[mtp-teoria] the future like it was yesterday

[givan bela]

Two Views

In our series 'views of the decade' we include 2 contributions. The 
first is the republication of a former article by Gívan Béla. The 
second is a review of the "last year +1" initiative which is related.

Yours truly,

G. Aleb,
Baku 2022 Foundation, Baku (Azerbaijani), 2023.


I- Views of the decade: On The Predictability Of The Experimental

Some 15 years ago, at a too busy moment in the spring of 2007, while 
participating as a resident at Okno Brussels in a mini-festival with 
some (media) artists, Dusan Barok attended a lecture by G. Knivol at a 
video art gallery/distributor place called Argos. He would write 
afterwards on the 'mtp-teoria' list in a so-called email titled "echo 
from Knivol's lecture":

	besides other things what i found interesting was his definition of new
	media art as "form searching for the forms" and the four strategies of
	"how to get out of media art misery" he closed the speech with

At that time, for most experimental artists it was not the point at all 
where the thing was heading for. Clearly most of us were working with 
computers, electronics and any media altogether. We were searching for 
techniques to work with in a creative way, and whatever the medium or 
outcome would be, in the true tradition of the experimental artist, we 
were prepared to go for it and took it one step further, and once the 
impact of the experiment had become apparent, we moved on. We were 
seeing for a long time already the growing dichotomy with the 
video-related groups, it was not getting any better since they joined 
the contemporary boring art scene. At that time there were more 
discussions about disciplinary former century matters as they were all 
pretty paralyzed by it as we remember. Besides, they were not 
questioning the materiality of their trade at all, so we left the 
discussions dying like the last mammoths and dinosaurs on their own 
area. And then came Knivol's lecture. We did not go, only Dusan Barok. 
And he reported on the mtp-teoria list. And as we happened to live in 
Bratislava, and the mtp stood for Multiplace, a kind of networked 
festival at that time, we were reading it. Well, Knivol had always been 
kind of a slick person, driving on what he heard from others and always 
carving out secret alliances. And then he was in Argos, where openly 
was said they did not give a damn about media art, they were going for 
video and film. Don't get us wrong, we were never against any media. 
But about the way of working, we being algorithmic composers and 
computer based felt always left on another side. But we accepted that 
fact, and did not further criticize others for whom leaving a 
pragmatically favorable setup would have been out of the question for 
sure. There were few joint initiatives at that time anyway.

We are mentioning all this, because Argos used to be a good heaven for 
certain parts of art, and to illustrate the mental state of the 
audience. Now, Knivol came about in the 1990s in the middle of a small 
group of international artists emerging and reinventing themselves as 
web and net artists. It were the haydays of industrial development of 
internet companies and the group immediately started to inscribe itself 
into media activitism, reopening long forgotten debates of the already 
then defunct and obsolete post modernist era. But the combination 
proved to be a hit, and fashion, design, clubbing joined in like they 
always do when there are outbursts of retro and kitch. Aesthetically 
speaking, they could also be described now as rather conservative in 
ideas and output, as Tilman Baumgärtel would describe very soon later 
in his "net.art 2.0 – Neue Materialien zur Netzkunst" (Nürnberg, 2001). 
But at the time of the Knivol appearance in Argos, either most of them 
had already disappeared in more favorable commercial (read 'art and 
design') surroundings, others took up posts as curators for renowned 
galeries, art spaces and festivals, or still others were merely writing 
and publishing in small circles and on even smaller email lists. 
Meantime, like for 50 years and longer, most of the computer based 
artists, who were interested in change for its materiality as we will 
show later, were not sitting there and waiting for a definition that 
could have affected them in a disastrous way. Luckily it was forgotten 
soon after the lecture. The Common Ground Formation was yet not 
operational, the Citizen Aesthetical Pact not yet published, and most 
official operations were similar to the 20th century fin-de-pomo years. 
Same time the Baku 2022 Foundation was setting up a longer term 
project, a common practice today, but it did not surface yet for real.

Now, the lecture which was based on a previously published article by 
Knivol and as described by Dusan Barok in his email on the mtp-teoria 
list, was remarkable in the light of today. And we are wondering why 
this could have happened. We don't want to criticize one person 
(perhaps Knivol is still alive and we could talk to one another one day 
about it again). Here we have to come to a defense against attacks on a 
single person. Most of these people at that time could merely be called 
trend-watchers like we still find nowadays everywhere in the industrial 
and commercial media. We know that they are often wrong but they won't 
be judged on the 1000 mistakes if they hit it once right. And oh to 
unmask them simply as career makers would drive us too far like to the 
edge of conspiracy madness. And after all they are not to blame: the 
mistakes Knivol and alikes were making at the time of the lecture could 
have been made due to historical blindness. They can be seen as 
spokepersons for a dead fashion. It is also like: journalists and 
interviewers understand and can reformulate opinions of other people 
better but are not necessarily smart enough to build up another 
framework. And neither do they often break out of their self-confined 
circles of interest. And again even if they magnify themselves and 
generalize what is very small in front of their nose only: they are not 
to blame for it. And finally times were not very favorable: the sad 
negative aftershock of nothing-can-be-new and 
we-have-seen-and-understood-it-all post modernism certainly proved no 
good to these people. We maintain, and again and again: no, we cannot 
blame them for that at all.

Nowadays it is clear that experimental art is not restricted to the 
niche of yesterdays' "new media artists" (the term was already fading 
at that time, but soit!). Experimental attitudes in media arts have 
always been part of the arts in general, of course - forgive me to be 
so blunt and ignorant but what is accepted now was perhaps vague at 
that time. Only, Paul Klee had already stated that a century before - 
and no trace then from 'new media art' believe me! He wrote that the 
aim of art was not to produce forms but to stress formations as a 
generative process. Klee would even call it a "genetic processes" 
himself. We think that this was common knowledge in the experimental 
art world, not specifically Klee's words but in general as a common 
idea and in an implicit way before, at that time and afterwards. And 
now comes the puzzling conclusion: if Knivol had been aware of it, why 
didn't he take it into account when he was predicting media art's 
future?

So either Knivol was not really affiliated with contemporary art in 
general, or he was making up his own mind about it. In the former case 
it would mean he was not really that important as an expert in the 
field. But what was he doing in Argos then, besides driven by 
cultural-personal or -political ambitions? The latter statement would 
suggest he was making it up to fulfill his own (wrong as we know now) 
predictions for the (non-existing as we also know now) field. And it is 
still to be seen if this purblind critical pose was put up on purpose 
or not. Knivol once declared with pride he was a 'super-pragmatist', 
philosophically speaking of course but ironically it can describe also 
a way of taking part in a culture and a society. Here we are coming to 
a point: an attitude! What attitude were his predictions promoting? And 
forgive me, as we were only mentioning ourselves above as a proof that 
we were working and thinking differently, we in the middle of many 
others, we were no exception. So let us proceed...

Strangely enough the categories Knivol was effectively describing for 
the future of media art were suspiciously identical to the sectors he 
was at the time drawing his income from: the fake half company half 
ngo's where his former net-art companions were working in, the revibed 
with computer art video and film festivals that overnight born former 
media artists now curators promoted, the larger publishing houses or 
the self invented university section in amsterdam they put up and 
renamed and rebuilt at will and according to funding needs. Basically 
by the time Knivol was marketing his analysis, the 1990s web-art group 
had exclusively moved into the most neo-liberal section of the arts. 
Pop always kills content, people say, since it is enslaved by profit 
making in various ways. Certainly we mention here above the hollow 
places that were hardly sustainable from the cultural side but 
altogether profitable from economical view. Good they were all 
officially added to the industrial development plan a couple of years 
later and the government issues restrictions on "one artist a company" 
in the end. For sure for 2 decades it had been the hope for survival of 
many small but also bigger cultural groups Knivol had set up himself 
and been involved in before (Mediamatic, Waag Society, ...). But like 
we mentioned before, their only intention was to become like an 
industrial subcompany working for television groups, private education, 
design companies, and city marketing initiatives. They even built fake 
development labs for it at one time and got even funded by the 
government when sometimes they went bankrupt. But it is certainly true 
they had no content what so ever in any of the arts, including media 
arts.

So basically Knivol's prognosis for media arts sounded to us as a 
description of the state of Knivol's own career:
1. new media art as an autonomous discipline
2. new media art as part of contemporary art (video and film and 
internet).
3. new media art as part of science
4. new media as a "creative industries"

We laughed out loud and never came back to it. But remembering that 
now, we all must be thankful that not any of the 4 predictions did 
really happen afterwards. It would have meant an utter disaster if more 
than one had become reality. Of course after 15 years and more we are 
in a safe position, and it seems easy to slash down Knivol's and any 
other prognosis as anachronistic, career driven, or as unoriginal 
mish-mash. Taking up residence now in Baku, we are still reflecting on 
what future we can expect from most of the experimental young artists 
today, 2023. We are still worried about the willingness and easiness of 
governments, industry, academy, education and single persons, to 
generalize and in the end, give in too easily to the production and 
consumption of artifacts instead of art. And like Knivol failed to see 
at that time what Paul Klee already made explicit before: that the 
experimental artist is and was and will always be preoccupied with 
tilting the stability of the four Knivol predictions out of equilibrium 
instead of realizing one (or more). Then the experimentalist will sit 
back and watch it all happen, maybe pick up a new medium, look at it 
again critically, think on how this affords new creative actions that 
suggest original materials and processes. What else interests the 
artist to work with technology and media, if s/he cannot experiment? So 
we know that this questions a society and its activities thoroughly. 
That is why the media arts and real activism could come together and 
create the new aesthetics, like we all have witnessed over the last 
decade. We took up Knivol's lecture to warn and not to forget that we 
are still under constant threat of being paralysed by attitudes like 
the ones popular within the groups mentioned above in the past. And the 
past is there to learn from, no?

We come out of a troubled decade but for sure nowadays the positive 
merging of socio-cultural collectives, media and communication 
activists, and experimental artists can only be productive and 
interesting the coming years. So let's look at the future. Nowhere in 
the 2007 Knivol discussion fun was even mentioned, or beauty, and these 
both have proven to be important convergence factors after all. The 
only thing media art by itself could contribute to - and what was 
documented the years to follow this maybe trivial anecdote - was that 
it proved to be the first type of groups that developed strategies for 
bringing together hypothetically any field without compromising itself 
with neo-liberalism.

In fact at the moment when EU was at the height of its expansion, 
defining new definitions for functional colonization and domination, 
especially in the second european zone like we know now (remember the 
political song "where wages were low and investments high", anonymous 
2009). But thanks to more open visions, very disparate fields of 
society - not so much driven by profit and self-interest - were working 
at a new experimental art. The thing that would bring them together in 
the years to follow was a new aesthetics for action, implemented with 
its own technological devices and systems. Experimental strategies were 
finally accepted widely as the way to create and luckily this is still 
continuing. This, and this stupid only thing, would counter the radical 
privatisation trends of the first decade of the 21st century and 
establish some interesting movements with a dangling new appearance. 
Pop and elitarianism were gone with a bang.

So now at my old age and coming out of this former era, maybe it is 
better to do it at once and to destroy our sad archives full of bad 
prognoses and sterile self-repeating discussions. Maybe it is better to 
forget the former labels and concentrate on current content. And let's 
also delete the implosion in communication happening shortly after the 
Knivol presentation. Because now these days media do matter again for 
political, social and aesthetically innovative reasons. We have open 
and collaborative developments that are giving us new instruments and 
tools for making interesting creative artifacts, for amateurs and 
professionals altogether. So why look back or turn elsewhere?

The last thing to add. We are happy to share with you our own 
prediction of what is to happen after today 2023. It is easy, and not 
divided in four outcomes that lead to the same state of boredom: that 
the future of anything from now on will still be thoroughly 
unpredictable like it was in all previous times. And this may sound 
more to you, like an epitaph from an old hypothetical utopianist, from 
the Baku 2022 Foundation after the event has taken place already. But 
at least it makes no effort to drive anyone in a corner and run away 
secretly with the dish prepared by others. If anyone tells you what is 
to be stable and neatly labelled hereafter, beware and beware again 
(zly pes)! There must be a career or an organisation lurking behind the 
corner that is ready to cash in on you! So our advice is, before we 
leave you here: don't believe anyone and just cultivate something else! 
The difference will be of importance, like it always has been! Goodbye.


II- Views of the decade: A Long Term Vision Growing Gradually Shorter 
Until It Was Over (review, December 2023)

At the opening of the Baku 2022 Foundation's last performance "last 
year +1", its facilitator Gívan Belá (G~B) would come up with some 
statements about the making of this performance over 20 years. He 
described the work of some of the early media artists and 
socio-C-groups (remember they had to work mainly in the dark), then 
mentioned everyone involved (luckily the single artwork approach is 
gone) and moved to today's after-initiatives (from which he is 
withdrawing). He also illustrated the problems on trans national level 
still not solved with virtual organisations and creative long-projects. 
The struggle of the Baku 2022 Foundation - because of their refusal to 
register themselves in a definite geographical setting, read 
regio-locks, and the consecutive financial and legal problems they were 
facing because of that -  shaped also some new ideas for establishing a 
greater autonomy for areas of creative collaboration. One of the 
benefits of setting up a long-project was definitely that it fostered 
some 'other' works that were driving on the abundance of time. See 
included. The results, impacts and works were as futile as they always 
pretended to be.
An issue - which only exists now in histo-musea - was that 
short-project curators were becoming dysfunctional and almost ironical 
in the process of producing this performance. The second major change 
from a decade ago was the no-area-discipline that came about, and that 
replaced the paralysed development of former media art, which lost 
itself in political fragmentation, more and more labels and no content. 
Basically the aesthetical reveil in which more and more active groups 
took place since then benefitted tremendously the dissolvement of art 
from the hierarcho-analysts that ruled these organisations themselves.

Then G~B would demonstrate the cPAPA device that they used for the 
performances last year. Like the name already suggests (the computed 
action performance publication archival device) the real time 
holographic calculator was merely driving on the accumulated images in 
the sheet, and reconfigured itself in the daylight, but with the aid of 
others that jacked in into leaving unclear what the others really did 
in there. G~B claimed he did not know himself since he only manipulated 
its tilt and reassemblage physicality. He made an immediate copy for us 
and said we should do the same and find out. "That is the interesting 
thing that you can leave the original in its place and move the 
simulators for offspring", he added. Any reader is getting 
automatically a copy so we don't have to include the description here 
neither. "In the past we were asked from time to time to describe 
things like 'print media in the future', or to talk about any other 
hard- and software, organisation, or performance. But since we were not 
selling anything and were concentrating on aesthetical, creative and 
collaborative techniques instead of technology, we always refused this. 
Since the cPAPA can be used integrated now, there are no workshops, no 
lectures, no print piles, no streams and broadcasts, no transmitted 
smart-asses needed anymore. It is a lib and locus in itself and 
ecologically safe." (G~B).

Then he refused to explain the current state of hypothutop, referring 
to the former publications on hypothetical utopianism by mxHz. It had 
now become obsolete anyway. As we asked a final characterization of the 
Baku 2022 foundation he chuckled with a smile: "A Long Term Vision 
Growing Gradually Shorter Until It Was Over." The full text and 
interviews with the rest of the activitants are in the cPAPA copy, 
including their building blocks and unique protos. Don't store too dry 
to keep longer fresh.