[-empyre-] In memory of Marilouise Kroker 1943-2018

C. Saper csaper at umbc.edu
Mon May 28 10:57:03 AEST 2018 

Sometime a long long time ago — the mid-, to late-, 1980s, in a galaxy far
far away I attended a dual-presentation by the Krokers (in political
science by the way — not art, not comparative literature, not cultural
studies). My encounter was, like Ricardo Rene Dominguez’s (RRD), in Florida
… and they were very likely brought to town (Gainesville) by Greg Ulmer. It
might have been near the time of the Forget Foucault show in Miami, and
although I’m fuzzy on the geographical and temporal, the encounter was so
profound psychogeographically for two reasons — the Krokers were doing the
sort of decentering of the singular author that we were interested in and
also mixing the best critical theoretical illuminations with something like
the work I had seen by Peter Rose (who film The Pressures of the Text and
his performance with it; and around that time I also studied with Diane S.
Rubenstein — another fascinating political scientist) — I can’t remember
the order I saw them all (it is a blur),  but I saw Rose in mid-, to late-,
1980s, and studied with Rubenstein the next year. Watch the video that R.
R. Dominguez posted below — the sound sometimes fails, but overall it is
amazing — and for me was like a potion to take me back — Marilouise was
wearing a black jacket and the whole performance was like a concert with
the talk going back and forth like a haromonizing duet.

The Krokers though had/have another important effect on emerging knowledge
(as the video demonstrates — R. R. Dominguez posted the link below) on a
critical approach to the neurological reduction of everything to metrics
and measurements via the e-media data-mining of eyeballs and minds (the
video and their work is difficult to summarize in a paragraph or in a
tweet), but it was that also because they were from far Western Canada that
also left a lasting impression on me for we all knew (or at least I knew)
that we were both marginalized (Florida/Victoria are on opposite ends of
the continent … and neither place is Paris, New York, or LA). The idea of a
Florida School could have been a U Vic School — or a Panic School (which
might speak also to our contemporary situation)  — but in my mind it meant
that you didn’t need to live near the Yale School or the home of diacritics
… if the Krokers were doing it than I wanted to be there (wherever). The
folded the mapping.

Thank you Marilouise. And, condolences to Arthur.



On May 27, 2018 at 6:55:43 PM, Ricardo Rene Dominguez (rrd54 at cornell.edu)
wrote:

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

All my deepest love to Arthur for his loss.


Marilouise will always be dancing all night long with Critical Art Ensemble
in Miami in the late 80's after our show "Forget Foucault."

She was a brilliant shining star and along with Arthur offered us deep
support even if we were young and bumbling.


(I have an endless tales of her support of all the work I have been
involved in).


I first encountered the hyper-research on excremental cultures while taking
a lunch break from Rubyfruit Books, an independent lesbian bookstore, I
worked at in Tallahassee, Fl in the 80's. I would get high and go across
the street to Florida State University Lib. journal stacks floor and do my
own version of psychogeographics by closing my eyes and randomly drifting,
then stopping and just pulling out whatever journal my fingers happen to be
touching. I pulled out something entitled The Canadian Journal of Theory
and Politics. It was CRITICAL CRACK!! Exactly what I needed, what my crew
Critical Art Ensemble needed and we sniffed it up and didn't stop.


A couple of months after discovering the Krokers I had set up my book table
to sell my wares (by then I had Feminism Now: Theory and Practice and
Technology
and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant
<http://www.ctheory.net/book2.asp?bookid=15> and issues of the journal that
would later be published as the Postmodern Scene. The first day of the
conference had started and then (remember this was before you could
instantly stalk peoples visages on-line), I saw to fingers dressed in deep
black with neon yellow backpacks with a segments of a poem in French
tracing across them. In my dazed and confused mind I automatically knew
that what was sauntering down the hall were the Krokers (it is amazing what
a critically high mind can do :-). I hailed them over and presented my self
and their books. They were so happy to see them present in the cultural
frontier of Tallahassee, Fl. I tolled them to the ditch the conference and
come party with CAE. Without hesitation that followed me down the yellow
brick road and they never left our side.



Marilouise via the multiple gestures she co-produced with Arthur
established a critical aesthetics and algo-rhythms at the edges of what
could be thought and felt. She worked with me on getting the very first
gesture that I published under my own name in the 90's in Ctheory on
Digital Zapatismo. It with deepest love that remember her kindness, her
support and most importantly the depth and fearlessness of her critical
investigations.


The last time I saw her was in a show I co-curated at Gallery at CALIT2 at
UCSD entitled "Drones at Home" in 2012. Arthur and Marilouise came down and
did a series of lectures and performances. In the video you will get a
sense of her voice and also about an hour into the video you can see and
hear their experimental videos as well:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2sq4YO9hYE
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2sq4YO9hYE>
Exits to the Post Human Future + After the Drones
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2sq4YO9hYE>
www.youtube.com
This lecture by theorists Arthur and Marilouise Kroker and reception will
mark the closing of Phase 3 of Drones at Home, a three-part exhibition in
the gallery at calit2 ...
Con Amor Infinito,

Ricardo


------------------------------
From: empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <
empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Renate Terese
Ferro <rferro at cornell.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2018 10:37:20 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] In memory of Marilouise Kroker 1943-2018

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Thanks Tim and Ana, If there are others of you who have thoughts or
memories about Marilouise Kroker please post.  We will keep this thread
open until the 31st of May.
Renate

Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall 306
rferro at cornell.edu



On 5/26/18, 2:04 PM, "empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on behalf
of Timothy Conway Murray" <empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
behalf of tcm1 at cornell.edu> wrote:

    ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
    What a shock it was to learn of Marilouise Kroker’s death on Tuesday
after an extremely short illness.  Renate and I have so valued our years of
friendship and collaboration with Marilouise.  As Renate mentioned, it was
very much the influence of Arthur and Marilouise that urged us to join in
collaboration for –empyre- and other writing and curatorial projects after
firmly keeping our work separate for the first period of our professional
lives together, when Renate would work separately in her studio and I would
write my stuff across the house in my study, only to meet in the middle of
house at the end of the day to share our creations.  Marilouise and Arthur
helped us to understand that it could be exciting and creative to share our
voices in public.  Strangely the other couple similarly influencing us were
Helen and Newton Harrison, with Helen also leaving us in April (at 90, with
a good fifteen years of more production than Marilouise would be granted).

    Marilouise joined with Arthur to usher in the first wave of “critical
digital studies” with their tireless work on CTHEORY – the first online
journal – and their many publishing projects.  So many –empyre- subscribers
will remember the verve and edge of their infamous public critical
performances when, clad in cool black and amplified by body mics, they
would alternate reading their experimental prose with their characteristic
flat and edgy voices as if cyborgs clad in human bodies.  Marilouise was
one of the early critical figures to insist on the fractious rub of the
feminist voice on the culture of the big daddy mainframe.  Her 1993
collection with Arthur, The Last Sex: Feminism and Outlaw Bodies, provided
a  cyberfeminist stage for the likes of Kathy Acker and provided an added
echo chamber for the growing and loud resonance of global cyberfeminist
voices of those pioneering figures and collectives such as Donna Haraway,
Sadie Plant, VNS Matrix, Old Boys Network, and subRosa.

    Renate and I enjoyed a magical semester with Marilouise in Ithaca when
she and Arthur were in residence at Cornell’s Society for the Humanities
for the 1998-99 theme year, “The Virtual.”  Even when Marilouise was
struggling with severe back pain at the time, she was always laughing and
mischievous in planning the next critical disruption of the utopic digital
scene or when sending me and Arthur off to the ice rink for what she would
call our “philosophical skates.”  And I so well recall her infectious glee
when Reggie Woolery and Srinivas Aravamudan cooked up the idea to launch a
pirate internet radio program of music and critical interviews in which she
and Arthur starred (perhaps one of the very first such online radio shows,
which Cornell soon shut down over copyright paranoia).  Just before they
came to Ithaca, Marilouise and Arthur seized upon the emergent multimedia
capacities of the internet to launch their first multimedia version of
CTHEORY: “Digital Dirt”  (http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu).  Aiming to
infect “the antiseptic cleanliness” of “the ruling illusion of digital
reality,” “Digital Dirt” provided a mixed media platform for interventions
in noise, e-art, and text.  As we spent that Virtual period together at
Cornell, we hatched the idea of creating a separate space for critical
net.art, “CTHEORY Multimedia,” which we opened at the Cornell Library with
the help of Associate Librarian, Tom Hickerson.  Profiting from library
programmers and designers dedicated to CTHEORY Multimedia, we produced
three additional issues of net.art whose criticality and artistic breadth
were unparalleled on the international scene: “Tech Flesh: The Promise and
Perils of the Human Genome Project,” “Wired Ruins: Digital Terror and
Ethnic Paranoia,” and “NetNoise” for which we jointly wrote curatorial
statements.  These issues are remarkably still accessible.  Co-writing with
Marilouise and Arthur was such an intellectual and stylistic thrill for
me.  My critical style has never been the same!  One of my favorite
memories was joining them on a phone call, when I dialed them in Montreal
as I sat in the parking lot of Arthur and my favorite Ithaca ice rink, when
Marilouise characteristically and so gently yet firmly always came up with
the perfect solution to the prosaic differences we were struggling over.
For NetNoise, we also recorded our readings of our curatorial statements.
We combined our voices for the introductory curatorial statement and then
each of our voices were featured on the statements framing the individual
net.art pods. On Tuesday night, after learning the sad news from Arthur, I
clicked on the link to the curatorial note for “Sound Culture” and
marveled, as I’m doing again right now, at the remarkable grain of
Marilouise’s voice.  As I conclude this brief homage to Marilouise, I
invite you all to join me in listening to the critical verve and haunting
voice of Marilouise’s contributions to critical digital culture:
http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/four.php ).

    The grain of your NetNoise lingers on the net, dear Marilouise.

    Tim

    Timothy Murray
    Director, Cornell Council for the Arts and Curator, CCA Biennial
    http://cca.cornell.edu
    Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
    http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu <http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu/>
    Professor of Comparative Literature and English

    B-1 West Sibley Hall
    Cornell University
    Ithaca, New York 14853



    On 5/26/18, 11:54 AM, "empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
behalf of Renate Terese Ferro" <empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
on behalf of rferro at cornell.edu> wrote:

        ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
        Sorry all.  Sent out the unedited version inadvertently. Use this
version to pass on to others please.

        Tim and I are heartbroken to write to all of you today.

        Marilouise Kroker, died earlier this week at home on May 22, 2018.
She was an author and Senior Research Scholar at the Pacific Centre for
Technology and Culture, University of Victoria. With her collaborator and
husband, Arthur Kroker, she wrote Hacking the Future (1996). She also
co-edited and introduced numerous anthologies including Critical Digital
Studies A Reader (2008), Digital Delirium (1997), Body Invaders (1987), The
Last Sex (1993). Arthur and Marilouise also jointly edited the online
academic journal Ctheory, an international journal of theory, technology
and culture. Collaborating with Tim Murray they created the curatorial
online project, C-theory Multimedia. For more of their work:
        http://krokers.net/
        http://ctheory.net/ctheory_wp/author/marilouisekroker/
        http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/

        Marilouise and Arthur Kroker have been vital parts of our personal
fiber for the past twenty years. It has been their courage and trailblazing
efforts at personal collaboration that provided us the beacon of example
for us personally.  Tim’s common work and writing for CTHEORY Multimedia
has been one of the personal and artistic highlights of his career.
Marilouise was ripped from Arthur so quickly and cruelly.

        Over the next week, until we introduce the next topic hosted by
ShuLea Cheang please feel free to add thoughts and narratives about
Marilouise.  We send our heartfelt condolences to Arthur at this time from
the entire –empyre- soft-skinned community.

        Renate Ferro
        and Tim Murray





        Renate Ferro
        Visiting Associate Professor
        Director of Undergraduate Studies
        Department of Art
        Tjaden Hall 306
        rferro at cornell.edu



        On 5/26/18, 11:47 AM, "empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
on behalf of Renate Terese Ferro" <
empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on behalf of rferro at cornell.edu>
wrote:

            ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
            Tim and I are heartbroken to write to all of you today.

            Marilouise Kroker, died earlier this week at home on May 22,nd
2018. She was an author and Senior Research Scholar at the Pacific Centre
for Technology and Culture, University of Victoria. With her collaborator
and husband, Arthur Kroker, she wrote Hacking the Future (1996). She also
co-edited and introduced numerous anthologies including Critical Digital
Studies A Reader (2008), Digital Delrium (1997), Body Invaders (1987), The
Last Sex (1993). Arthur and Marilouise and Arthur also jointly edited the
online academic journal Ctheory, an international journal of theory,
technology and culture. Collaborating with Tim Murray they created the
curatorial online project, C-theory Multimedia. For further colaborations
see the following links:
            http://krokers.net/
            http://ctheory.net/ctheory_wp/author/marilouisekroker/
            http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/

            Marilouise and Arthur Kroker have been vital parts of our
personal fiber for the past twenty years. It has been their courage and
trailblazing efforts at personal collaboration that provided us the beacon
of example for us personally.  Tim’s common work and writing for CTHEORY
Multimedia with the Krokers has been one of the personal and artistic
highlights of his career.  Marilouise was ripped from Arthur so quickly and
cruelly.

            Over the next week, until we introduce the next topic hosted by
ShuLea Cheang please feel free to add thoughts and narratives about
Marilouise.  We send our heartfelt condolences to Arthur at this time from
the entire –empyre- soft-skinned community.

            Renate Ferro
            and Tim Murray



            Renate Ferro
            Visiting Associate Professor
            Director of Undergraduate Studies
            Department of Art
            Tjaden Hall 306
            rferro at cornell.edu



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