Re: <nettime> ISEA 2011 fees

[Armin Medosch <armin@easynet.co.uk>]

Hi, 

initially I did not want to contribute to this discussion but since
givan bela has provided the cue

> so I would suggest that we leave the luxury cruise ship for what it  
> is, and together build another boat to sail the wild media art seas,  
> wherever that is taking us, non-affiliated artists and organizers,  
> etc...? [in the long run also ISEA and the other events would benefit  
> from it (it is a small world after all)]

it is necessary to add the link to my article on the "Wireless Loveboat"
at ISEA 2004.
http://www.metamute.org/?q=en/The-Wireless-Loveboat-ISEA-2004

where I tried to highlight the in- and exclusions that such a festival
produces exacerbated by the fact that part of it was held on a ship.
However, in this online version the footnotes have gone astray. This is
unfortunate because the footnote are as important as the main text -
this was the way in which this piece was constructed, the free ranging
style of the main text body makes only sense if read together with the
more factual subtext of the footnotes. 

ISEA always depended on the existence of a knowledge economy around
universities happy to provide funds for students and staff to attend
such a conference - a system which by its very nature skews the
demography of attendance to the richest countries. At ISEA 2004 hosts
actually made quite a considerable effort to raise additional funds so
that other people, non-institutionalised people, could attend. Yet this
just creates another layer of in-/exclusion, there are then on top of
those from universities with funds (where do those come from?) the happy
few handpicked to add more colours and flavours. 

I cannot understand the outrage at this year's fees because there is
nothing qualitatively new, it has just become a bit more expensive
(inflation?). For some its more expensive to go to Istanbul, yet for
others it would have been very expensive to go to San jose or Singapore,
the fees then dont make such a difference anymore. It maybe even smells
a bit bad to single out "emerging nation" Turkey for such critique, when
ISEA had been held at the heart of the US military-industrial complex or
at a veritable dictatorship with no-one haveing loudly voiced having any
issues with that

regards
Armin

-- 
thenextlayer software, art, politics http://www.thenextlayer.org



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