[-empyre-] politics anabashadly

Thu Feb 10 16:44:36 EST 2011

I'm jumping in before my 'proper introduction'.....

Sitting in my in-box right above this thread about the role of the Internet in the uprisings was an advertisement from the New York Metropolitan Opera for their upcoming live HD broadcast of John Adam's 'Nixon in China.'
That opera's aria starts with the unforgettable lines "The People are the heros now / Behemoth pulls the peasant's plow"

The story of the 'social media revolution' still seems to be under the same logic. The people are still the heros, but now our definition of Behemoth has changed. Its no longer the Maoist idea of cultural revolution or the classical Marxist idea of historical determinism. Now Behemoth is the Internet and social media.

In the same way that we left behind these over-determined concepts of Mao and Marx, we need to watch out for the over-determination of social media. 
No more Behemoths.
Remember, the revolution will not be televised, streamed, linked, liked or friended.

(speaking of links...! you can hear that part of the aria here:
http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/broadcast/hd_events_template.aspx?id=11964    )

Kevin McCoy
NYU-Abu Dhabi
mccoyspace.com

On Feb 10, 2011, at 3:46 AM, Isak Berbic wrote:

> In regards to social media and Tahrir square:
> 
> 27th of January internet and mobile phone service was shut down in Egypt. Mobile phone calling services were restored the next day sporadically, though it was not stable but not impossible to get through. Soon after shut down again.
> 
> On the 2nd February users of Vodafone received the following text message:
> ---
> Received 11:55am Wednesday 2nd February 2011 (before SMS services were restored / before people could send messages to others)
> Sender: EgyptLovers
> مظاهرة حاشدة تبدأ ظهر اليوم الأربعاء من ميدان مصطفى محمود لتأييد الرئيس مبارك
> Translation: Mass protest today, Wednesday, starting from Mustapha Mahmoud Square in support of president Mubarak
>  Vodafone recently made a public statement saying they were forced to send out the message. 
> ---
> 
> Subsequent to the network wide broadcast of this SMS opposing demonstrations formed, the event with horses on the streets occurred, followed by devastating violence into the night and the next day.
> 
> Internet was eventually restored on 4th of February. BBM and SMS were also sporadically restored between the 4th and 5th of February.
> 
> Since then people on the square have been using electricity from city light posts to charge their devices.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is remarkable how in this instance the government quickly learned and utilized the immediacy and responsiveness of social media. While the anti-government organizing occurred through the forwarding of messages (much like a chain letter), with access to the telecommunications company itself the Sender: EgyptLovers was able to broadcast to the entire network of users. The SMS is foolishly pretending to be anonymous or "from the people" rather than from a particular source. Regardless, it successfully brought out a significant amount of people to the streets for conflict.
> 
> 
> 
> Isak Berbic
> February 10, 2011.
> 
> From: nat muller <nat at xs4all.nl>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Wednesday, February 9, 2011 7:08 PM
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] politics anabashadly
> 
> 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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