Sketch of a critique of the networked festival format

19 July 2002

A mail from Florian Merkur of Jul 18, 2002 to the serverfestival list suggests the serverfestival should become a part of next 5 minutes and vice versa. N5m is 'an occasional, large scale, festival of tactical media making from around the world'.

The serverfestival as instance of a format

This shows two things:

• it demonstrates that the serverfestival uses or instantiates an increasingly popular format (format in the sense of "oil painting or "video installation")
• it shows in an exemplary way the aesthetics and rhetoric of such an event, that it will try to cast itself as counter-event (following Debord and or other traditions of cultural criticism) while being forced to retain the event character for any outside public and any funding bodies.

While being process-oriented, networked, open, transparent, flexible (pick any other catchword), it serves at the same time the expectations towards modern cultural practices or institutions in producing demonstrable (fundable) public output, only in a different format. (This is not what may be considered most important about it, but rather a mere side effect; still, it describes the material basis of such events: e.g., 'What do we get out of it in terms of sustaining the cultural capital of this city?')

The format may be characterised by the following points:

• rhetoric of open 'networked' workspace instead of exhibition room. The emphasis is on the nexus between artists or activists, not on that between artist and non-artist / consumer / member of the public.
• Seemingly, lower entry barrier for artists towards professional distribution mechanisms and the respective sources of revenue . Whether this is possible only because the link between respected activity and income is weaker needs empirical (if anecdotal) research - compare Diedrichsen's phrase ('wer nichts außer sich, seiner Arbeit und deren Preislosigkeit verkaufen will, macht in diesem Sinne Kunst.') in Das Netz als Technologie permanenter Inklusion
• The rhetoric of a transparency of production for the public (whereever the concept of 'public' still appears). At bottom is a change of the concept of 'public'. The position of the public is no longer opposed and complementary as in the theatre or cinema, nor asynchronously relayed as in the individual addressee (the reader of a book or spectator of a museum object). Both are confronted with the final result of the artist's activity. Instead, the position of any 'public' is now lateral. An early example oif this gesture is an exhibition of '69 in which Robert Morris used the gallery as studio, progressively documenting in photographs changes to a range of (physical) material. The public gets closer to the inner workings, it is given a prominent place to observe, but by the same token it is defined mainly as observer, critic, or sometimes sparring partner.
  
  Many parallels from Morris' setting can be drawn to the setting of the networked cluster of activities surfacing as n5m or serverfestival (and, I bet, many others). The transparency relates to the fact that the entire process from planning to final exhibition is potentially made observable (e.g. via an email discussion list), or in other cases, open for participation often with some degree of curatorial filtering.
  
  The gesture of inviting the public to witness the artistic process has several implications and effects:
  • it demystifies the artistic activity, at the same time it lays bare the functional professionalism (command of means of artistic production - in the case of the serverfestival, using ftp, setting up mailing lists, mixing streams, scripting and programming, etc.)
  • it suggest an entry to the activity is possible while communicating via the observable professionalism an implicit standard for participation that will keep out or keep as inactive observers, most of the potential participants.
  These standards are implicated to some extent in technical knowledge, but more importantly, in cultural knowledge: in the implicit demonstration of the capability of entertaining a certain discourse, being able to respond to certain terms without revealing oneself as inadequate. The excluding power of this discourse is strong, even if there is no closed or dogmatic terminology or rules of the game beyond a vague notion of shared opinions (or shall we say cliches) regarding counter-culture, anti-globalization, freedom of speech, anti-repression, anti-copyright, open source, etc.
• The rhetoric of participation, or stronger, dialogue. This is the strong-hold of the anti-author position - a collective practice emerges as an inter-play between equals, from a shared activity of dialogue or discussion which is in itself the main 'event' or purpose, especially, in a critical cast, in its relation to exisiting social practices. The practice may produce traces (photos and remnants from installations at the high time of conceptual art, web sites, mail and document archives today).
  
  The concept of participation itself has come under critique: 'participation is not enough' (Christoph Schäfer, Park Fiction) - the aim should be for access of anybody to the same means of cultural production (compare Beuys).
  
  The individual spectator: the visitor who is neither co-artist nor cultural professional (journalist, curator, politician, sponsor) is an imaginary point of reference, and in a more political and didactic context, the estranged nomad who should be elegantly lead to comprehend the world that is opaque to him or her, and pick up a bit of political or aesthetic conscience.
  
  Most individals that do take part in shared art activities have either a professional or artistic background that helps bypassing entry barriers, or have some prior informal relation to the initiating artist/activist(s). There is nothing wrong with that. It is just helpful to see that nothing seems more difficult than establishing an authentic relation to the other who is not already peer.
  
  In many cases the other is
  • either allocated a certain role, to be eshrined in a concept and documented in its traces like a fly in the amber (this can be traced back to pieces such as James Collins 'Introduction piece' (1970) in which he approached two complete strangers, documented the shake-hands in a photograph, and asked the strangers to sign a template describing the format of the documented meeting. Template and photo together then constitute the material trace of the piece.)
  • or the putting in of fleeting appearances, usually only in a short quip in a (physical) visitors book or (electronic) guestbook. The discomfort can be read from the brevity of the input and the 'humour' or pointedness of the quip which seems to indicate a gesture of ' I'm not going to get in your way, let me just remark..'
  The rhetoric of networking and collaboration. As individual artists gang up to produce formats such as the serverfestival or n5m, they are for once driven by the realisation that together, they may have a working environment to demonstrate artistic concepts that involve a multiplicity of interlinked actors. Secondly they may realise that the group activity has better chances of geting noticed and funded than individual(istic) projects.
  
  As the networked genre gets more popular, artists and others collaborate to sustain various instances of this practice and build the critical mass (a tangible market in the future?) in the same way as freelance designers or filmmakers employ one another in a give-and take manner to survive the conditions of economic dependance on large companies playing the outsourcing game.

Concluding notes on the networked format

The format of creating shared environments, linking loose clusters of 'nomads' into more or less permanent art and research ensembles sounded radical 10 years ago, but it has now best chances to become the definitive standard if not to say, ruling dogma of curators and public funding bodies (just browse through the recent artgenda or manifesta programmes).

As the public rhetoric catches up with the networked culture, it discovers welcome traits to re-integrate the exotism of electronic nomads, hackers, webloggers and cultural students back into the established activities of production, industrial design, architecture and urban planning. Rosalyn Deutsche has shown the role that art in the public space has played in the gentrification of parts of New York and the consequent displacement of lower income groups and the homeless.

What is the position of critique given here? (future link)