[-empyre-] From Lurking to Confession

["Charlotte Frost" <charlotte@digitalcritic.org>]

Hey Nancy,

Thanks for your comments and thanks for joining me...perhaps this empyre
could be re-titled Lurkers Unite!

>hi ok from this mail i will react because i often find my self lurking
>because all my commenta are either reactionary or i have no time and >just
scann like a modern day person and think ok i'll really read that one
through and respond with this very insightfull thought full  >response and
then do neither because i know it is an extreme either >way but ok enough
idle chit chat...

I often think it is a bit like jumping on a moving roundabout/carousel. It
is really hard to catch the arguments as they pass, and get your footing,
but once you get on, you quickly get acclimatized and can taunt and wave to
everyone you left standing on solid ground....

I was recently one of the critics at a Furtherstudio Critical Forum
http://www.furtherfield.org/furtherstudio which was an incredible
experience. 

You enter a chat room with the artist and other selected critics and have
about 40 minutes of debate, with an audience watching, and then you move
into another chat room for a free-for-all. Essentially it is just like a
panel discussion, but online. However it quickly became clear to me, that
like list posting, it is a discipline it itself. I had prepared questions in
advance, and had a window open with them on next to the chat box so that I
could copy and paste, but the pace of the debate means that even if you are
lightening quick with your pasting, you can often be too late and either
create a rather rambling, incoherent debate, or just get left behind. It was
very intense and the time flew past and the artist in question replic**t
http://www.replic88t.net was very slippery! Because of the chat element,
there is more scope to sidestep questions and/or engage in a lot of niceties
- there is the constant desire to tell people if you are laughing at their
remarks (lol) or being cheeky ;-). Funnily enough, it was so fast it made
lists seem like long laboured philosophical tomes and it was in parts so
chatty that I longed for the rigors of list life. Although that is not to
say that it didn't offer a really interesting model of practice for the
critique and interview, and I have been thinking about it ever since,
wondering what other environments we might introduce to enhance lists, or
fill in the gaps they inevitably present???


>i know johah so this is not personal . BUT i mean this 'survival' >model is
VERY problematic type of 'behaviour' -indeed i mean this >whole concept  of
dawin ' survival of the fittest is what i fight >against every day -=its
fascist essentially...  here in regads to >social darwinsim i will quite
bauelaire april 1853 'there are solemn >excesively solemn individuals, who
have made no study of nature, and >who generally mjake everyone around them
miserable. I do not know why >i think of them as reekng of Prodestantism.
They cna neither >understand no allow such poetic ways and means of passing
the time.  >They are the smae individuals who will gladly given a shilling
to the >poor man on the condition that he stuff himself with bread, but
refuse >him a farthing to go and slake his thirst at the nearest taver. When
I >think of a certain calss of ultra-reasonable and anti-poetic poeple at
>whose hands I have suffered so much, i always feel hartred pinching >and
gnawing at my nervouse system.'

I find the 'survival of the fittest' quite a New York thing! ;-) You see it
in queues at Deli's where the loudest, longest order is dealt with first,
while other quieter contingents wilt with hunger. So perhaps some of our
tendencies and reactions to lists are a lot more cultural than we even
realise and that this grey/white box we fill with text just can't engender
all this diversity. In the UK in a Deli queue/sandwich bar, we would all
stand around silently, hoping not to make eye contact with anyone until
finally someone takes our order. Perhaps I am quiet on lists because until
now, no one has taken my order? I don't know, and I am being deliberately
silly with my example, because I just don't know the answer. But where I
cited Jonah's work as an example of people playing with list dynamics, and I
noted that it shows how lists shape their lineage as part of a group,
perhaps it is also the case that this group loses a little of its diversity
to suit the format. 


>..well just people speaking more maybe and not trying to be so clear and
dry...

I really like this idea, because I see a lot of emails being seized upon for
a lack of clarity, or for the ways in which it can be misinterpreted, rather
than trying to pick out the ideas that the poster was trying to form...I
think that part of writing on a list should be about the process of actually
forming the ideas, and not just posting fully formed ones in order to
perhaps show off, or appear more in control of ones brain and fingers than
others!

Charlotte