[-empyre-] politics anabashadly

[Renate Ferro]

definitely...go for it....we always use links but never attachments or
images per say...r

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 10:08 AM, nat muller <nat at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> renate,  there was an interesting piece on the bbc about the role of social
> media.  would like to share it with the list:
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12400319
>
>
> On Feb 9, 2011, at 15:21, Renate Ferro wrote:
>
> 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
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