[-empyre-] re: relational geographies (christina, gair)

[lmdk@nbnet.nb.ca (lea)]

Hi Christina,

 to follow up on Clemente Padin's
>  http://www.eale.hpg.ig.com.br/ppi/001.htm and threads

>  the demotic underground impulse towards irony,
>  declassification, unruliness, wildness never really goes away.. The
> 'correct' is perpetually undone...

About the 'correct'.. is it like
 binarism... locked in the mechanism of being tossed  ( perhaps not 
so randomly) to land on one of it's sides over and over again.



>  May i suggest a thread through the idea of eating ....connecting with
>  Clemente's ironic live poem pan/pax: To the social geographies suggested in
>  his piece./the uruguayan experience of place within a hypperreal or 'fake'
>  commodities flux.


    Yes, as you point out about embedded contexts and relational geographies,
the in situ live presentation of Clemente's performance is bridged to 
the hypperreal poem in PANPAZimagine  a collaboration between 
Clemente and Brazil's Alexandre Venera http://www.eale.hpg.ig.com.br 
). And also to our respective, individual geographies, cultural 
environments where we access and link the on-line work.
    The bridging of relational-geographies through digital topography 
collapses the spatio-temporal distances and distinctions unto a 
uniform surface-screen.  Numerous intricacies and subtleties 
(contexts) remain unknown, unavailable to this virtual homogeneity. 
This expanding and permeable on-line geography populated by 9,7% of 
the world is no doubt also correlated to other numerous and layered 
geographies.
     Geography is about context and it is reasonable to think of 
contexts as ideological filters. The reinforcement of distinct 
cultural environments may be favoured by geographical circumstances 
where space and time remain barriers. In May approximated on-line 
users in Brazil amounted to 7.74%, compared with 13% in Uruguay, 
56.88% in the UK, 54.38%  in Ireland, 33%,in Australia, 59.1% in the 
U.S., 52.79% in Canada, 7.03% in South Africa, and 69% in Iceland, 
and 2.92 in China (from http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/)
    A culture survives through its shared and repeated use of codes 
and tools of communication. A culture can only extrapolate from what 
is (readily) available or accessible whether provided from an 
immediate environment or from an electronic one. To get to the food 
thread, Gombrich suggests "context must be supported by prior 
expectations based on tradition...some years ago there was a story in 
the papers to the effect that riots had broken out in an 
underdeveloped country because of rumours that human flesh was being 
sold in a store. The rumour was traced to food cans with a grinning 
boy on the label. Here it was the switch of context that caused the 
confusion. As a rule the picture of fruit, vegetable or meat on a 
food container does indicate its contents..."
    Are relational geographies potential maps, or perhaps even 
trajectories for relational works of art...as could be the proposed 
cityscapes by Gair musing on Guy Debord and derive. I encountered the 
materiality and physicality of a mail-art piece by Clemente Padin in 
Central Canada a few years ago. He had been invited to participate in 
a group show tribute to Joseph Beuys which was co-curated by a French 
woman and a Chilean artist. In the process of preparing the e-lounge 
I contacted Clemente hoping he would attend in situ...we resolved in 
the end to present the on-line paz pan project. The binarism of 'the 
correct' not landing on its 'correct' side this time. To which 
Clemente explains  "Here there are no institutions, neither public 
neither private, that help to the art neither to promote to the 
artists in the exterior. Except if the artist allied with the 
official art and to the Ministries of Culture and Art. It is not my 
case."

lea