::fibreculture:: Natalie Jeremijenko on technology, art and knowledge

[Ned Rossiter]

and I have quite a different take again, though I'm referring not to 
Natalie's Sydney appearance, but her time in Melbourne as part of 
RMIT's SIAL event Intimate Distance: liveness and affect - an event 
that included talks by Massumi, Stelarc and Marcelyn Gow. 
http://liveness.sial.rmit.edu.au/VFP/vfp_Links.htm

I was incredibly bored and, when provoked enough, mildly irritated by 
Natalie's talk. And this was an experience that kind of disappointed 
and surprised me: I had met Natalie for the first time the day before 
in a studio critique session of some of the SIAL students, and I was 
particularly impressed  by the clarity and verve of her thought.  And 
it was also nice to hear her style of marxian diatribe directed 
against the prevailing neoliberal culture within the arts.  It never 
hurts to remind architecture folks of such issues/conditions/modes of 
critique.  However, her talk the following night contained none of 
that - and fair enough.  Instead, it struck me as really disorganised 
and particularly unclear of the audience: the anti-Bush rhetoric 
seemed really misdirected and almost quaint, and I found the 
americanese accent -  genuine rather than affected no doubt - to be 
quite annoying coming from a not so long ago melburnian.

Ok, so these are all personal gripes and perhaps I was just having a 
bad hair day, or no hair, if I'm to grant veracity to that horrible 
mirror.  But speaking later with others, I discovered my response was 
not an isolated one.  One person made the interesting point that 5 or 
so years ago, this kind of thing may have gone down well: ie, an 
instance where Australians get to see & learn what the euro-american 
techno-avant garde are up to.  Today, that spatio-temporal distance 
in the circulation  of ideas has well and truly collapsed [in other 
ways, it of course has not], and Australian [ie, those who work here] 
new media artists, thinkers, etc are more often than not producing 
more interesting work -- and I'm well aware that many would claim 
this has been the case for a long time anyway [I wouldn't disagree 
with that].

Even more generally, I found her talk representative of a position 
that is a common one amongst many guest "international" types.  That 
is, it was high on the gee-whiz glitz factor [when sites could be 
loaded, ie why don't people, esp. new media types, cache/download 
sites beforehand??!], and very low on any critical reflexivity that 
can locate modes of production and styles of expression within larger 
transnational, multi-local contexts.  NJ struck me as yet another 
instance of a techno-academic elite reproducing itself - ie 
valorising its own work, speaking to its own types ["networking"], 
maintaining its own economies of expansion.  The consequence: an 
impoverished, self-indulgent,  ineffectual body of work (that's how 
it struck me on the night anyway).  This is of course not limited to 
those who occupy the higher echelons of academia and the art, but 
something all of us in our own respective ghettoes must always be 
cautious of (and I certainly don't exclude myself here).

So, a pretty unconstructive posting from me.  Nothing on creativity. 
Nothing on innovation.  Piqued with ressentiment, some might say. 
Marcelyn Gow's talk was even worse, if that balances things out a 
bit.    No doubt I'd change my view of NJ's work if I spent a bit 
more time engaging with the actual stuff [I don't think I'd change my 
mind on MG, however].

Ned [in post-viral mode: there's no way those SA footy players will 
recover in time for their match!]


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