[-empyre-] subscription

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

I am going to try and reply to a few points before I am out of time....

Point 1)

Alan I was really interested when you said:

"Well, one doesn't have to subscribe to an art gallery. One just walks in. 
One doesn't have to get along with the other people in the gallery. I've now
got a kill file, so I don't get too upset at some people's postings. I don't
have to do that at Sonnabend. In some ways corporate space is a lot freer
and more democratic, most often kinder, than most lists I've been on. I'm
lucky with cybermind, etc. etc. - they're open to just about anything."

Because I think that actually it's the opposite, we *DO* subscribe to art
galleries, and it is our very commitment to them that makes them acceptable
places to be. I'm not talking about the specifics of whether white cubes are
'friendly' so much as the fact our belief in them is what makes them sprout
up all over the place. You might not have checked a subscription form, and
you might not receive daily mail outs from them, but a belief in them is
everywhere you go, from Sonnabend to Tate...

I think lists  sometimes bring the art gallery into your home! They provide
you with the information and links to find the work, they give you critiques
on works and announcements on how you can get even more involved.... Its
just in real world galleries we have a different etiquette, probably largely
because we have faces in galleries and so we aren't so bold. 

But not subscribe to galleries? - if you go to Sonnabend, you surely do!

Charlotte