Re: [-empyre-] Contrapuntos Dinamicos

[Eduardo Navas <eduardo@navasse.net>]

On 4/29/05 12:11 PM, "Christina McPhee" <christina112@earthlink.net> wrote:

> dear Kate, Raul, Eduardo and list,
> 
> I wonder, how could the 'matrixial' give us a pathway out of the
> impasse of identity wars?  so that we can create generative fictions,
> the source of art's lasting power in culture?
> 
> cm

Hi Christina and list,



Before I go on, I do want to  point out that in my last e-mail, A  sentence
needed some corrections.  The following sentence:
"I have intermingled indigenous people in my country
and I have no connection to them or than the history that alienated us."

Should  read:
"I have intermingled [with] indigenous people in my country
and I have no connection to them [other] than the history that alienated
us."

To this I will only add that the personal choices I previously shared have
been made because I know the histories of my people[s] and deeply respect
them.  And it is because of such awareness why I choose to take action in
art practice as I have done so far.  From this I move on to matters I find
urgent, lurking behind new media practice.



When I replied to Raul I did not think it would read as an "impasse of
identity wars."  Upon reflection, I can see the possibility.

Anyone that may be familiar with my activity online knows that my work and
critical position does not deal directly with identity issues.  And
honestly, I don't see this being the case any time soon.  However, Raul's
approach consisting of his personal position that was extended to many
others on the list demanded a more personal counter-argument that I hoped
exposed how he should not simply expect everyone on the list to accept an
essentialization of his personal narrative.  After all, we have people here
from different parts of the world that may not know much of what he was
referring to, except general knowledge.  Terms like "our ancestors" do not
go very far in places like Empyre.  This I believe is what Heidi Figueroa
was referring to when she asked if he was perhaps to quick to extend his
oral tradition to an event (Interactiva 05) which features diverse groups of
people who share emerging technologies throughout the world.  In my previous
instead of focusing on this, I admittedly focused on Latin American issues,
something that one could say was not part of Heidi's comment but which was
lurking within Raul's original commentary. I decided it needed to be brought
forth.

In response, I did what I have rarely done in the past, but which is
extremely common with theorists who deal with difference: implicating myself
as the subject of analysis.  This is something that Empyre can claim to have
a "first of."  This is the only list where I actually have exposed my own
social construct (identity).  Do not expect this to happen in the future or
even on what follows in this e-mail.  The reasoning behind this is mainly
that my approach to criticism is based on a more diverse set of methods that
certainly uses narratives of difference but not in the usual forms expected
of post-colonial writers.  Having taken such approach to Raul's comment,
however, does expose how when personal experience is part of a public forum
such exchange places other participants in an uncomfortable position.
Whether this is because of unresolved issues of difference or simply because
the situation appears to have become personal are not matters for me to
speculate on.  The usual (dare I say classic) approach by theorists who have
developed a reputation by using resistance/difference/diversity would be to
claim that Christina's message above is a way out to avoid a real conflict.
I, however, do not believe this is the case, and frankly it is not my
interest to accuse anyone unconstructively.  I believe Christina wants to
get the most of the last couple of days left in this month.  And I want
discourse to move on and so I hereby contribute, moving past difference thus
making it part of a more complex thread... That such subject will comeback
in future e-mails is quite possible but it will be by the issue at hand not
my self-righteous individuality.


I previously commented on conceptualism and its relation to new media, in
particular net art, to which, Ryan and Alan replied.  I do not disagree with
either of them, really, as I know that Conceptual Art is quite diverse.
This is the reason I mentioned the New York scene and its reaction to
Greenbergian modernism.  And why I offered a specific book to consider that
offered a diverse source of readings that included the New York school of
conceptual thinking as one of many.

In terms of political economy, to bring up a term that Bryan used as being
his interest, I do think that this is definitely what is held in common any
critical practice (transparently) since the turn of the twentieth century.
Here I explain:  a conceptual approach to art making always relies on what
is already there to create a work.  This in essence is a materialist
approach: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

That is, the artist looks at the subject and considers key material elements
to then make them obvious to the viewer, who if the work is developed
carefully, will come to question it according to the exposed contradictions,
limitations, excess, which can be read as open-ended, or at times not to far
of from the sublime (the latter may be problematic for some conceptualists
who are critical of ideology).  The artist can claim that what s/he has done
is nothing but show what was already there, thereby appearing critical and
detached with proper distance, thus questioning not only what the role of
the artist is, but also the idea of originality.   This is what Duchamp did
with his famous Urinal.  As we all know, he did not do anything but choose a
work that exposed the artist's role in art practice and her/his relation to
the growing industrial world.  However, he was not directly questioning the
material aspect of the work of art.  Conceptualism did.  Whether moving
towards or away from the object, the point is that,in conceptualism, the
materiality of the object of art was in question.

With new media we experience work that is not materialized in the
conventional sense that conceptualism reacted to.  New media work is easily
reproducible (hence why Benjamin's "Mechanical Reproduction" is overcited in
such a field).  However, issues of originality and purposiveness were
already dealt with by other media such as photography and most importantly
film (we know this through Manovich's research). New Media is an allegorical
medium.  We can see this when we notice that it uses the language of film
and photography not to mention painting with great ease.  The viewers accept
such work because the codes at play are already common knowledge.  And this
is the key point to how political economy dependent on a materialist
approach to art practice after conceptualism  plays a role in new media art.

This is not so different from how political economy played a role in
conceptualism.  It was the platform to measure the work with.  The  new form
to critique is information, the object of art (of new media) is
metadata/data.  Materialization of information (however this may be) is an
after effect of power relations ending in careful distribution through
diverse forms--for the information can be reconfigured to meet the demand of
a locality according to a global market.  This is the object of
contemplation in new media practice and this is where artists who have made
work of note in such a field have focused.  And here we can find renewed
forms of resistance.  How such forms are analyzed is what is happening right
now.


This is the state in which  we find ourselves functioning.  What critics of
new media focus on is an elusive object (information) that not only can take
on several forms at once, but also which is not always dependent on the
traditional market.

Such work follows the threads mentioned by Christina McPhee of diverse
practices around the world, whose agenda's are quite diverse but still hold
on to resistance even in abstract form. This, I believe, also complicates
how pre-established theory can be applied to new forms.    And here, I
concede with Ryan; I think we can consider other works like Clark's  in
relation to matrixial space.  The symbolic and  the imaginary are at play,
let them enter the field of meta-data and take on different shapes.

Shall we try discussing them in relation to this?

Eduardo Navas