<nettime> N E T T I M E M A Y C O N F E R E N C E N E W S - F I R S T

["Vuk Cosic" <vuk@KUD-FP.SI>]

N E T T I M E  M A Y  C O N F E R E N C E  N E W S  -  F I R S T  C A
L L

'Beauty and the East'
 A Nettime Conference
 22nd and 23rd of May 1997

Ljudmila (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, part of Open Society Institute
- Slovenia) is pleased to announce the Nettime May Conference entitled
'Beauty and the East' with the following co-ordinates: 
dates: May 21arrivals
         22-23 conference
location: Ljudmila, Prusnikova 74, Ljubljana, Slovenia

>>daily time line:

 10.00 bus takes all participants to ljudmila
 10.30 workshop / collaboration projects
 13.00 break
 15.00 panels
 18.30 bus takes all to city center
 19.00 dinner
 21.00 evening events

>>The morning sessions are planned as extended media brunches
  that combine collaborative workshops with presentations,
  discussions, and performances of international experts and
  practicioners along the topics of net.art, data recycling,
  tactical media, private i, remote c, presence.

>>The afternoon panels are organized as moderated discussions
  enriched by few blitz.statements by international expert-speakers.
  The focus is on the stimulation of dialog rather than the
  presentation of lectures. Participation is open and encouraged.

>>The topics of afternoon panels are:

DAY ONE - May 22

 On-Line Publishing:

  Push Media Planets, Collaborative Archives and Discourse Machines

  The generation of content is context sensitive, people produce
  information out of signals, groups define what people can produce,
  tools make possible what groups can define and vice versa. A
  critique of the net must include a critical analysis of its 'matter'
  as a social and cultural product. With the rise of the web, the well
  developed group structures around bbs, moo, mud, usenet became
  almost invisible. Now, we are told that the web will vanish and only
  media with broadcasting qualities will survive. I push therefore I
  am. Surprisingly, the mailinglist was always a push media, as
  sucessful and cost-effecitive as e-mail. The coming social
  information architectures will need a more hybrid, time-based and
  conceptual working/leisure environment which maps electronic
  intersubjectivity based on our needs and not the imaginative,
  inherent will of technique.

  It is time that intellectuals rethink the relevance of their tools
  in a wider radius than linguistics. The apperatus of discourse gets
  extended today by new networks of power/knowledge which are still,
  compared with the world of print, very unimportant. This makes place
  for all kinds of experiments and the renovation of historical
  concepts. In a mix of historical, empirical, and speculative
  analysis we will try to map a likely and liked future of
  'online-publishing,' beyond the static model of the web magazine (or
  the preformatted net-radio on demand). How will our social interface
  look like and how do we continue with our gift-economy?

chair persons: Geert Lovink, Pit Schultz


DAY TWO - May 23

 Power Politics:

 Virtual Europe, Ministate Thinking and the Construction of the Data
 East

 Within the development of aesthetics and politics of electronic media
 since the late 80's 'East Europe' played a minor but spectacular
 role. Today, driven by unified market forces the topology of cultures
 in the east and west has to relate to new maps of global corporations
 and media networks, down to the local resistance of bureaucracies,
 institutions, and cultural initiatives. But it is not only 'the east'
 that is forced to adapt, but 'the west' also having to face an inner
 crisis within its imaginary cartographies. The construction of a
 media map of Europe becomes indistinguishable from the image of a
 chaotic, dangerous, and underdeveloped 'hinterland'. The fear of
 heterogenity and change locates and produces the zones of conflict at
 its periphery. Under the sign of ethnic and national cleansing grew a
 the multiplicity of borders and microstates. 'Balkanization' becomes
 the preferred horror scenario for all kinds of disintegration, and
 economic, social, cultural, and political difference. The dream of
 entering the EU-NATO zone is fading away. Is this the freedom people
 dreamt of?

 Culture has yet no answer to this imminent crisis. The only thing
 institutions can come up with, is a weak and cheap remake of well
 known slogans, taken from yesterday's social movements and art groups
 (and their media). This includes the quasi-neutral, engaged but
 professional PC attitude of the NGOs that remained as political
 forces. The rest is popular revolt, armed despair or armchair
 criticism. Is an predefined 'open society' the best of all possible
 options? How long can we support minimal politics and the (justified)
 desire for conformity? What double role does 'The Net' plays within
 this configuration?

chair persons: Inke Arns, Oliver Marchart


>>The evening events in the club K4 are reserved for the
>>theory-performances of
    a) Critical Art Ensemble
    b) Peter Lamborn Wilson
    c) featuring special guest

>>Contributions as abstracts and short articles will appear in zkp4
  nettime's newspaper, 32 p, rotation print, in many copies on
  different conferences in 1997. please send all submissions to
  <zkp4@ljudmila.org>, the call for papers was posted to the list on
  March the 13th see also news://news.thing.at/alt.nettime

>>The conference works in friendly collaboration with
  Radio Student, Hotel Baclava and Restauration Bagatel

>>Hosted by Ljudmila (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, Open Society
>>Institute) Organizing Committee: Vuk Cosic <vuk@kud-fp.si>, Geert
>>Lovink
  <geert@xs4all.nl>, Diana McCarty <diana@dial.isys.hu> , Pit Schultz
  <pit@contrib.de> and more soon.

>>For information on travel and particpation, please check the
  website http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/nettime/ (in few days)
  and look for the application form. Or contact <vuk@kud-fp.si> or
  <diana@dial.isys.hu>

C H E C K E D  Y O U R  S C H E D U L E  ?  L J U B L J A N A  M A Y 
2 2 - 2 3


---
#  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body
#  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner@icf.de