[-empyre-] It's not where your from its where you are @?

["Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>]

>Does it means
>something to be located in Montreal, Ljubljana, Dakar or Sydney when
>creating, or looking at, content for the Web? 

 I am sure this question was raised a number of years ago, but clearly
need to be raised again.

Hmm, does geography matter? Does social position matter? I like to 
think of Internet as a mapping of the human body, the social body, upon 
a mapping of the globe as it is imagined in that heartland, or 'Kraal' 
of western white tribe dreaming, the field of Information Technology 
Studies. Do the social geographies, distributions of and movements of populations, languages, wealth, knowledge, information, bits and bytes, matter when it comes to the locations and economies of production of 'content' for WWW, and the contexts and economies of reception 
of said 'content'. 
 
I would err on the side of saying that location and social position 
matter very much whether one is producing or receiving 'content' 
online. There has been a belief in the 'sameness' of experience - a 
belief that what one does online is likely to be understood within the terms of a  particular or should I say 'peculiar' dominant 
techno-cultural perspective such as that proposed by the American Association of 
Internet Researchers. But this belief was formed when one could be 
fairly sure that everyone who might produce and everyone who might 
receive digital culture was of a similar ethnic, gendered and 
professional elite. 

When they were not there was often a contest.

There may be an argument that suggests that the terms of access to 
this formidable set of technologies of media and communications 
modifies ones world view no matter which ethnicity, gender generation 
or social status, but Sarai, Afrofuturism and the women of undercurrents seem to be contesting this particular belief quite successfully. I 
think one interesting outcome of questioning the 'universality' of experience of knowledge and of science through the 'work of art', is
that assumptions about the location of production and contexts of
reception of art also undergo an engaging revision. 

So, I would say yes. Yes, the question of the location of production 
is everything. Of course, CTheory could not have been produced in Dakar - 
critical concerns there would have required an entirely different set 
of questions informing that publication with a focus on another kind
of 'postmodern' experience. The 'grain' of East European 'aggressions' on 'the idea of the West' (which is what most 'Deepest European' work 
seems to be about - a sort of 'defense in depth' against 'NATO's' internet), are as distinctive as the playfully subversive, indeed 
perverse, tenacity of Australian articulations of Internet and the 
set of beliefs that brought it into culture. ICOLS, due for discussion 
here once that lame excuse for a cultural critic, Sean Cubitt has been 
dispatched with, is an excellent example of the OZ take on internet.

As for Quebec internet art. Could it have been produced in Toronto? 
Me? I don't think so.


Lachlan Brown






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