<nettime> Re: The Virtual Intellectual (by Peter Lunenfeld)

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

Reply: Documenta X lecture: The Virtual Intellectual
peterl@artcenter.edu (Peter Lunenfeld)

I think your case against les quadras is obviously stronger in a Western
European context that it is for us in the States, where the radicalism of
the baby boomers was always overestimated by both themselves and the media.
Interesting that you should have such a strong statement against this brand
of cultural politics in the context of documenta X which has been taken (at
least by American art critics) to be a nostalgic and retrograde look back
to that very moment and its artistic aftermath.

I like the idea of the Virtual Intellectual being "more than just a
spokesperson for the new media industry and the battalions of 'digital
artisans,'" but it's vital for the VI to have a connection (we can, of
course, no longer speak unironically about organic connections) to the
specfics of the media in which they operate. Part of the problem with Paris
(if we are to spatialize the theoretical landscape created by Virillio,
Baudrillard, Levy etc.) is that it tends to generate a
science-fictionalized discourse about the new media - the
professorial/professional  result of relying on graduate student
demonstrations of the new technologies to feed textual phantasms.

Peter Lunenfeld
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