Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Re: [Yasmin_discussions] collective genius

roger,

couple of more things that somehow should matter within the realms of
collectivity and collaboration:

- collectivity does not necessarily have a physical boundary (not a
community, neighborhood, territory, etc.), does not necessarily have a
book (biblical, regulatory, constitutional, agreements of any sort in
written form, etc.), should be highly dynamic ans does not necessarily
form a clique, clan, brotherhood, fraternity, guild, society, union,
nation, civilization. this is why i love internet collectivity; the
first reason you are involved in a collective is very basic: you have
internet connection. the rest depends on your interests and your ability
to turn this into physical communication whenever possible and/or needed.

- a collective could be the "array of arrays" that are composed dynamic
definitions / coincidences / overlaps / concurrences / intersections /
convergences / etc. it is, in a way, a center of equal peripheries with
no center:) i did not know the great quote from the great marcel
duchamp, thanks for bringing it up: "... the artist is part of a larger
system in which his or her conscious intention forms a small part ..."
this is sort of what i mean by "center of equal peripheries with no center."

best,
murat

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On 17.08.2009 06:09, roger malina wrote:
> Murat
>
> I found interesting your IMECE connection and checked out the
> interesting web site for the event in turkey this october
>
> http://www.imece2009.anadolu.edu.tr/index.php?dil=en&icerik=konu
>
> "" Furthermore, it foregrounds certain concepts naturally available in
> "imece" practice such as solidarity, collaboration, experience
> sharing, common production, interaction and common use of public
> places in terms of their contribution to development of creativity. ""
>
>
> I think you make a good point about scale differences between
> collaborations , which usually involve smaller
> number of people, and collectives which can provide shared resources
> and infrastructurer for much larger
> communities of practice
>
> i just came across several interesting articles in the fall 2008 issue
> of Art Journal
> vol 67 nos: http://www.collegeart.org/artjournal/fall2008
>
> From Space to Environment: The Origins of Kankyo and the Emergence of
> Intermedia Art in Japan / Yoshimoto, Midori
>
> The Public Sensoriums of Pulsa: Cybernetic Abstraction and the
> Biopolitics of Urban Survival / McKee, Yates 46-67
>
> Steps to an Ecology of Communication: Radical Software, Dan Graham,
> and the Legacy of Gregory Bateson / Kaizen, William
>
>
> The first , by Midori Yoshimoto, about the japanese
> collective/collaboration describes the 1966 exibition involving 38
> artists who worked
> together to mount two exhibitions under the name of the Environment Society
>
> Pulsa was an american collective that exibited "unrestricted public
> experiments to redefine the urban environment ' ib boston and other
> cities in the eastern usa and their work is described in the text by
> Yates Mckee
>
> the third text ,(authored by william kaisen),includes some interesting
> discussion of the interaction of the media activist magazine radical
> software( the article discussses people such as frank gilette, paul
> ryan beryl korot,dan graham) but of relevance to our yasmin discussion
> a panel at
> the 1957 american federation of arts meeting in houston which included
> a panel with rudolf arnheim, stuart davis, marcel duchamp and
> particularly relevant gregory bateson
>
> the article quotes bateson : that he gives up any notion of man,
> redefining the self as an expanded mental
> field ...with the mind no longer bound by the invidual body..a
> conjunction of self and world produced through
> communication ecologies" which refers nicely back to the early posts
> on this YASMIN discussion
> ( even though bateson was talking 52 years ago !)
>
> and from marcel duchamp: "..the artist is part of a larger system in
> which his or her conscious intention forms
> a small part"...
>
> these discussions were of course all taking place in the same period
> as the macy cybernetics conferences
>
> a relevant comment is that art history, with its emphasis on
> individual creators/art market mechanisms= finds
> its difficult to give appropriate treatment to group and collective
> work= and as pointed out by frieder nake in
> a later issue of art journal= even in the case of E.A.T we tend to
> reemmber the names of individual artists
> (rauschenberg etc) and billy kluver of course, but the rest of the
> collective disappears in anonymity=- and
> even current artists whose work results from close and crucial
> collaboration with engineers often do not
> credit the engineers as co creators of the work.
>
> the problem with the concept of genius is that it is so tied to
> particular ways of writing art history
> that its perhaps hard to extend the concept to radical innovation
> arising from art-science or
> art-technology collaborations
>
> roger
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Murat Germen<muratgermen@sabanciuniv.edu>
> Date: Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 3:52 AM
> Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] collective genius
> To: Kerry Tunstall<hvkerry@gmail.com>, YASMIN DISCUSSIONS
> <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
>
>
> let me add one more cent so that we can jump to odd and/or prime numbers:)
>
> collaboration and collectivity are not the same thing. the scale /
> number of people involved in a collaboration is usually less than what
> you would expect in a collective act. in addition, collaboration does
> not always involve a good deed;
>
> there is one notion called "imece" in the traditional turkish culture
> which generically means collective labor. below is a link that tries
> to define the notion in english:
> http://www.imece2009.anadolu.edu.tr/index.php?dil=en&icerik=index
>
> and a quotation from mehmet kucukozer's paper:
> "Another concept that promoted village solidarity was imece, or
> "community project," as Delaney defines it (152). Mainly women engaged
> in cooperatives but this depended on the project, which could take
> various forms: pooling money for cooperative construction of
> infrastructure; helping members of the village community who were in
> need (such as relatives from the city when they run out of money, or
> taking in their children during the summers); and organizing sporting
> and social events. [...] Imece indicates the emphasis placed in
> Turkish culture on maintaining the harmony of the social group,
> whether the family or its extension, the village. Jenny White's (2002)
> ethnographic work of a poor migrant district of Istanbul illustrates
> how [...] imece continued to be the basis of social networking in the
> city and provided a foundation for horizontal political organizing,
> mainly among women." (from "Civil Society: A Proposed Analytical
> Framework For Studying its Development Using Turkey as a Case Study"
> mehmet kucukozer paper, p.21, UNIVERSITA' DEGLI STUDI DI MESSINA
> Facoltà di Scienze Politiche Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica,
> Matematica e Sociologia "Pareto")
> reference for Delaney: Delaney, Carol. "Traditional Modes of Authority
> and Co-operation," pp. 140-155. In Culture and Economy: Changes in
> Turkish Villages (ed. Paul Stirling). Hemingford, UK: Eothen Press,
> 1993.
> reference for white: White, Jenny B. Islamist Mobilization in Turkey:
> A Study in Vernacular Politics.Seattle,Wash.: University of Washington
> Press, 2002.
>
> i
>
> best,
> murat
>
> <<< +90 532 473 8970 (gsm mobile)
> <<< http://www.muratgermen.com
> <<< http://www.flickr.com/photos/muratgermen/
> <<< http://muratgermen.wordpress.com/
> <<< http://www.camgaleri.com/en/sanatci.aspx?id=27
>
>
>
> On 14.08.2009 23:58, Kerry Tunstall wrote:
>
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