[-empyre-] Simon Taylor: Resolution for Digital Futures

[Renate Ferro]

>  I am stealing in to post a resolution for digital futures, if, indeed
>the plural and the singular ought to occur in that order; the best seem
>to have been by proxy so far, so to continue the trend of the best if
>not to come near it: please feel free to delete this post as it comes in
>from the fat land that is bound to be thinner hereafter:
>
>Since art is a faculty we share, perhaps it were better to make art not
>before reading our emails but before we are not alone, and then alone
>make what we are happy to call art before being disabused of the notion
>that we are. The digital social scene is centripetal, in its
>assumptions, this is the presumption. Or: perhaps we can do with less
>art; only the art which jams entertainment is green, surely.
>
>What calls to be theorised is a new proxemics, which includes more
>short-term thinking and less altruism.
>
>Short-term ought to be taken to an extreme and pushed back into the
>past, like a cuticle. It will hurt but the carbon burden will be less as
>the hurt increases.
>
>The wisdom of Solon in wiping out debt: capitalism we resolve we will
>support when it arrives. Insider trading in cultural theory will not be
>supported.  Futures are burdened with no expectations that defaults will
>be culpable. The punitive regime will not be hypostasised. Neither will
>representation.
>
>It will be new to be near because we will proceed from the notion that
>mutual understanding with universal textuality is and will be a lie. We
>will demand better lies from our artists.
>
>Every advance deserves to be turned back on itself until we find that
>thinking of it like we did forward was a futurism which was not creative
>and moving forward is presumptive and not creative; we will do better
>imagining ourselves at the end of a long dark age, where knowledge was
>less recognised than sinned against and limits were more recognised than
>exceeded... although we like to talk of moving forward...
>
>
>sticking in places,
>Simon


Bio:  Simon Taylor (New Zealand) Renate established and ran 
Stronghold Theatre Co., Auckland, New Zealand, 1992-2007 and Cafe 
Brazil, in Karangahape Rd., 1995-2007. He currently writes his blog, 
Square White World, and for and about theatre projects that funding 
bodies show no interest in. The digital remains a problem for him, a 
creative one,  in terms of its relationship to representation ...  if 
hands do the devil's work , do fingers do it at higher resolution?


-- 
Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Cornell University