[-empyre-] text, criticism + geography

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

I think there is a reductionist take on 'text' here. 
Written languages (ie English, French, Korean etc.) 
placed in opposition to 'graphic' or 'multi-media' forms.

Perhaps we should be more clear on the fact that written
text, an image, a moving image, or a hypermedia work connected across internet are all <very strong em> TEXTUAL</very strong em>. And of course 'code' from
html to world wide web worms, including
recent distributions and aesthetic articulations of 
the 'packet sniffing' Carnivore technology, are 'text' 
too. Music, likewise, is another kind of text, and 
perhaps the laguage of mathmatics.

If we consider film, written narrative, or multimedia 
game as 'texts' then we have a common kinds of textual analyses and several traditions of analyses and criticism 
to draw upon and to compare, from the literary, the cultural historical, the filmic and of course art 
historical. These ways of knowing, or coming to know and understand text and textuality, illuminate discursive 
'con-texts' in which 'text' is produced. 

Of course these contexts include the 'extra-textual', the social, material,historical and geographical contexts in which any artistic activity resides. 

And, of course, textual analyses, even 'art' and 'art criticism' can be applied to these contexts too. The
institution is textual, it is there to be read. Just
as the city is a text, open to a range of different
interpretations and readings. Just so the criticism
formed around the work of art, it is textual and open
to competing readings depending upon ones background, 
ones gender and sexuality, ones ethnicity, and ones
geographical location.



Lachlan Brown


Centres for Cultural Studies
and Urban and Community Research
Goldsmiths College
University of London



-- 
__________________________________________________________
Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com
http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup

Get 4 DVDs for $.49 cents! plus shipping & processing. Click to join. 
http://oas-central.realmedia.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/mail.com/columbiahouse/1112745096/x09/ExactAdv/ColumbiaHouse_IO473_7.19_8.19/blank.gif/636632633232383133383736634333430