The Next Layer

About four years ago, after the disastrous US elections in 2004, a group of us meeting at 16 Beaver Street in New York launched the idea of Continental Drift. The hypothesis: a coming "tectonic" shift in the geopolitical system, precipitated by the mismanagement of neoliberal globalization under the Bush-Blair regime. What we saw on the horizon was some kind of collapse of dollar hegemony -- "hegemoney," as Arrighi puts it -- and the rise of a multipolar order, with new possibilities and challenges for grassroots egalitarian movements around the world.

The Postmodern Condition, A Report on Knowledge, by Francois Lyotard, first published in French in 1979, was not the first book to carry the word postmodern in its title, but probably one of the most influential ones in the long term, with both its warnings and sometimes its overly optimistic assumptions about the future of knowledge in a computerised society. Reading it now what is perplexing is the rather one-sided reception it has got. While Lyotard's critique of meta-narratives and the proposed switch to language games has characterised the postmodern debate, his ambiguity about the development of science and the university under the condition of neoliberalism appears to have been given much less consideration by his followers.

Dieser Text ist die deutsche Übersetzung des Vortragstextes Maurizio Lazzaratos bei der Creative Cities Konferenz am 31.3.2009 in Wien. Die Übersetzung stammt von Stefan Nowotny. In diesem Text argumentiert Maurizio Lazzarato, inwiefern die derzeitige Politik Frankreichs und der EU im Bereich der Creative Industries anti-produktiv ist.

Die sogenannte Heidelberger Erklärung und die Kampagne namhafter deutschsprachiger Medien gegen Open Access und Google Books verrät nicht nur ihre Arroganz und Borniertheit gegenüber neuen Formen der Produktion und Dissemination von Kultur und Wissen, sondern offenbart auch anti-liberale, autoritäre Züge - die bürgerlichen Medien haben ihre liberalen Wurzeln wohl vergessen oder verdrängt. Die "intellektuelle Finsternis", die von FAZ und Die Zeit auf Grund der "unheimlichen Kräfte" des Internet befürchtet wird, ist bereits da und von ihnen selbst mitverschuldet. Was jedoch wirklich gebraucht wird, anstatt drakonischer Urteile und Netzsperren, sind neue Wege der Vergütung kultureller Produktion, die an den etablierten, im Niedergang befindlichen Instanzen vorbei gehen.

Art and Research
Volume 2. No. 2. Spring 2009

Editorial:

This issue of Art & Research represents a ‘gathering’ of issues and experiences in artistic research as manifest in papers and artworks presented on the ‘occasion’ of significant international conferences and symposia dedicated to artistic research held between May and December 2008:

The phenomenon of "peer to peer", or "P2P" file-sharing over the internet is a transglobal expression of techno-social relations. We could say the same about other popular domesticised forms of internet usage, such as email, searches, blogging and photo sharing. However, P2P is different, like the 'special' child who doesn't really fit in with the rest of the family.

This is an attached slide-show (with notes)* from my presentation at The Second IT & Disorder Workshop held at the University of Technology, Sydney, on 26 March 2009. I need to work this up into a paper for publication in a uni e-journal very very soon! But I seem to be more devoted to d/l'ing endless stuff 'for research' from my favourite sites.... Anyway this presentation went well, and I felt i had redeemed myself after 2 really embarrassing presentations late last year.

Art and Research is an online journal for ideas, contexts and methods. It provides a resource of downloadable finished papers, interviews and conference notes that are considered important and current to the discourse that surrounds artistic research. The journal is international and peer-reviewed with an editorial board, one of the main editors being Ross Birrell an artist researcher and staff member at Glasgow School of Art. As well as being an interesting artist, Ross is also an interesting writer and his editorial paper Jacques Ranciere and The (Re) Distribution of the Sensible provides ‘Five Lessons in Artistic Research’ that condenses and links ideas such Rancier’s notion of the ‘distribution of territories’, a commentary on the value of certain disciplines over others, to Mika Hannula (and others) notion of the ‘democracy of experience’ which is ‘the precondition of a non-hierarchical research environment’.