Re: [-empyre-] the emperor's new clothes

[Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis@gmail.com>]

On Oct 29, 2006, at 2:49 AM, blakkbyrd wrote:
> You don't seriously expect me to respond to a thinly veiled  
> accusation that I am   just copying something i saw on nettime?
>
> You have raised an interesting point, thankyou. Why should my  
> questions be challenged?  Shouldnt they be answered?  Are you  
> questoining my right to question?
>
> Still querying the legal aspects.

no, my intention was not to suggest a mockery of the nettime  
discussion. however it seemed odd not to acknowledge them (not on  
anyone else's part but my own) given the kinds of questions that were/ 
are coming up. i wouldn't even pretend to know whether anyone else  
here even read nettime lately, except for those that have posted to it.
And i certainly wouldn't try to challenge the "right" to question,  
but in a discursive space like empyre, the responsibility that comes  
from producing scrutinizable "objects" is on all of us, not just the  
"artist" of the month. we can all question the "motives" "intentions"  
and "effectiveness" of a project described here, demanding  
"evidence," but those questions are likewise open to challenge - as  
to their relevance and the ideological position that they stake out  
in their rhetoric.
i'm still unsure of why you began with an assumption about the work  
in question's politics that you merely sought to confirm for the rest  
of us through rhetoric.
the author is not only dead, s/he took the audience out as well. last  
time i checked, there still wasn't a survey impartial enough to gauge  
"audience" reception.
i don't question the relevance of the questions nor their political  
importance of the questions. i do question whether these questions  
are productively engaged in this instance. especially when that  
assumption is based on a theory that the project is a marketing  
exercise. is that analysis sustained by looking at the rest of  
deGeuzen's work?
i would maintain that the political question is one of affect, not  
effect. and i don't know that the quantifications you're looking for  
get us to that matter. i thought i addressed this earlier, but know  
that these discussions can be pretty circuitous. you challenge the  
appearance of marketing in the project by taking on the role of a  
administrator (a grant administrator at that), asking for "factual  
evidence" of the project's efficacy? Would it's effectiveness as a  
marketing exercise validate or invalidate it for our purposes here?
perhaps this gets me to the questions i initially began with... we've  
been arguing over "facts" but what is our "concern"?
ryan