<nettime> Re: Leading Art Site Suspended

[Keith Sanborn <mrzero@panix.com>]

Although I am not acquainted with the details of the suspension
referenced, I must take exception to the neo-conservative rhetoric
espoused by Mr. Weil. To equate the corporation, the state and the
indivdual might be called "cynical or disingenuous," but I would say it is
simply non-sensical. To be exact, Mr. Weil uses a kind of
undergraduate moral relativism which makes the individual no worse than
the state or the corporation. The difference is that the state and the
corporation are legalistic fictions of so-called "representative"
democracy and that's just where the con-game begins. The individuals which
make up corporations and staff the bureaucracies of the state are
specifically NOT legally (the social definition of "morally") responsible,
which is precisely what we demand of the individual. This line about wake
up and smell the coffee, it's the 90s, not the 60s is precisely the smug
"end of history" rhetoric of a Fukuyama or Bloom. Therefore, are we to
conclude that we should all lie down and accept the" inevitable" march of
history over our dead bodies towards the greater glory of capitalism in
this best of all possible worlds? We should make a deal with our perceived
pupeteers instead of asserting our own political agency and establishing
our own channels of resistance and communications, though they be in the
margins of the digital juggernaut?

Make your own website. Start your own war. Or else pursue that hybrid
corporate museological career and don't forget your most Bohemian tin cup.
The digital lobbies of corporations are always in need of insouciant
decoration. Or as Manfreddo Tafuri might say: the fate of formal
innovation in the arts is to be coopted by advertising.

Keith Sanborn

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