when artists teach at art  
> school, this happens all the time. This does not excite me per se.  
> You should elaborate on this, make it clearer what you are  
> expecting to happen, or define even super clear rules to make it  
> special. Only speak about the artists who are present? Is there  
> still a kind of general subject to which the presentations will  
> refer or do you envision it more like a pecha-kucha, straight  
> forward presentation/reflection of one or many artworks without a  
> conference like theme?
> How this will foster critique? I am not sure it can. Real critique  
> means also negative critique - in public this is very unlikely to  
> happen. And why should an artist be more suited to critique another  
> artist's work than anybody else? Finally the theoreticians - self- 
> absorbed in their own theory and discourse (like you say) they  
> should now disclose their subjectivity and/or speak predominantly  
> about the art. What I am missing rather in our field are more  
> theoreticians who come up with strong theories...theoreticians who  
> are not caught up in the scholarly world but have some connection  
> to reality. There is much more to say about your idea, this is just  
> a quick response, and we should continue talking about it. I agree,  
> we need more and new formats, because we all want to talk to each  
> other honestly, but we still hardly know how to in public.
> -- 
> su
>
> susanne jaschko
>
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