[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> from hypertext to codework

[McKenzie Wark <mw35@nyu.edu>]

Thanks to Paul for 
his remarks, but i 
think, as they say, 
that
i want to break it 
down...

>the problem with 
the digital media 
scene - it is 
SUPER 
> WHITEBREAD - 
there is alot more 
going on....  
Yes, but when it 
comes to entities 
like antiorp or 
jodi, is it
all that useful to 
pose things in 
this old 
identity-bound
language?

>think about 
precedents for  
theater and 
spectacle outside 
of the >normal 
discourse that 
goes on...
Yes, but i don't 
quite have the 
freedom of 
movement that 
you
do, Paul. As an 
artist, you can cut 
and mix in a way 
that one can't
in scholarship. Its 
not the medium, 
its the genre. 

>this is a Mcluhan 
refraction of the 
old inner 
> ear/eye thing, 
but with a little bit 
more of a 
technical twist. 
Always been 
skeptical about 
that aspect of 
McLuhan, but I
think Ong is 
useful here. He 
talks of 
'secondary orality', 
which
is the orality that 
arises within a 
literate culture, 
but i think
there is also now 
a 'secondary 
literacy', the 
literacy that arises
within an 
electro-oral 
world....

> Artaud  was the 
fellow who 
invented the term 
"virtual reality" 
Oh really? 
Where? [scholar 
mode] "We must 
awaken the Gods
that sleep in 
museums." Yes, 
Artaud is a good 
handle for 
understanding 
the global media 
event. My first 
book already
covers all this. 

> this in itself is 
one of the major 
developments of 
20th 
> century culture: 
the ability not just 
to accept the 
linguistic 
> regulations of a 
situation (again, 
Debord meets 
Grand Master 
> Flash...) - but to 
constantly change 
them. This is one 
of the major 
> issues that 
Henry Louis 
Gates wrote 
about in his 
"Signifying 
> Monkey"  essay 
a long while ago
Yes, i once wrote 
an essay on 
Gates' signifying 
monkey and
Skooly D, who 
has a great rap 
about the 
monkey, the 
faggot
and the fat-assed 
pimp. Needless 
to say i couldn't 
get it
published...

> Alan Sondheim 
is 
> perhaps the 
equivalent  of an 
MC for Nettime
Alan posts to a lot 
of lists and does 
a lot of other stuff 
besides,
so i don't think he 
would want 
anyone to see his 
stuff here as
representative. 
But i think that's a 
nice take on it. 
Sondheim as
an MC of sense, 
of affect, cutting 
and mixing the 
letter to that
effect. Everything 
Alan does is a 
proposition about 
how to
read.

>but again, the 
field 
> could and 
should be 
expanded at this 
point.
Its your job to 
think like that, 
Paul, some of us 
have to work in
a different kind of 
time. Its not about 
slow or fast, but 
about
rhythms (all 
rhythms are the 
same speed as 
they all get you
there in the end). 
Its about being 
untimely. Mixing 
past and
present is 
another kind of 
mix. Blake and 
Integer. What is in
that edit? I don't 
see it as 
invalidated by the 
other edits it
passes over in 
silence.

> 1) multi-cultural 
variations in 
language 
You're an 
American, Paul, to 
whom 
'multicultural' 
means
multi-racial. 
That's fine, but it 
is not the 
definition of
multiplicity with 
which the rest of 
the world 
necessarily
works. I'm not so 
keen on the 
compression of 
difference
down to this 
narrow plane so 
as to squeeze it 
into 
American 
bandwidth. The 
celebration of 
multiplicity
going on right 
now is a 
frightening 
reminder of just 
how
narrow 
conceptions of 
difference are in 
the United States.

> multi cultural 
takes on this are 
alot more fun... 
Well they would 
be, but American 
multiculturalism 
isn't
much of a 
multiplicity. I find 
it tone-deaf to 
'patois' that isn't
minted locally. 
And look at the 
basis on which 
other kinds
of multiplicity are 
annexed to its 
needs: the 
appropriation
of 
postcolonialism, 
the Black Atlantic 
and so on. All well
and good, but in 
the long run just 
variations on the 
self
image of America 
in the world. 

So: there's a 
problem with the 
multicultural 
scene, its
SUPER-AMERICA
N. But, again, its 
not a criticism of 
you,
Paul, but just 
indiciative of the 
difficulty of 
working in this
place and time. 
Its hard to see the 
context, and how 
the
context shapes 
the discourse.

Thanks for the 
urls, which i'm 
looking at and 
learning from.

cheers

ken


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