[-empyre-] Body Politic and Technoutopias

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

dear  -empyreans-

It is interesting that this point was made on the same day  I met my  
new sweetheart PAM, Perpetual Art Machine, an excellent example of  
Christiane's and Warren Sack's observation.

http://www.perpetualartmachine.com/


Christiane Paul writes,

"So one could argue that database and related issues (bureaucracy /   
administration) were already very much part of the discussion   
surrounding conceptual art. But Sack pushes this into a different   
realm: the aesthetics of governance, where the “body” is a “body   
politic,” a collective, or groups of people articulated together   
through diverse sets of social and technical means.
I think this particular concept of governance and body politic is   
essential to the age of IT and networked database. It goes beyond  
the  aesthetics of administration in the databases of conceptual art  
and  has taken new form in the n-state."


Much depends on a spirit of generosity and collaboration on the part  
of the administrators in such an enterprise. Maybe in that way, not   
unlike many progressive visionary groups of the modern period  
worldwide.   Still the utopia PAM dreams of is a technoerotic heaven  
with spiritualist overtones:

a quote from the front page url:

[PAM] IMAGINES A CIVILIZATION WITH ACCESS TO VIRTUALLY UNLIMITED ART
[PAM] IMAGINES A CREATIVE SOURCE THAT IS ABUNDANT, FREE AND  
ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY
[PAM] IMAGINES A STABLE AND DURABLE ALTERNATIVE TO DEALERS, MUSEUMS  
AND GALLERIES
[PAM] IMAGINES AN ART MOVEMENT WHICH RUNS "COOL" AND HARNESSES THE  
ELEMENTAL FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE
[PAM] IMAGINES SUCH A MOVEMENT EMPOWERING THE WORLD

and the caps give you a clue PAM may be a bit tongue in cheek here.

Yet I  thrive on the translocal electronic venues for digital video.





Christina