Re: <nettime> ISEA 2011 fees

[roberta buiani <robb@yorku.ca>]

On May 22, 2011, at 8:44 AM, Eric Kluitenberg wrote:
> 
> 
> There was not much more of an 'ideology' involved, it was a rather pragmatic intervention. For my own part I felt deeply dissatisfied by the lack of critical engagement with socio/political realities, but also a lack of critical approach to the aesthetics of this emerging field and recognised that ISEA was not the right structure to engage these issues and therefore looked for them elsewhere.

...and yet, a lot of the people I usually encounter at ISEA and other similar venues, are deeply invested in these critical approaches. in this sense, it has always been quite rewarding for me to go. I find myself less interested in the official academic context (which sometimes contains truly interesting interventions, with challenging questions, but often turns out to be just an empty carrousel of achievements of this or that scholar...something that I can check online by browsing the profile of the presenter) ....but definitely interested in interacting with some engaged individuals and with the city and environment that hosts ISEA. 

I am wondering then, with so many people willing to engage in critical and political approaches, why would ISEA be "not the right structure"? 
 I really like when you mention horizontality  . 
> 
> The thing that has dramatically changed since the inception of ISEA (1988 / 1990) is obviously the radical proliferation of networking technologies and our ability to put these infrastructures to good use. So perhaps, if a completely distributed setting does not work (ESmog), but also large scale meetings of the ISEA type threaten to collapse under their own weight and become mechanisms of exclusion / segregation, then perhaps we should look more closely at structures of horizontally networked smaller scale and more localised events, gatherings, and meetings as a way of bringing the field as a whole forward.
> 
> 
if there is really a number of people committed to bring up and seriously discuss the issues that seem to have come out of this thread, it might as well be possible to have such horizontal forum within the existing context of ISEA. this should not be just to piggy back on an existing event to create our own, but to create a small pocket of critical and open discussion that addresses the issues that are not currently addressed by the big event itself (and that the big event would not be able to address --because of its sheer size and its diverse content).

...and yes, I totally agree that anything that is done online is somehow lacking. nonetheless, it would be good to prepare and organize something else.

rb



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