hello all,
I realized this week that I had completely forgotten to respond to Esther Polak's request for examples of alternative symposium models. Yesterday would have been the best time to finally sit down and talk about it, but unfortunately I was very busy. One of the things I had to do was score a bucket full of Italian ice cream to celebrate the 15th anniversary of 'net.art per se'. This small but legendary gathering on May 21st 1996 is one of the examples I was talking about, but there are more.
As I wrote earlier, it surprised me to find such well informed people come up with such a limited description of symposia and conferences. In hindsight I guess what they were addressing is probably a very particular kind of event, and very particular presenters: big events with (generally) lots of financial backing, inviting very specific speakers that are on the road nearly 24/7, who are delivering the same speeches everywhere. I do believe that in the larger scheme of things such events and speakers are a minority. Maybe, and please don't take this the wrong way, the writers of the Juxtaposium proposal have 'arrived' at a certain level of events, the most institutional kind, and do not see the many smaller and alternative events that are no less important?
Anyway, before I dart off on another lengthy criticism of the juxtaposium idea, let me try to give a few different examples of fruitful events that I have witnessed myself. In most of these the boundaries between audience and speakers was non existent. This is at the top of my hat, and I know that alternative conference models have been around since at least the sixties. I read in Dark Fiber by Geert Lovink that for example the founders of de Waag, Carolien Nevejan and Marleen Sticker, were also adamant to avoid the traditional, hierarchical conference model in events in the early nineties. A quote (page 246): "Using audio-visual media, constantly changing position of tables and chairs and a sharp, witty rhetoric of well instructed chair (wo)men, attempt were made to cut through the routine pitches of experts, politicans, and writers. Remotre contributions via telephone, video conferencing, web cams and chat rooms were brought into the local debate."
I am sure the examples I mention (above and below) in my mail are not the only ones, and that these alternative conference practices have not disappeared and are still alive today. I welcome anybody chiming in and giving some, but I know that is rare on mailing lists these days... So here are my examples:
1: The First Cyberfeminist International, at documenta X in 1997. In the summer of '97 the Orangerie in Kassel was occupied by ten different groups for ten days at the time. It was called Workspace, and each group had a very alternative presentation model, which was partly due to the setting: it was an open workspace with people coming and going. There was not a symposium audience, but an exhibition audience, which behaves differently. The mailinglist Faces, for women working in new media culture, was one of them. They organized a very loose and sympathetic event, part of which were talk sessions, in which everybody would gather in a circle and discuss issues. There was no hierarchy. there was only a shared interest in (cyber)feminist issues. There was not even a very tight schedule, if there was one at all. My memory fails me on this point. This conference model reminded very much of that of Beauty and the East, the first nettime conf, in spring 1997, but there was more openness for experimentation.
2: There are the three net.art events I have described in my book Nettitudes: net.art per se (in Trieste, Italy, organized by Vuk Cosic), Digital Chaos (in Bath, UK) and 'the secret net.art conf', and event in the 'Anti-with-E series (in London, both organized by heath bunting). In all these meetings the emphasis was on participation and accessibility (of 'experts', or a leveling of roles), and on escaping the traditional conference model. True, net.art per se was so small one could say it was an 'insiders only' event, but the whole idea of these kind of events is a very basic destruction of hierarchy and the creation of true social interaction. This happens in small and bigger meetings.
3: The Cool Media Hot Talk Show is another very interesting model. This was/is an initiative of Tania Goryucheva, and was organized and (literally) programmed by Eric Kluitenberg and Michiel van der Haagen of De Balie in Amsterdam. It was an event that could be entirely planned through an online audience. Special software was created through which anybody could compile an event, choose the speakers, have it voted for, create questions, etc. The event itself happened on and offline. The online audience could vote for specific audience questions that came up during the event itself.
What is missing in all these models is of course the Big, Awesome Expert. What I am missing form the juxtaposium proposal is any view on the role (and value?) of this expert and of the audience. It just wants to get away from boring speakers talking about themselves or the same things over and over. In a living social environment people actually do not get away with such behavior. Having someone discuss the work of another person is no alternative in my point of view: I do it almost every time I give a lecture, and so does almost every critic and theorist. What is interesting however is getting real conversations going between real people.
best, J * ______________________________________________ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
