Re: <nettime> limits of networks...

Dear Kristoffer, et al,

Yes, you have hit on it for me...

and basically up until today?>

Very important - as it is not the tools per se or the platform, but now, possibly new contexts in which even tactical media or “community-based” networks occur, which utilize varied tools.

I have been doing both artistic/curatorial research and community-based work with non-profits around these overlaps. With waterwheel.net, a team of 30 curators programmer online performance and events for a week with 120 artists from all over the world. This project, the brainchild of Suzanne Fuks and James Cunningham, utilized popular online tools such as Skype and Facebook and email - along with a custom designed media archive and online performance space. Suzanne kept this network in close connection for 3 years. We integrated our work remotely with the Balance/Unbalance festival at Arizona State. For me, this project about water and art was, in addition to the art, ingenious for a) it’s utilization without apology of everyday social media b) it’s capavity to connect in person and online via online performance space - for conferences/panels such that we all actually “saw” and “met” and heard each other. I am still connected to many of the artists I worked with!

Local “campaigns”, for instance, for safe walking streets - from senior citizen groups - use Twitter, FB, etc and more to “network” —while neither art nor sophisticated, these campaigns do represent living communities with “interest in common” - condition of the old online communities AND, importantly, blur distinctions between virtual spaces and “real” spaces.

The latter point may seem crude, but it’s possible that social networks such as these are an historical advancement on communities which put the network before the flesh meet, or never had a flesh meet and died OR never had the “real” profile pic at least to color and pepper the imagination.

I’m no fan of Facebook per se...but it’s not FB alone, but a helpful feature of FB to have visuals...

So talking theory...I throw this bone...with bandwidth depletion out of the way and compression technologies vastly superior, network practices have been able to better color-in their members...add more graphics...enrich and make robust vision of community. This may be an important development in network practice and one to assist radical practice...as well as a reason why we are occasionally depleted by text-only communication.

I will post later a link to Haraway interview where she talks about making networks now

On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 7:25 AM Kristoffer Gansing <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear all,

Maybe I can take the opportunity to plug in to the running discussions
by shamelessly plugging the announcement of the next transmediale
festival which aims to deal exactly with the topics of networks, as it
appeared here as a recurring common concern.
https://2020.transmediale.de/festival-2020

I think its quite interesting how the thread on nettime being in a bad
shape and the one Rachel O' Dwyer started on net-art is converging
around questions that have to do with how the limits of networks have
become more tangible today, technically as well as in the form of
"network idealism".

Molly Hankwitz wrote:

> The question comes up more and more - where is the whole idea of networks
> that was once? Answer: sorry, social media has everyone blissed out on
> their own screen.
>
> The great debates that enlivened networks of the 90s, have become muddled
> to the point that "networks" per se don't seem to carry much weight online
> - now its the app, its the website - which don't always reflect a living
> community of net-users as we know...or maybe we are imagining networks
> differently than before and that does not help. Common interests which
> drove the formulation of networks and network 'flows' seem to have been
> replaced by something else. Who is the we of any network now...

Rachel:

> Can we still speak about ?tactical media? or ?the exploit?, and if not is
> this because
>
> a) network activism has transformed so that these older descriptions no
> longer accurately describe net art and ?hacktivist? practices, or
>
> b) these art practices have stayed much the same, but they are no longer
> effective in the current political and economic context?

I would not agree with David Garcia that these meta-discussions is a
sign of the decline of nettime however, rather that the discussion of
networked forms seems to be returning at the moment, maybe especially
also on a list like nettime, because it seems as if it disappeared from
the big "digitalisation" debates that are now anyway everywhere. (except
for the breaking up of THE social network) Meanwhile, users are
returning to smaller networked forms in the form of the fediverse or in
other intimate constellations taking their cue from safe spaces and
intersectional practices online, offline or rather in between. Maybe we
need new ways of modeling networks also beyond the canonical Baran
diagram of centralized, decentralized and distributed, along with
nodocentric visualizations that have been so prevalent from the 1990's
and basically up until today?

best,

Kristoffer

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