nettime: the art of debating

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

New Media and the Art of Debating
Second Thoughts on the Organisation of Conferences

A Personal View by Geert Lovink

As many of you might know, I have been involved in organizing a variety
of conferences and meetings. At this moment, I feel the necessity to
write down some of my experiences and thoughts about this odd and
perhaps powerful medium. It is about time to overcome the obvious and
almost banal statements about new media increasing (and not
decreasing) travelling and the cozy, all-too-human need of us to meet
in real-time and space. This is all true. Breast-to-breast
communication still is the most powerful, intimate form of gathering
and I do not like speculating about the potentials of tele-conferencing
and on-line chats. Meeting in real-life, for me, still is the most
effective and fastest way to build up a network (like v2_east, nettime
or Next Five Minutes) and exchange arguments. It prevents us from
making small but fatal mistakes, the most common cause for flame wars,
which have destroyed many personal relationships on the Net. One clumsy
e-mail can have fatal consequences, a mechanism which can easily be
corrected during a gathering on location. At meetings we get a much
faster grasp of the context of people's works and intentions.
So why do we meet? Simply because we are social animals? Perhaps not.
Individualists from Egoland, armed with objective, selfish goals can
also have good reasons to meet. At the marketplace of goods and ideas
there is always enough time for informal talks, agreements, rumours and
conspiricies. In the case of new media in the nineties, I think, there
is a strong need to share feelings and experiences, to reload
batteries, create a sense of common interest. Then return home and
continue with the implimentation of something which still is very
conceptual, instable, invisible or even ununderstandable for outsiders:
a never finished Gesamtkunstwerk of images, texts, sounds and meanings.
This may sound blurry, but that's what it is. I don't mean this in a
negative sense. Mostly, it's not 'just' work (or not yet). Conferences
function foremost to gain motivation in order to continue with this
kind of work, which requires a lot of creativity and persistence at the
same time.

THE FUZZY ECONOMY OF CONCEPTS

Besides the hardware and software industry, we have been facing the
rise of the 'conceptual sector', responsable for interface design and
the re-connection of the human-machine relation to the arts, culture,
education and even social and political organizations. And most of all:
the difficult integration/synergy of the computer with the 'old' media
(audio, video, graphic design, intellectual discourses, theatre, etc.).
Most conferences I am speaking about here, deal with such issues. It's
only recently that I became aware the conceptual nature of the notion
'cyberspace'. Being more than the Internet and perhaps less ambitious
than 'total VR', this rising discipline (which incorporates elements of
philosophy, art history, cultural studies, the performing arts and SF
of course) comes up with workable memes, models and metaphors, which
the 'conceptual sector' will finally implement within the framework
(and limitations) of the existing software. This work does not fit in
the traditional cultural sector. Nor is it merely a technical skill.
It's not a job for specialists, but for generatists which might have
had many strange, different activities before the rise of the Net.
Do we deal here with 'vaporware'? In some cases, yes. There is an
increasing pressure on the early adopters to put up an 'anarcho-
business'. But in general, one could could say that the conceptualists
are suspicious of commercialism. Neither hardcore academic nor entirely
business oriented, the cyber-tactical community is positioning itself
as a true 'interface'. Sometimes sensible for social and political
arguments, open for critical discourses, always way ahead of the
dinosaur bureaucrats but too dreamy for the pragmatic sales managers,
this sector has created many (temporary) free meeting spaces to tinker
on the premisses of future environments, with which masses of users
will finally work with. Even if we admit the primacy of the hard- and
software industry, one has to understand that the users eventually will
be surrounded by the conceptual space, not by Intel, Windows 95 or
Netscape, at least at the psychological level of perception.
In this rising concept business, there is a constant need for visions,
metaphysical constructs and spacial frameworks. The well known American
'visionairies' are not only spreading the 'hype' through the
traditional media like television and magazines. Their main audience
are young professionals, in need for leading ideas, contacts and
motivation, necessary in the first, risky phase of their new existence.
The most common way to encounter these blessings is, besides reading
magazines like Wired, is to attend a conference. In this atmosphere, an
unspoken consensus seems necessary. The brainstorm should not be
upholded by critical remarks. Any reference to old discourses can be
deadly disturbing. Of course, one can make historical references,
reintroduce old rituals, celebrate the unity of body and spirit, but
negativism seems to be out of the question (at least, until recently).
Such conferences should not raise controversies. There is hardly any
pro and contra and little time for discussion. This is decided by the
programmers of events in an early stage. And who likes to spoil the
party anyway? One lecture after another, with a panel to answer some
questions, that's it. This format is now becoming quickly obsolete,
without an alternative model in sight. Will future conferences only
have small workshops for the happy few who are able to pay the high
fee, for those who are allready member of the cyber elite, the famous
'virtual class'? I would never like to organize such an event. But
maybe this is too easy, too simple. Conferences are about inclusion and
exclusion. Who will be on the list of invited speakers, who comes in
for free, do we care for those who cannot afford to pay the trip, hotel
and entrance fee (from Eastern Europe, for example)? Specially the
bigger institutions in Europe tend to look first for big names. If they
can contribute to the chosen theme, plays a less important role.
Visitors will end up with a strange mix of speakers and a conference
without much focus. This of course is compensated by the short period
of numbness and hallucination when the Cyber Star is on stage and
delivers his or her prophetic lecture-performance.
>From the very start in the early nineties, multi-media and net-related
festivals had the function to generate consensus, not controversy. This
goes together with the general tendency to 'stage' podium discussions
and estheticize boring conference halls. Over-organized events
(sometimes managed by hired professional laity) are of course
eliminating spontaneity and are raising consumer mentality of visitors
who would like to get spectacle for their money and precious time. In
general I have nothing against 'directing' of big public gatherings.
Only Germans have the phantastic discipline to discuss with 300 people,
and enjoy their 'Thesenpapiere', 'Rednerliste' and 'Wortbeitraege'. In
Amsterdam, for example, people start screeming and walk away because
they get bored immediately. In other countries, the audience remains
silence, whatever you try, because it is not common to speak in public
and they prefer to express their opinion rather in a much more
informal, intimate environment, like the cafe. Other culture might
still have to deal with 'machismo', dull academic rituals etc.
In this respect I have learned a lot from Marleen Stikker and Carolien
Nevejan, who are now heading the Society for Old and New Media (De
Waag) in Amsterdam. In the past they used to work in De Balie and
Paradiso and organized an endless list of debates, meetings, public
discussions, lecture series and conferences. They have always been
looking for ways to rearrange the setting of speakers, to get rid of
the static and passive formats: how to place the seats, to instruct the
chairman/woman, do a 'live magazine', work with imagary in order to
overcome the real existing consumer culture which is killing public
debating at the moment. Most conflicts are hidden nowadays. Victims can
only speak within the victim discourse. Institutional power structures
are finding their own way to make deals. And the 'enemies' are hiding
until violent clashes and bitter hatred suddenly occur. The rest is
dealt with in a boring, rational way, using the well known empty
phrases, you can find in the newspaper, day after day. And the rising
cyberculture finds itself in the middle of this crisis of the public
discourse/space, while dreaming of an electronic democracy and many-to-
many communication.

DISCUSSION WITHOUT CRITIQUE?

But there is something else: the critique on technologies of the
eighties has not been able to regroup and failed to attack the neo-
liberal cyberhype in the public arena. The only well known commentators
are cynical journalists, who would like to eliminate the hype as soon
as possible. No luddites in sight (with the exeption of the Unabomber).
Noam Chomsky and others have no clue about new media and still speak
about the New York Times and the networks and the same counts for Neil
Postman and other conservative defenders of book culture. The same can
even be said of the 'cultural studies', which is mainly dealing with
the (MTV) television/pop culture. This is slowly changing at the
moment, but the introduction of critical texts and their autors still
takes a long time.
Another factor in the upholding of a rich discussion culture is the
language and translation problem. It is not enough to critique the
ideological premisses of American cyberculture if we do not organize
other voices at the same time (not only European, of course). And they
express themselves in other languages. This has been one of the most
frustrating, implicit exclusion mechanisms in the organization of
recent cybermeetings. Critical cyber discourses from France, Germany,
Italy, Japan (even general media theory), is not entering the
international arena (if we restricts ourselves to the 'developed
world'). Who is able and has the courage to speak in English in front
of a hugh audience? And how do you organize the translation of your
paper if you are not a native english speaker? Simultaenous translation
is expensive and conferences tend not to have a budget for a
translation. Yes, yes, the automatic translation programs are on their
way, says the eternal optimist. But we can't wait for technical
solutions and slow publishing houses, we have to come up with other
solutions soon. I know this is not a concern of people from the UK,
USA, Canada and Australia, alltough they will be the first to benefit
from it. The initiative has to come from other countries. It would be
great to start soon with a truely global 'virtual translation desk',
which will bring together writers, translators, publishers and
organizers of conferences.
Finally, there is a big dilemma for me between self-organisation and
going public, at least when it comes to 'net criticism'. A conference
always has both elements. The exchange of ideas and concepts is the
primal motivation to travel and get together. This is sometimes hard to
admit for the organizers of an event, who are under the pressure of
foundations, institutions and sponsers to come up with concrete results
and examples where this cyberthing is actually heading to. It seems
such a luxury, so incrowd, such a waste of money and all the efforts.
The results do not find their way into the general public, exept for
the many interviews, done for radio, tv and the local magazines. But
for the insiders, it's another story. They are building up a largely
invisible network of contacts and friendships, exchange materials and
get a clearer idea where their specific project fits into. With
nettime, v2_east and Next Five Minutes, we have been trying explicitely
to strengthen this kind of network. Now it is time to make it more
visible, richer, and look for controversies, without causing a
backlash, ending up with real old fashioned, dogmatic fights over cyber
politics and the laming fear for the final sell-out to Babylon. I
strongly believe in the continuity and the building of small,
independant communication structures, whatever may happen to the hype
or even the proclaimed end of 'net criticism'.
--
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