<nettime> Interview with Kevin Murray

["geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>]

Interview with Kevin Murray
By Geert Lovink

Kevin Murray, writer and curator in Melbourne, Australia, is a refined and
knowledgeable person. I hesitate to say exotic because it is such an
outdated term. Let's say he is singular. A sophisticated intellectual with a
preference for the alien point of view. The variety of his interests are no
doubt unique. He is an Albania expert, if I may say so, and familiar with
East European cultures. He works as a part-time artistic director at Craft
Victoria, a regional crafts organization, rather unusual for a new media
curator. Kevin has a significant online presence, currently as the online
editor of Art Monthly. On top of that he has also been on boards, organized
conferences, has an impressive list of publications, and is very much
involved in Melbourne's cultural life. Always in  a critical manner, as the
following e-mail interview shows.

GL: Coming from a visit to New Zealand you are in South Africa at the
moment. What are your activities there?

KM: I am mostly trying to find out how black and white interests engage with
each other in the 'new south'. The New Zealand case seems paradigmatic of
the reciprocal relationship that might exist between two races in the
post-reconciliation era that beckons. Thanks partly to historical
circumstance and the Maori spirit of friendship, it is possible for the
European descendents in New Zealand to call themselves indigenous in a way
that is less fraught than in other ex-British colonies of the south. This
identity has a nominal and concrete expression. On an official level, the
Maori word 'Pakeha' is used to denote those of European stock who inhabit
the land. Culturally, the 'Stone, bone and shell' school of New Zealand
jewelry has carved (literally) a distinctive tradition out of European metal
smithing, Maori motifs and indigenous materials, such as pounamu (South
Island jade). How does this compare to the paths traveled by Balanda
(non-indigenous Australians) and Umlungu (non-black South Africans)?
Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have well established sporting
links, mainly through rugby and cricket.
I am interested to explore the kinds of cultural links that might accompany
these exchanges (www.craftvic.asn.au/south). It is possible to claim that
the end of apartheid has led to a reduction of cultural ties with South
Africa. We knew how to support the struggle of a repressed
people, but we don't really have a grasp on how to relate to the 'new South
Africa', other than fear and trepidation. Australia is home to a large
expatriate South African and New Zealand population. Rather than becoming a
Club Med nation for white businessmen, we need to keep open links to their
origins. All this is given urgency by the slide of southern currencies. The
financial failure of the Melbourne Biennial is testament to the increasing
costs in staging events within a northern framework. I've heard talk since
in South Africa of south-south connections, such as trade links with Brazil.
It would be good to try a few of these in the cultural circuit, rather than
presuming a radial framework where everything must go through the centers.

GL: You have a special relationship to Melbourne trams.

KM: Trams rescue Melbourne from being just another large Western city. Their
practical utility as public transport is sublime. But privatization has made
Melbourne's tram system as a site of struggle, with an enduring alliance of
ex-conductors agitating against the evils of a world operating on remote
control. Trams provide the props to fantasize that a city like Melbourne
actually has a soul. One of the wonders of the new South Africa is the
emergence of the mini-bus network that covers the nation with frequent
service, cheap fares and daredevil feats of driving. In Cape Town,
mini-buses with names like 'Poor Man's Friend' and 'Who Let the Dogs Out'
provide instant contact with people and friendly advice. The jockeys who
hang out the door collecting fares and shouting destinations seem a
reincarnation of Melbourne's lost tram conductors.

GL: One of your projects dealt with the question of coincidence in history.
What would have happened if Australia would have become a Portuguese colony?
Or Dutch? What fascinates you in playing with alternative scenarios?

KM: The 'what if' histories help place reality in a meaningful context. The
Portuguese colonization of Australia is a particularly apposite speculation
given the situation in East Timor. Since the First Fleet, the relaxed morals
of the Portuguese colony in Rio have provided a contrast to the god-fearing
path of British colonists. Now in East Timor, the new Australian colonists
come up against the Portuguese. The Portuguese supported the struggle for
independence on the world stage and have a natural sympathy with the people.
However, they left virtually no infrastructure in the country despite
centuries of colonization. What if Australia was Portuguese? It may have
been a mess, but it would have been an exciting one. I've been interested in
the power of fictions for a long time. My PhD was titled 'Life as Fiction'
and the project How Say You (www.kitezh.com/howsayyou) explored the creative
potential of pseudonyms. The logic is that our experience of reality is
always framed by an understanding of how it might have been otherwise and
how it could be different. Changing the horizon of possibilities is one way
of altering our reality. Plant a utopia and see what fruit is bears.

GL: You have recently done a show about digital weaving. It was focussed on
possible similarities between craftsmanship working with textile and the
"weaving" of websites. The analogy between writing code, linking documents
and the computer as a loom is a whole history in itself. What is your
strategy here? Is it your purpose to unveil broader cultural patterns,
thereby tempering the expectations of the New which still surrounds the
computer?

KM: While outmoded technologically and conceptually, the crafts have an
active role to play in contemporary arguments. It is not just a matter of
advancing crafts into the digital age, but of keeping our feet on the ground
as the kite flies higher and higher. Crafts offer an uncanny 'shock of the
old' to counter the saturation 'schlock of the new'. Similarly, tribal
systems such as Albania's challenge the increasingly abstract cultures of
the west.
Now to weaving, I'm not so much interested in the similarities between
making tapestries and building the Internet. Weaving is 'women's business
'-immediate, tactile, communal and expressive. The Internet is 'men's
business'-diffuse, abstract, individual and utilitarian. The weaving
metaphor is a bridge that enables travel between the two worlds. The results
are live discussions where men and women explain each other's practice. In
Adelaide (www.craftvic.asn.au/loom), we included a string theorist into the
conversation, which is even more abstract than the Internet. What emerges is
not a common understanding, but a live encounter-maybe a dialectic, but
without the synthesis (further, you could say male and female is the warp
and weft, crossing but never joining, but that shows how entangling the
weaving metaphor can become).

GL: New media arts in Australia has turned out to become a very specific,
not to say narrow discourse. You also work in other arts fields and curate
shows in the "contemporary arts" sector. Could you give us an ethnographic
view on how this particular set of ideas and arts practice has come into
being? Where does, for example, the fascination with hardcore science and
biotech in particular come from?

KM:  Where I live, the public face of new media was constructed at the end
of the 20th century by a specific state government agenda to catch the next
wave of economic growth (Alan Stockdale was both state treasurer and
inaugural minister for multimedia). While previous state governments
sponsored arts that counterbalanced the mainstream, the Jeff Kennett agenda
was to support whatever could be labeled as 'contemporary'. Celebration of
the techno-simulacrum became government policy. This peaked with the
election campaign based on jeff.com.au site, which included a GrandPrix
shockwave for potential young male voters to take a spin (it still exists as
www.jeff.com.au, but has been made-over to the new crew).
What I've tried to do over the years is bring new media into the same
critical discussions that include other visual arts. In Binary Code
(www.kitezh.com/bc) we tried to get art critics and new media persons
talking to each other. The result was mutual indifference. In two CD-ROM
shows, Bug (www.kitezh.com/bug) and Chip (www.kitezh.com/chip) we tried to
find a non-technological thematic-insects and psychoanalysis-for the small
screen. The fear is that new media succeeds as a form of technological
evolution, but fails as a medium for expressing anything of the world
outside itself. These shows heralded works that succeed in conveying
something beyond the medium, but I'm still worried.
More broadly, I'm interested in shifting the art-craft debate into the newly
wired contemporary gallery. Video and photography have displaced painting
from the contemporary art space. Painting now shares more in common with
ceramics and weaving than it does with screen art. Whereas before, the
critical difference was between 2D and 3D, today it seems whether the work
is inside or outside the screen. Getting the screen to relate to the outside
world can be an inspiring challenge. One of the thrills of the Museum of
Sydney design was the way it combined ethereal Pepper's ghost effects of
video floating on glass with the hard-core physical substance of chains and
milestones. Rather than an escape from the wet world, digitization seems a
useful detour on the road back to the world of flesh. As photography
migrates to the screen, the darkroom finds a new meaning
(www.craftvic.asn.au/darkroom). As the world becomes more densely wired, the
realm of offline becomes more significant (www.kitezh.com/offline).

GL: You are working part-time at Craft Victoria Gallery where you did a show
called "Instrumental". The centre mainly focuses on such things as glass,
wood, building violins, jewelry and textile. How does the computer fit into
this world? Could computers been seen as instruments? They are usually
portrayed as tools, isn't it?

KM: I find the contrast between 'bench' and the 'screen' particularly
useful. The bench is a horizontal surface, on which objects can be handled
and worked. Put objects on a screen and they fall off! This stupid
difference actually bears further thought. The floating world behind the
screen provides a perspective for understanding the mysteries of the
bench-making a smooth edge, finding the grain of the wood, throwing a pot,
turning a tree into a violin. Things fall into place using the gravity of
the bench.
The ur-text of new media, 'Myst', christened the computer with the sacred
status of tool for the mechanical world. Players operated their computers
like mechanics, fixing the broken contraptions of a fallen world. But this
is largely a fantasy of computing, which connects it with the familiar
material world. I disagree when people say about their computer, 'it's just
a tool'. It seems a miserable cap on the imagination to reduce the screen to
a mere practical device. It's a machine for navigating a path through the
ocean of information. It has the promise of evolving new collective forms of
understanding that are beyond the scale of the bench.

GL:  In 2000 you curated the "Loom" show in Adelaide. Its website states: "'
The analytical engine weaves algebraic patterns as the Jacquard loom weaves
flowers and leaves' wrote Lady Ada Lovelace describing Charles Babbage's
first mathematical calculator. As with many other creative arts, our
traditional image of weaving is being challenged by the evolution of ever
more complex forms of machinery. The image of a patient weaver at the loom
seems to be increasingly rare, even nostalgic." You noticed that much of
today's weaving occurs at the computer screen. How do you see the
relationship between textile weaving and the digital world wide web? Is
there any interaction between these two worlds or is it just an analogy?

KM: What's to be gained by reducing a computer to a loom? It grants the
virtual world a material lineage; it introduces a gender politics of labour;
and it provides an aesthetic license. Maybe more. The loom metaphor can be a
very productive, but it has a limit. As an interlacing device, the loom is a
comprehensive mechanism where shuttles create a weft that encompasses the
horizontal structure of the warp. The Internet is clearly more rhizomic in
nature, with branches bifurcating endlessly. From the other end, textile
arts are migrating to the screen. There's a Jacquard loom at the Montreal
Centre for Contemporary Textiles that enables weavers to 'print' a scanned
image into tapestry form. It's not quite as simple as that, though. Weavers
still need to manually translate screen colors into thread structures. This
'flaw' offers a window for artistic expression. It will be interesting to
see how long that stays open. Louise Lemieux B�rub� has some stunning
tapestries of dance photography (http://www.lemieuxberube.com)-there's a
contrast between the instant of the camera and the measured time of the
tapestry.

GL: The Loom show focussed on possible similarities between craftsmanship
working with textile and the "weaving" of websites. The analogy between
writing code, linking documents and the computer as a loom is a whole
history in itself. What is your strategy here? Is it your purpose to unveil
broader cultural patterns, thereby tempering the expectations of the New
which still surrounds the computer? The website says: "As with many other
creative arts, our traditional image of weaving is being challenged by the
evolution of ever more complex forms of machinery. The image of a patient
weaver at the loom seems to be increasingly rare, even nostalgic." You
notice that much of today's weaving occurs at the computer screen. How do
you see the relationship between textile weaving and the digital world wide
web? Is there any interaction between these two world or is it just an
analogy?

KM: I'm not so much interested in the similarities between weaving
tapestries and building the Internet. Weaving is 'women's business' -- it's
immediate, tactile, communal and expressive. The Internet is 'men's
business' -- it's diffuse, abstract, individual and utilitarian. The weaving
metaphor is a bridge that enables travel between the two worlds. The results
are live discussions where men and women explain each other's practice. In
Adelaide (www.craftvic.asn.au/loom), we included a string theorist into the
conversation, which is even more abstract than the Internet. What emerges is
not a common understanding, but a juxtaposition -- perhaps maybe a
dialectic, but without the synthesis. You could say male and female is the
warp and weft, crossing but never joining, but that shows how tangled the
weaving metaphor can become.

GL: Could you tell us something about your involvement with Albania? It is
perhaps not the most obvious topic of interest for a Melbourne art curator.
How do you keep informed about the ins and out of the Tirana scene? How
would you describe contemporary Albanian cultural politics, ten years after
the fall of communism and the opening of the country?

KM: The world has become so homogenized now, the best way to experience
something foreign is to stay at home. Getting to know Melbourne's Albanians
initially led me to enjoy all the exotic features of a foreign
culture --haunting music, strange language, difficult food and conversations
about the fundamental things in life
(http://home.mira.net/~kmurray/world/albmelb.htm). But then, I began to
realize how similar they were to Australians -- more Australian than
Australians, you could say. They had a trust in higher authority that
Australians share -- Albanians seem just a little more expressive about it.
There is a very good Albanian artist in Melbourne, Arsim Memishi
(www.kitezh.com/soil/exhibit/ttszam.html). Being an artist is quite foreign
to their sensibility, so Arsim's projects most of his creativity into
building kitchen cabinets in a business with his brother -- making houses in
Melbourne's poorer western suburbs.
After the end of communism, artists literally came out of their closets
(painting has been forbidden without official license). Expressionism burst
forth in quite unadulterated forms, like bits of paint rags stuck to canvas.
The wholesale dismissal of social realism and folk culture seemed another
sad fracture in Albanian culture.
In the west, we are getting very little news about Albania. This silence
suggests that great advances are being made in that country. News from other
sources confirms this and some Melbourne Albanians are returning from Tirana
with ecstatic accounts of the motherland. This enthusiasm is tempered by the
situation in Macedonia, where most Melbourne Albanians originate. Their
inherent fatalism has been renewed as the political situation unravels.

GL: Is Albania a mirror for you? How does it relate to the state of
Australian multi-culturalism? Ghassam Hage has analyzed it in his book White
Nation. He came up with a radical critique, relating the state ideology of
multi-culturalism with the rise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party. Human
rights organizations are criticizing the harsh conditions in Australia's
detention centers, which are hidden in the middle of the deserts, far away
from the urban centers. Immigrating to Australia has become next to
impossible, in sharp contrast to the common perception overseas. It's only
allowed if you belong to the rich and bring in enough resources, like the
whites from Zimbabwe and South Africa. And particular bad if you're from
Middle East or let's say Kosovo. Is this situation reflected in the arts?

KM: Albania is a piece of Europe that has drifted into the orient. Much of
its history has been in the thrall of the east: five centuries of Ottoman
rule and five decades of Maoist-style totalitarianism. This has been
punctuated by brief periods of 'enlightenment'-the Albanian renaissance of
the late nineteenth-century and the experiment with democracy in the early
1990s. The dream is that Albanian might transcend the grip of the east and
enter the world of freedom in the west.
For Australia, the situation is exactly the reverse. For most of its
colonial history it has been beholden to the values of the western world, as
evident in the White Australia Policy that underpinned its birth as a
nation. Of late, its cultural struggle has been to embrace the world of its
neighbors, to be part of Asia.  Both Albania and Australia seem to be
pushing against the grain of their own cultures in order to be part of their
immediate world. Albania resists the pull of the east that Australia gropes
for. Australia seeks to wrest itself from the west that Albania aspires to.
Perhaps they should just do a swap.
Despite this symmetry, there is a significant difference in the kind of
isolation each country experiences. Albania is isolated from the rest of the
world by three mountain ranges: the Pindus, the Dar and the Dinaric. The
geographical isolation has bred a culture that seems out of step with the
rest of the world-a world of honor, revenge, pantheism and national pride.
Isolation is also a plight that Australians have complained of, as in the
legendary phrase 'the tyranny of distance'. Of course, this is a chimera.
Australia is far from isolated from its immediate neighbors, such as
Indonesia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Borneo. The colonial mentality bemoaned
the distance from the Western centers. Since the Russian threat in the late
nineteenth century, there has been a fear that Australia would be cut off
from its mother country and left to fend for itself in the region. Thus the
fraught hospitality offered to people seeking shelter on its shores. Asylum
seekers are kept in prison-like conditions in the least hospitable parts of
the Australian continent. Kosovars were given only tentative hospitality
before being shipped back to their shattered homes. If only Australia were
as isolated as Albania.
While mainstream culture is hooked into the West, Australian artists
continue to develop links with Asian cultures. This has become a
well-trodden route for artists seeking to incorporate oriental themes into
their work. The result has been some quite evocative and deeply personal
work. The plight of our 'exotics' imprisoned at home needs to find a voice
as well. The media sensationalises their presence, while artists seem best
placed to take the human measure of their condition.

Kevin Murray's writings plus his CV can be found  in his extensive web
archive: http://home.mira.net/~kmurray

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