<nettime> FW: commentary on Unsubscribe text

["anna balint" <epistolaris@freemail.hu>]

[Once I spent hours enjoying Ben Vautier's work called 'The Postman's
Choice'. It was a postcard with two different addressees on each of its
sides.]



'Il n'ya plus de centre de l'art.Chaque artiste doit se considérer comme
faisant partie d'un réseau' Robert Filliou - Eternal Network

Dear Ana, folks, auto replyer,

One of the fantastic aspects of the net is the immediate accesibility to
the texts, sources, works, people. One minute search on the web is enough
to acknowledge the context of a text, and find out that the Eternal
Network text was published. One more minute is enough to overcome the
impression that mail art circles were ever closed and kill roots without
appropriate understanding of the context. For people with theoretical
interest in mailing lists, networks, netart - the net will probably be a
minimum reference and relevance.

Unfortunately I did not find your text in the nettime archives, as it is
very raw and inefficiently organised. Contrary to such net archives, mail
art archives already developed archiving, filtering strategies, and
methods for organise information.

Art and media concerned BBSs, mailing lists owe a lot to the
correspondence networks and movements, even the mailing list technique was
developed in mail art circles, it goes back to the newsletter of Dick
Higgins and the New York Correspondence School of Ray Johnson. Besides
technical aspects, on the content level even nettime reproduced and
interfered with many of the mail art and fluxus phenomena - intermedia,
collaborative work, the multiples, the anticopyright movement, much of the
netart, media art, visual poetry, copy art, censorship questions, radio
art, sound poetry, fanzines, video art, computer art, alternative music,
alternative galleries, comes from the correspondence art and fluxus.

When about bulky correspondence art materials, many theories and concepts
cover them very well, correspondence art theories in the first place, but
the library of Borges as well, some notions of Flusser, the palimpsest (of
Hakim Bay as well), heteroglossic forms of Michael Bakhtin - his theory of
reverse culture covers your original text as well - hypertext, and so on.
When about transmission of idea, would it be a coincidence that one of the
moderators of the nettime list comes form the American Fluxus circles, the
other from the Advancement for the Illegal Knowledge group, the third
close to the Marshall MacLuhan heritage - of course connected with Fluxus,
as Marshall MacLuhan was first published by Something Else Press?

The concepts, theories, practices and attitudes of the correspondence art
infiltrated not only mailing lists, but contemporary art practices - the
call for artworks and papers for instance, its morality, its rules. The
idea, the illegal knowledge which circulated through postal network on a
global level became much more known and legitimate on a larger scale due
to the net.  Though many things originating in the correspondence art
became more visible, some still wait to be discovered. Topics, methods as
well. For instance correspondence artists adored trash, crab and junk,
they very much explored and recycled it. They very much liked to recycle
idea as well. When about empty places in mailing lists, the squatters
logic works, what's wrong in that? That logic brought up alternative
spaces, alternative radios, alternative tv's, alternative art, alternative
idea.  Nokia is a spammer? Great!  We found out that they traced the list
or they sponsored it? The Dalai Lama is spamming? Good that somebody
reminds me the question of who the Dalai Lama is! Integer was banned from
the syndicate, nettime, rhizome and infowar list at the same time? First
of all we all learn that these lists were connected. Their moderators
control (too much) and they lack humour - or the time did not come when
people accept no censorship, no jury rules. Her messages are overwhelming?
Did we know before that messages can mix private and public spheres, did
we know so much about private and public feed-back, did we question
content, language, filtering before? Didn't we learn something about
hidden and visible aspects of the email? Did some mailing lists die out?
Finally! New ones come, and maybe we will find out what is eternal. It
might be anything which breaks everyday routines. There is already much
said about spatiality of the net, many people explore utopia and atopia,
virtual space, spatiality in general. Much less is discussed the notion of
temporality, though some artists, theoreticians struggle with this
concept. At this moment my personal time perceiving is very much
determined by the commercial s/censors of net-works, as the
Telecomunication Company where I am connected lets me to work in the night
with less costs.  Robert Filliou did not wait the raise of the internet to
formulate his theories, maybe we still need time to properly understand
his notion of time with the help of the new medium. Eternity is a
religious notion? Which concept is not?

bests regards,
Anna Balint





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