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Cultural Exchange via Internet - Opportunities and Strategies Forum of the House of World Cultures, Berlin |
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Insights into the Debate: 8 July - 29 August 1999 Access to the quoted postings Members of the mailing list: with a click on the annotations you open an email-window with the respective command (Message-ID) for retrieving the quoted contribution. Immediately after sending the message you will receive the text via email. If you are not a member of the list, this doesn't work, unfortunately. But there is a way to access the email archives to read and search by keywords. To subscribe: see modalities - or send an email to join-forum1@hkw.kbx.de. The summer vacations in the northern hemisphere led to a temporary lull in our forum's activity. However, between the 8th of July and the 29th of August, 25 members made 38 contributions to the debate, excerpts of which we - as usual - are presenting according to topic: Projects Once again a series of interesting projects of various kinds were introduced. Here is a short summary: Alicia Haber 1) from Uruguay presented the project "The Virtual Museum of Arts El PAIS" (MUVA) of which she is Director. It has been online since May 1997 in an "effort to give visibility to the arts of a small country from Latin America." Based on the idea "to use the Web as an exhibition medium that can recreate the museum experience", four architects have designed a "virtual" building, which means the visitors move through its seemingly three-dimensional rooms just as they would in a "real" museum. "The construction of a real art museum like the outstanding ones in the First World would have cost a prohibitive sum for the Uruguayan economy. ... At the same time Uruguay doesn't have the budget to organize several itinerary exhibitions per year and that is one of the reasons why many people do not know about Uruguayan art." At the conference "Museums and the Web" in Toronto in April 1998, the MUVA won one of six prizes that are given to online museums throughout the world. [http://www.diarioelpais.com/muva] Sabine Bitter 2) informed us about the website "But Is it Politics? Circulating Ideologies and the Bloc of Art". The project, an examination of art's political potential, was initiated by herself and Helmut Weber during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada (October - December 1998). The site publishes statements and artworks by participating artists. [http://www.lot.at/politics/] Oliver Grau 3) wrote about his research project "Art history and media theories of Virtual Reality" at the Institute for Art History of the Humboldt University in Berlin. "The primary task of the art historically oriented project is the examination and systematization of different forms of using Virtual Reality and the reveal of methods and artistic strategies that are used to force the recipient into the image." [http://www.arthist.hu-berlin.de/arthistd/mitarbli/og/og.html] As a supplement to the debate on Aboriginal art, Amanda McDonald Crowley 4), Director of ANAT (Australian Network for Art and Technology), announced the First National Indigenous Summer School in New Media Arts held from the 5th to the 23rd of July at the Visual Arts School of the Northern Territory University in Darwin. The project was developed in collaboration with the New Media Arts Fund and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council especially for indigenous Australian artists and was led by Brenda L. Croft (Gurindji). 14 artists were chosen to participate. [http://www.anat.org.au/ - see projects] In a later posting, McDonald Crowley 5) made reference to "Resistant Media", a web exhibition project that she curated. Each participant works with different strategies of online technologies. A portion of the project is a discussion list which deals in part with art and the Internet and the common development of tactical media strategies. [http://www.anat.org.au/resistant-media] Natalia Blanch 6) described the Global Women Project Exhibition. The exhibition is scheduled for June 2000 in White Columns in New York and will present one woman artist from every country in the world. It is being run by Prof. Claudia DeMonte, University of Maryland at College Park. Blanch named several countries who are not yet represented by an artist in the show. Ravi Sundaram 7) is one of the initiators of the Sarai project which was begun in Delhi in January 1999. After a comprehensive introduction to the role of new media in India, he explained the project's intentions. "Through different forms of new as well as established media practices, theoretical interventions, research, education, and activism", Sarai creates "an open and lively space for a bold and imaginative re-constitution of urban public culture, especially in a South Asian/Asian context, with strong global links". With Sarai, various ways of approaching a situation are united to "challenge the existing elitist bias of the usage of new media in third world societies, by opening out access.... to those sections of the public who would otherwise be excluded from the hermetic virtual corridors of the new information technologies". The project is a "step forward in the direction of creating a model for an equitable distribution of media and communication resources, accessibility and connectivity between developed information societies... and societies with enormous information needs and few information resources such as India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan or Sri Lanka." Sarai reaches out to the local communities and regional areas as well as working in collaboration with media initiatives throughout the world, while searching for a "new cultural politics". Sarai thinks, "it is time to transform the terms of the debate itself, not just quantitatively broaden it, by making space for the Third World." Catherine McGovern 8) belongs to the Canadian ISEA team of the Workshop for Web-Art Dakar Web in Senegal. At the moment she is looking for artists and partner organizations for her new project "Wireless" (working title). It proposes "four one month long trips in remote regions throughout the world during the year 2000. The participating artists will travel by bicycle, interacting with artists from Canada and the host countries and with residents of the regions to be travelled in. The artists will produce individual and collaborative web-based art works exploring the issues surrounding the concept of a "global village" at the turn of the millennium." ... "Internet access will be via cellphone/satelite uplinking and all electrical power will be generated by the human powering of the bicycles." She is considering northern Canada, Vietnam, Mali and Uzbekistan as possible destinations. [http://www3.sympatico.ca/~catmcg] Peter Schneckmann 9), art director of the organization for international cultural exchange "die brotfabrik" in Frankfurt/Main, told McGovern that he would consider incorporating her project into the festival "Different Colours - One Freedom" to take place in 2000, and that he had passed her suggestion along to other artists. [http://www.brotfabrik.de] In a later posting 10), Catherine McGovern referred to a mail she had received privately containing a criticism of her project. She was told that it was typically "western" to travel to "exotic" places and "couldn't the money be better spent teaching the citizens of those countries how to use the net and/or providing them with access?" In this context McGovern asked: "what are the implications, problems, issues surrounding the idea of organisations or individuals from the West going to developing countries to implicate themselves in art projects, as collaborators, educators, technical advisors, etc?" She received support from Tom Vincent 11) and Pat Binder 12). In a further mail, McGovern 13) emphasized the necessity with these kinds of projects for an "open attitude and a belief that one has much to learn from the people of the country where one is." In connection with a call for participation, Pat Binder 14) referred to the International Women's University (IFU) which will be held in Hannover parallel to the EXPO 2000. It will give 900 female students from all over the world the opportunity to take part in a post-graduate, interdisciplinary program in English. The IFU is especially interested in the participation of women artists and political activists working for NGO's. Applications are being excepted until the 15th of October 1999. [http://www.int-frauenuni.de] Juan José Díaz Infante 15) informed us of "Century XXIX", a group exhibition of Mexican videos from 1990-1999, curated by himself and Mónica Domínguez. It is on view until the 5th of September at the Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo and will continue on to Buenos Aires and Ushuaia. [http://www.altamiracave.com] Ricardo Iglesias 16), artist working at the Media Centre d'Art i Disseny (MECAD), Sabadell, Barcelona, shared his thanks for the cooperation on his project "references". However, he is still on the lookout for servers in Africa, Asia and South America. He then received relevant information from Catherine McGovern 17) and Patricia Ortiz Monasterio18). [http://www.mecad.org/net_condition] Publications In several postings, publications were introduced dealing with the forum's thematic context which invited the members of the mailing list to a collaboration with magazines and/or webzines and discussed strategies of web publishing: In his "Columna de Arena" (column of sand), José Roca 19), Director of the Art Department at the Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango in Bogotá, finds it important "to counter the absence of serious art criticism [in Colombia]" by publishing a bi-weekly column on the Internet with "critical reflexions from Colombia". At first he sent them as e-mails to only "a handful of friends", a few newspapers and a cultural magazine. Time and again he expanded the circle to include a "sincere and interested" audience. He was surprised at how well this strategy worked; in the meantime over 300 people are included in his distribution, not just in Colombia and in Latin America but in countries outside of the region as well. One advantage of this medium, Roca emphasized, is "that the relationship critic-artist-readers is horizontal, meaning that any one can respond very swiftly and that his or her response will be displayed at the same extent and with the same editorial status as the original article. This has made possible several ardent debates...". He acknowledged the significance of a parallel web presence, brought about by Universes in Universe, which "allowed people outside Colombia to get to know about the Columna, and by extension, of Colombian artistic activity." [http://universes-in-universe.de/columna/indice.htm] Harald Friedl 20) announced the new issue of the magazine "zum Thema" featuring "The art of traveling - modern escape into a virtual paradise?". (Nr.31, 26 July 1999) [http://www.zum-thema.com/archiv/index.html] Parallel to the exhibition "Alexander von Humboldt - Networks of Knowledge", the House of World Cultures published a comprehensive e-zine on the life and work of the German scientist and research traveller. It was presented by the editor Ute Hermanns 21). She described Humboldt as "a figure of intercultural activity, whose transdisciplinary scientific thinking was a forerunner in overcoming the paradigm 'Centre-Periphery.'" Hermanns felt "if Alexander von Humboldt were alive today, he would be fascinated by the technical possibilities of telecommunication with Internet and e-mail" and explained why his travel journals would be so appropriate for this medium. [http://www.hkw.de/english/culture/1999/humboldt/humboldt.html] Hassan Khan 22), Senior Editor of "Alive", presented this "international monthly theme based magazine about people". "The publication would have been impossible without Internet", he pointed out. "Being based in Cairo, Egypt means being at a strategic disadvantage in terms of media flow and control. ... Our budget would never have given us the global reach that the internet has provided us." He asked for contributions and suggestions, especially for the coming issue "Policemen" in which police officers from all over the world are interviewed. (Deadline: 5 September) [http://www.alivemag.com] Partha Pratim Sarker 23) sent in a press release on "bYtES For aLL", a website and mailing list. The editors are Frederick Noronha, a Goa-based freelance journalist interested in developmental issues, and himself, web designer and online activist from Dhaka, Bangladesh. He listed the focal points and invited to take part with information and links. In a later mail he announced the August issue with its table of contents. [http://www.bytesforall.org] Robert Bernell 24) sent a newsletter on the newest issue of Chinese-art.com, devoted to Chinese art at the 48th Biennale in Venice, "where international curator Harald Szeeman 'played the China card'". Among the authors is Britta Erickson, a forum member. She wrote a contribution on Cai Guoqiang, winner of the International Prize of the Biennale. [http://www.chinese-art.com] Olu Oguibe recommended 2 publications: "Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace" 25), a critical anthology edited by himself and Okwui Enwezor is available from InIVA and MIT Press. "Third World Wide Web" 26), a special issue of Third Text (Nr. 47, Summer 1999), Kala Press, London. Guest Editor: Sean Cubitt Borges, Violence, Earthquake Victims As Olu Oguibe was writing "on the fiction of tradition and the inescapable dangers of the concepts of origin and fatherland" and once again became interested in Jorge Luis Borges, it occured to him that it was the 100th birthday of the great writer. He immediately sent an Borges hommage to the list 27). In it is exclaimed among other things: "Speaking to that demand which is still made of non-Western artists today, namely to bear the mark of their origins on their brow, Borges wrote: 'The idea that Argentine poetry should abound in differential Argentine traits and Argentine local color seems to me a mistake'" Oguibe continued: "No doubt a mistake that many continue to make." Borges, too, dreamed of "a day when races and nations will be cast into oblivion, and the solidarity of all mankind will be established..'" Oguibe added: "That day is of course far off in the future, as Borges himself admitted, and may indeed never come. Yet, the duty of all philosophy - and prophecy - is to propound and reiterate those generous ideals without which our species has no future to aspire it. So is the burden of culture" A few members of the list joined the homage, as did Tom Vincent 28) and Héctor Zetina 29). José Roca 30) quoted a statement by Borges on Colombia in order to make a point about the dramatic situation in his country which has even worsened in recent time. Roca wrote: "For those of us who have decided to stay and work, we are very aware that a cultural activity in our country is an act of resistance." Two further examples of the violence and injustice in Latin America were posted: Raul Ferrera-Balanquet 31) informed us of the murder of Cintia Ricaldi, the prima ballerina of Yucatán's reknowned ballet ensemble. Francisco Córdoba 32) passed on a call for support for Ofelia Medina, one of Mexico's most famous actresses, who is being deported from San Cristóbal de las Casas because she "sympathises with the Zapatista cause." Vasif Kortun 33) from the Istanbul Contemporary Art Project sent a mail asking for help for the earthquake victims in Turkey. "If you have tents you can send, please let me know. But at least, as important, I look forward to your ideas about healing in whichever form it may come..." Pat Binder 34), made reference to the previous postings by commenting on an article on how the philosopher Benedetto Croce survived a serious earthquake. Borges, writing about Croce, was also quoted: "In order to overcome the total desperation, he decided to think of the universe: among disconsolate a usual and occasionally healing procedure." Summary: Gerhard Haupt |
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Forum of the House of World Cultures, Berlin, on the use of Internet in the cultural exchange with and between Africa, Asia/Pacific and Latin America. 1998 / 2000 Project direction: Gerhard Haupt - haupt@uinic.de |
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