[-empyre-] the artist in conflict

[Timothy Murray]

>Thank you ever so much Horit and Nat for your forceful and 
>compelling statements about your work and the challenges faced by 
>artists and teachers in the throws of conflict.    I'm particularly 
>thankful to Nat for honoring the memory of Ahmed Bassiouny, the 
>sound and media artist who as killed during the events of January 28.

I can't help but note the commonality of Horit and Nat's posts given 
their emphasis on "the situatedness of media" and how  "the politics 
and aesthetics of mediation" impact, as Nat puts it, "accountability 
and affect within an artistic context."   I can't think of a better 
way of describing the interventionist work of Horit, which I've been 
following and admiring for years as she has worked perilously with 
other feminist artists at the Israeli Palestinian checkpoints, 
checkpoints that imprint the very ontology of 'mediation' on those 
passing through it.

I welcome more thoughts by Horit and Nat (and certainly by members of 
the list-- recently subscribed members should know that they are free 
to join in the conversation, and can do so by replying to this 
e-mail) about how they understand the interrelatedness of 
accountability and affect within the artistic context.  One wonders 
whether such interrelatedness wasn't being practiced by Ahmed 
Bassiouny on the day of January 28, when his capture of sound and 
media would have been so crucial for the rearticulation of events 
happening so rapidly.  Or perhaps, in this instance, his very 
presence on Tahrir Square provided corporeal media through which such 
capture was itself an expression of resistance.

>Then there's the flip side expressed by Nat, how to "teach a class 
>on this topic
>without the class becoming a seminar in political history or a lesson
in activism only. " I must admit to having fallen under suspicion at 
times over the years by students who have felt that both my choice of 
artists under discussion and my emphasis on political topics crossed 
the line into activism.  From my point of view, I feel that we are 
imprinted with the ideological framework of our working conditions, 
which in and of themselves might constitute the very political 
histories or lessons of activism.  Conversely, I was recently 
speaking with an American graduate who wishes to work on tactical 
performance but whose professors urge her to select the oeuvre of 
"artists" for evaluation.  Couldn't the performance of Tahrir Square 
stand-in for such an artist?  Might mediation come into play when the 
public stands-in for the private, in a way in which creative 
approaches to social media might stand-in for more traditional means 
of artistic expression?

Tim
>


-- 
Timothy Murray
Director, Society for the Humanities
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
A. D. White House
27 East Avenue
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853