Re: <nettime> Political Work in the Aftermath of the New Media Arts Crisis

[Matze Schmidt <matze.schmidt@n0name.de>]

Thursday, May 14, 2009, 10:28:59 PM, one wrote:
> On Monday, May 11 2009, 21:29 (+0200), Geert Lovink wrote:

>> While society at large is inundated with (new) media, the art      
>> branch that deals with the digital moved itself in a ghetto.       

> This is too true, and that branch has to reinvent itself from
> scratch or it will collapse very soon (if it isn't already
> collapsing).

Mh, so let it be killing itself, the Reinvent Yourself-Discourse is a
line from the Pet Shop Boys from the 90s and says nothing than "Nobody
knows the trouble I've seen" in a 'modern' reinvented (sic!) way. But
I cannot see the trouble of this hard front line between a Paik and
a Ubermorgen. For example the "1001 Songs of eBay" of uebermorgen is
just a funny funny project I can implement over the weekend dealing
with online politics sex. And this confused and disoriented waiting
for the new-old avantgarde like "Let's do many Paiks" is boring and
does not have anything to do with the real world in which electronics
are the basis of the doings. What was really radical in a Paik?
Fucking the Porta Pack with Alternative TV-Ideas or the TV-Sets with a
magnet? Were the neo-dada fluxus guys radical anyway or just radical?

> as if radical video art from Paik to Infermental had never happened.
> (It seems as if most contemporary artists actually don't know it
> anymore which is comparable to painters no longer knowing about
> abstract painting.) One should perhaps advise Montevideo just not to
> leave its video art roots behind.

I'd like to point out at this point that institutions like Montevideo
are revolutionizers of money, e.g. they payed Jaromil for working
on dynebolican stuff and by this means they are able to rescue the
middle-class fantasies of a free arty market of software on the basis
of electronics, a market without too much money and with lower prices,
with all effects of an open source software"z" driven by the mediate
support of the state.

But while talking to them some years ago the Montevideo people turned
out to be very naive in political questions. They have no idea about
economy and no idea of what is going on out of their field. That's
okay, as long as they incorporate all folklore and avantgarde at the
sam time, because it is their mandate and mission.

Matze Schmidt





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