[-empyre-] politics anabashadly

[Renate Ferro]

Thanks so to Larissa and Isak, Horit and Nat for laying the groundwork for
our discussion this month.  In regards to Nat's comment again that Tim
pointed out below, I have been so moved and glued to the events being
broadcast here in the US from Egypt via cable television, network television
and National Public Radio.   The relationship between geopolitics, media and
aesthetics is so obviously before us that  early last week during my class,
Introduction to Video and Sound ,I decided to talk about the relationship
between mass media, viral networking and its affects of late on political
networking.  Interestingly I was saddened when many of my students,
themselves eighteen and nineteen, though users of Facebook multiple times a
day, had not a clue what was unfolding in the MIddle East. (Only one used
twitter irregularly).

For the remainder of the semester it will be politics, politics, politics
unabashedly.

In solidarity.  Renate

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 8:39 AM, Timothy Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu> wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20110209/844dfdad/attachment.html>