[-empyre-] political-aesthetic discourse on interactivity

[timothy murray <tcm1@cornell.edu>]

> I've been meaning to reply to Johannes who laments that there is "no 
> political-aesthetic discouse on interactivity."  While he might find 
> political emphasis to be slight in some criticism based solely on 
> phenomenological models that's not the case with all work written in 
> dialogue with philosophical sources (even Western ones).  Because my 
> own writing and curatorial work remains committed to balancing the 
> European and Japanese philosophical/critical traditions in which I 
> was trained, I am particularly wary of discourse that distinguishes 
> between the West and the Rest (Naoki Sakai is extremely eloquent in 
> warning us against this dialectic, whether voiced in support of 
> western or eastern writers).

I'd encourage us to take seriously the extensive bibliography for 
which the "critical" in Critical Spatial Practice has long been a 
commitment.  I would refer you to recent books by Arthur Kroker (The 
Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism), Samuel Weber 
(Targets of Opportunity: On the Militarization of Thinking), Jordan 
Crandall (Trigger Project), D. N. Rodowick (Reading the Figural, or, 
Philosophy After the New Media), Verena Andermatt Conley 
(Ecopolitics: The Environment in Poststructuralist Thought), and even 
my own forthcoming book that develops a postDeleuzian ideological 
theory of "digital incompossibililty" which notion I first discussed 
a few years back in CTHEORY (Digital Baroque: New Media Art and 
Cinematic Folds).  I recommend these books as examples of texts that 
dialogue with the traditions, say, of both Bergson, Deleuze, Derrida, 
Lyotard AND Debord, Marx, Marin, Lefebvre, de Certeau and Fanon [to 
emphasize only the French oriented examples--there are numerous 
others such as the tradition stemming from Negt/Kluge or the 
fascinating production out of Slovenia voiced/practiced by  Tanja 
Vujinovic and Zvonka Simcic or Marina Grzinic, not to mention the 
array of criticism coming from Latin America and Asia]. This not to 
say that exciting work isn't being penned from within confrontational 
postcolonial traditions, well represented by Joannnes's examples of 
Coco Fusco and Raqs Media Collective, but that we should be careful 
not to limit our perspective too strictly to one particular critical 
lens  (for example, the traditionally (French) poststructural 
journal, diacritics, is hosting a major conference here at Cornell 
next week on Marxism in Latin America).

> I fear that Johannes's performative statement might steer us away 
> from serious engagement with the wide variety of critical and 
> artistic work committed to the "political-aesthetic discourse" of 
> critical spatial practice, whether by Critical Art Ensemble and 
> CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA or by practical engagements such as Millie's work 
> with PED, long-standing interactive work by an exceptionally wide 
> array of international practioners from MONGREL, Muntadas, Lynn 
> Hershman, Jordan Crandall, Keith Piper, Shu Lea Cheang, and 
> YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES to younger or  lesser known 
> international practioners for whom spatial practice IS inherently 
> critical, such as the many artists that Arthur and Marilouise Kroker 
> and I featured in our special issue of CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA, "Wired 
> Ruins: Digital Terror and Ethnic Paranoia" 
> http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/issue3/index.htm).  Also of 
> interest to me is how James's very formal and practical concerns, 
> with +Parasite, to construct interactive installations in a 
> non-invasive way (using natural materials and temporary fixative 
> devices) have stimulated this viewer to reflect broadly on matters 
> of art and sustainability.

Of course there's also the wide array of texts and artistic 
interventions that address race, ethnicity, and gender specifically, 
often in dialogue with philosophical models, such as materials 
covered in texts by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Control and Freedom: Power 
and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics), Alondra Nelson and Thuy 
Linh N. Tu (Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life), and 
Jennifer Terry and Melodie Calvert (Processed Lives: Gender and 
Technology...), and Mary Flannagan and Austin Booth's newest 
collection on feminism and interactive practice, Re-Skin, etc. 
Indeed, Renate and I shortly will be introducing one of the coming 
week's guests, Catherine Ingraham, whose feminist concerns and 
critiques have been particularly helpful to the theory and practice 
of architecture.

While I enthusiastically welcome the erudition and provocative 
engagement of Johannes' posts, and particularly embrace his desire 
for ideological commitment, I wish to caution us against getting too 
sidetracked by "us/them" assumptions over who might best own critical 
spatial practice and over which critical precedents may best serve us.

Renate and I are confident that the month's guests will reveal an 
extensive array of critical spatial practice from which we all might 
hone our particular practices.

Tim


--
Timothy Murray
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
285 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York  14853

office: 607-255-4086
e-mail: tcm1@cornell.edu