<nettime> no need for Mute

[t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

Mute magazine has been running a crowd-funding campaign for the past
several weeks, and happily they've met their goal. Which means there's
no *need* to send an appeal to nettime. Indeed, if anything, they should
be acknowledged for their principled restraint in that regard. Most
would-be crowd-funders will stop at nothing to 'mobilize' every 'social
network' within arm's reach, and often -- as we know -- many that lie
beyond reach. Not Mute.

Now that Mute's effort has escaped the all-or-nothing demands that drive
so many CF efforts, their appeal can take on a different valence. The
hostage has been released and the jaildoors are open: the prisoners now
face a more old-fashioned dilemma, still 'existential' in a way, but
more like Sartre and less like game theory.

It's tawdry to use the word 'gift' in such a crass context, I know, but
the gift never really existed outside of its ~economic context, did it?
And, anyway, if ever there was a publication that embodied the gift in
form and substance, Mute is surely a strong candidate. They've been
doing it on a shoestring for close to twenty years now, and hopefully
they'll keep on doing it for twenty MOAR. Exceeding their modest funding
goal would be beneficial in its own right; and doing so is the kind of
thing that can impress Measurers farther down the line -- an essential
if oft-missed aspect of how the logic of the gift plays out back and
forth over time.

The point isn't that you 'should' donate, because, god knows, they were
never in it for the money; from day one, it's been about reading,
writing, debating, and disseminating ideas and (yes...) 'practices.'
Beneath the banal request there remains the very human gestures of
support and mutual aid; and lately some of the people who've maintained
Mute all these years have been extending very concrete support to many
other entities and histories displaced by aggressive attacks on cultural
institutions and histories. Or, as Mute puts it: Proud to be flesh.

Behind every click there's flesh. So go click around:

     http://www.metamute.org/

Cheers,
T





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