Re: [-empyre-] Farewell -- Thanks and final thoughts

"Christine Goldbeck" <cgoldie@verizon.net> · Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:12:23 -0500

Christina and Friends:
It has, as always, been an interesting month on empyre. I wanted to add 
something to the good-bye chorus:
Professor of Photography and Communications at New York University’s Tisch 
School of the Arts Fred Ritchin[1] reminded new media photographers and 
designers, “In order to contemplate its future role in society and the 
impact of new technologies, it is necessary to at least acknowledge that 
photography is highly interpretive, ambiguous, culturally specific, and 
heavily dependent on contextualization by text and layout.” (72)
May I suggest that we can remove the term "photography" and insert 
"videography," "writing," "reading," etc ... ?
in other words, these new worlds we are building as a means to foster 
something we perceive as beneficial (or even as just different) are heavily 
based on long-standing ways of being and doing... So, when we build our new 
places, using old windows, we must question and KNOW our motives and their 
background and we must be mindful of the myriad potential responses (based 
on myriad experiences and POVs) our work invites.
Are we changing opinions on issues on which our work is based? Sure we are - 
and in ways we may not have anticipated.
Are we always getting what we want? Hell no. Because the virtual world is 
often a mirror of the streets on which we work ...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Ritchin, Fred. In Our Own Image The Coming Revolution in Photography How 
Computer Technology is Changing our View of the World.  New York: Aperture 
Foundation Inc., 1999.

Best to all and again, THANKS for interesting discussion. See you next 
month.

Sincerely,
Christine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christina McPhee" <christina112@earthlink.net>

To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>

Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 2:14 PM

Subject: [-empyre-] Farewell to "Whispering in the Dark" and the Journal 
ofAesthetics and Protest

dear -empyreans-

As November draws to an end,    "Whispering in  in the Dark,
conspiratorial incantations"  have conjured  a thousand and one
jhinnis who will magically transport the reader, like Aladdin, to...
where? To the next adventure,
" embracing resistances where they may be found"
 (Deborah Kelly,  <https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/
2005-November/msg00012.html>

Thanks to the American artists, editors and writers involved in the
Los Angeles-based Journal of Aesthetics and Protest.
http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/
Bookmark the  archive of the complete discussion from this url:
https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2005-November/ subject.html

The Journal's remit -- and the focus of this month's discussion --
has been to ask,
"How can a discourse not be tied to the expression or promotion of
particular industrial technologies? How has and how can we reframe
the category of new media? How does new media and new media discourse
impact communities and social justice? How does the commodification
of discourse influence understandings of tactical media's
possibilities?"

Thanks to Christina Ulke, Marc Herbst, Cara Baldwin, Robby Herbst,
Ryan Griffis and Nato Thompson for generously giving of their time,
thought and writing craft for -empyre- soft-skinned space.  And not
least to list readers who challenged and supported the discourse
throughout, including,  Frederic Madre, jonCates, Alex Killough,
James Barrett, Deborah Kelly, Edmar, Christine Goldbeck, Kenneth
Newby, Henry Warwick, Elizabeth Day, and Simon Taylor.

Stay in touch for next month on -empyre- soft-skinned space, as we
turn to questions of art and cognition.

-cm
----------------------------->Cara Baldwin was born on a military
base at the end of the Vietnam War and has since returned to the
sound of helicopter blades rattling her crib. She received her MFA at
CalArts in 2000 and has since organized several projects that deal
with public space. She's an independent curator, editor, artist and
writer living in Los Angeles.
----------------------------->Ryan Griffis is an artist whose work
takes the forms of writing, curating and otherwise performative
activities, often in collaborative situations. Focusing on the social
problematics of technology, he writes regular reviews of art and
culture for Rhizome, ArtUS and other on and offline publications.
"YOUgenics," a traveling series of exhibitions and events about
genetic technologies curated by Ryan since 2001, was recently
exhibited at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a
member of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest collective and also
moonlights as a part-time travel agent for the Temporary Travel
Office - an ongoing investigation into the sub-rational desires for
mobility.
<http://www.temporarytraveloffice.net/>
----------------------------->Marc Herbst is currently completing is
a site-specific photo collage project involving neighborhood
demographic statistics aimed at communicating cold economic realities
to distinct homes. He works with pirate radio, diy and grassroots
media . He currently is beginning a group of abstract biomorphic
monuments to extinct or endangered community institutions such as
historical memory, telephone trees, and shared values. He teaches web
design, performance art and sculpture at UC San Diego and American
Intercontinental University LA.
sparkle[at]c-level.cc
----------------------------->Robby Herbst is interested in the
networks of visual media that foster the development of
intersubjective power. His new-genres practice explores, initiates,
and enacts democratic negotiations with culture. Since 1996 Robby has
been around the creation of several autonomously run media
collectives (Radio Dumbo, Indymedia Seattle and Los Angeles, Journal
of Aesthetics and Protest). Currently he is excited about the Journal
of Aesthetics and Protest’s slide library. The library attempts to
address the many problems of LA’s gallery and academic art systems by
unveiling “dark matter”, accomplished through the creation of a
publicly accessible archive.
<http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/projects/library/
slidearchive.html>
<http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/new3/index.php?
page=sholette>
<http://www.theoctobersurprise.org>
rherbst@journalofaestheticsandprotest.org

----------------------------->Christina Ulke lives and works as an
artist in Los Angeles. Her site-specific and often collaborative
public art practice revolves around questions of globalization’s
aftermath, the deconstruction of normalized racist technological
hegemonies and the articulation of a radically local iconography. In
an attempt to create locally meaningful discursive sites, Ulke co-
founded c-level (now beta-level) in LA’s Chinatown and is also a co-
editor of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Ulke currently
teaches at UCSD's Visual Arts Department. http://
www.ulkeprojects.com/ closeencounters.html
----------------------------->Nato Thompson is a writer, activist,
and Assistant Curator at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.
Recent curatorial projects there include "The Interventionists: Art
in the Social Sphere," a survey of interventionist political art
practices of the 90s, and edited a related book, "The
Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of
Everyday Life," MIT Press 2004. He is a co-organizor at the
Department of Space and Land Reclamation and strong believer in
radical practice. His writings on art and politics have been
published in tema celeste, Parkett, New Art Examiner, the College Art
Association Art Journal and In These Times. Nato is a contributing
writer to the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest.

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