[-empyre-] -empyre- July 2007: empyrean documents

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

hi everyone,

This month, we open up the context of the much-awaited Documenta 12  
and attendant Magazine Project to our network especially as we are  
being featured July 16 to 22, 2007 in Kassel.

If you've been to Documenta, fire away, send us your observations and  
critiques; even if  you haven't. No special guests this month: it's  
about our network as a group and your individual views.  Sergio  
Basbaum and I will moderate posts.



The online Magazine is finally online at  http:// 
magazines.documenta.de/frontend/


http://magazines.documenta.de/frontend/index.php?IdMagazine=59


 For our contributions to the magazine,  I still have some work to  
do, to put up more images and additional materials (some audio and  
movies from guests on the three topics).

 Please,  if you participated in the 3 discussions in March 2006,  
July 2006 and January 2007,  and have made audio files of any of your  
posts to the three topics, send them to me as mp3s as soon as you  
can, and I will be able to include them in my presentation in July.

Online,   I have also featured an especially interesting body of net  
based work by Sharon Daniel, called Public Secret. The project  
relates to the Bare LIfe topic, while Sharon was also a guest on the  
"What is to be done (educatIon)" forum last January.

I did go to the opening of Documenta 12 last month, and am about to  
return, courtesy of the magazine project, to represent you for an  
upcoming week of presentations, tentatively scheduled as follows,  
thanks to Alessandro Ludovico and Nat Muller.  This is a draft from  
Alessandro, not final, but the most recent info I have.  These are  
public events, so if you are able to be in Kassel during this time,  
please come and introduce yourselves and participate.  All events are  
in the Documenta Halle.


> > D12: Paper - Pixel
> >
> > Tue 17 July: 13-14h
> > Lunch Lecture 1: Bare Life: How to Survive the Paper Industry -  
> > Simon Worthington
> > Focus on the change in the economy of publishing;  practices such  
> > as *print-on-demand*, sharing of knowledge and resources, and how  
> > pixel eventually can be strategically used to insure the survival  
> > of paper.
>
>
> > Thu 19 July: 10.30-12.30: Processual Aesthetics - Processual  
> > Editing: Net- Working
> > presentation/panel/debate
> > participants: Alessandro Ludovico, Miren Eraso, Patricia Canetti,  
> > Christina McPhee
> > focus on the aesthetics and practices of networking, collaborative  
> > editing and publishing and how does all that tie into what ned  
> > rossiter had called *processual aesthetics*, namely an aesthetics  
> > that recognises the material and embodied dimensions of  
> > netculture. how do editors really work on the net, and where is  
> > the locus of pixel and where is the locus of paper?
> >
> > Thu 19 July: 13-14h
> > Lunch Lecture 2: The Art of Blogging - Regine Debatty
> > the *we-make-money-not-art* phenomenon.  focus on art critique and  
> > blogging (is a new genre of art critique born?).  blogging art~art  
> > blogging, what is the place of this parctice within high capitalism?
> >
> >
> > Fri 20 July: 10.30-12.30: Publishing the Public: Contextualising  
> > Locality
> > presentation/panel/debate
> > participants: Jaime Iregui, Fran Illich, Jose Carlos Mariategui,  
> > Nebosja Vilic
> > What does *public* in publishing mean (in regard to a public  
> > sphere for critique, or in regard as the public as readership),  
> > and how are conceptions of *the public* and how it is published  
> > shaped, affected by particular localities.
> >
> > Sat 21 July: 13-14h
> > Lunch Lecture 3:  [title undetermined yet, but relating to *What  
> > is to be done*] - Andrew Murphie
> > Focus on the change in academia/academic publishing OR this  
> > lecture will be an audio-visual performative  culmination of the  
> > past days and discussions




Some reviews on Documenta 12 :

http://www.eurotopics.net/en/presseschau/archiv/article/ARTICLE18175


the critics have been glum:





David Cohen, New York Sun: “The whole show feels like a consciousness- 
raising rehabilitation program for ‘bourgeois deviationists’ too  
concerned with the aesthetic realm.”

Holland Cotter, New York Times: Thoughts after a first visit:  
“Perversely esoteric, kinda like it."

Catherine Hickley, Bloomberg: What is bare life? I don’t know, but I  
do know it’s not a helpful curatorial leitmotif. “I’ll spare you the  
rest.”

Christopher Miles, L.A. Times: "The high points are few in the  
massive but disappointing exhibition.…The tendency to categorize is  
what plagues the show.”



but hey, -empyre-  reads well !  (it's in the fine print.)



-cm






> >