[-empyre-] from temporary to unfinished

[School of Missing Studies]

Some very interesting comments and url’s—thanks for posting.

Ana, to comment on temporary autonomous zones, this is very pertinent  
in the Western Balkans. The question may be how temporary is  
temporary? This gets into the “unfinished” business.

First, so many individual initiatives sprouted up during and after  
the war.
Some were great like Ljudmila, kuda, center for cultural  
decontamination, etc. but others were things like war criminals  
building huge television empires that promoted turbo divas and  
nationalist sentiment. People are building their own family homes  
extra-legally, claiming a certain right to private property in the  
absence of the government’s ability to provide for them after  
socialism. But then, they are putting up their own fences around  
their property to block the world out. http://talkingcities.org/ 
talkingcities/pages/182_en.html  http://www.europelostandfound.net/ 
node/26

On one hand this is great because people were active and exercising  
free speech and expression—but the question of taking responsibility  
for this freedom is a huge question we think. The Belgrade artist  
group skart has a great project “your shit, your responsibility.”  
http://www.nyfa.org/nyfacurrent/skart/skart_page8_yourshit_part1.htm

So I still didn’t finish the thought on “unfinishedness,” but do  
others have thoughts on whether it is necessary for a project to be  
unfinished or to be immaterial (different but related concepts) for  
it to be participatory? This is a huge discourse now from Nicolas  
Bourriaud to Claire Bishop to Jacques Ranciere. But we wonder what  
art, design, and media creators really think and practice?

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