<nettime> Hand over that media! Now!

[hromlegn kainn <hromlegnkainn@dbonanzah.org>]

Pamphlet for a new and cultural resistent art by a resistant culture: Hand
over that media! Now!

Century +1.

After the desillusion of the discourse that never-ended, the dialog that
never-existed , and the history that never-started , the postmodernists
slowly faded away in the millennium bug that never-happened. So, done and
over with the nineties, 2000 is like starting civilisation in the desert
amidst the carcasses of a bovine culture: yes, ill-literacy is everywhere. 
That means that the happy haydays of netart, media-art, net-activism and
web-art, are over. If there ever was a hope that new artists and
media-activists would mix, mingle and create a new context, build a new
infrastructure for a new kind of future art, it is certainly forgotten and
abandoned now. Push that escape button to get elsewhere, quick. 

So much.

So much for the individual original web-media-artist-activist, who happily
continues to compromise him/herself with setting up high-art competitions,
living from official grants to talk and have a jet-kick in global
abundance. More and more, formerly alternative and virtual networks are
taking part in officially supported initiatives set up by universities,
governments and super-governmental organisms. The danger of "subsumption" 
is immanent: any part taking into the former and ineffective structures,
will be punished by loss of memory, identity, and bodyweight. Voila! 

The stop-start.

So, we should stop looking at the past for anything else than the past,
and we should stop looking for explosives since no one ever hotwired
anything.  Next to selling the future in reverse, and giving webart to the
museums, webinstruction to the schools, there are more urgent things to
handle. We should turn over current power and skills to totally 'informal'
organisations. Back to the young and inexperienced, back to the noise -
digital noise - and let it develop by itself. No involvement by the
ministries of culture, education, family, playground, television,
computers, internet, whatever... Give it a chance, start! Even if it all
ends in "outcome uncertain", stay tuned for the blank screen, the
silence.ra, the failure:hooray! And know that there are worse things to
come. 

[hromlegnkainn@dbonanzah.org, 2001-1]
http://www.dbonanzah.org/untitled.html



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