Finally I got some time to respond, including my initial thoughts on from Renee's and Stephen's recent postings on 'time' and 'commodification'. At the same time I am watching the news unfold on the latest burst of the world economy (at one point I imagined I was imagining looking instead at Tatsuo Miyajima 'Counting' installations).

I cannot help thinking on whether the next bubble to burst - in similar fashion to the dot com and housing market bubble - will indeed be the art market (give and take a few monts or years from now)

This forms the last in a series of 3 initial discussions that I am hoping to publish before the Launch of n.e.w.s. during ISEA 2008 in Singapore. Unfortunately time is running too short for a more profound introduction. However, discussions on the internet and cyberspace as possible 'total works of art' have been taking place in the past, so hopefully a discussion can start before I have time to post my extended introduction.

As with any new platform for communication, there is the need to ask questions on the role of control, distribution, and reception. This means asking the simple, but important questions of: 'Who are we writing for?'; 'What are the responsibilities of authorship?'; 'Are we just preaching to the converted?'; and '[Well then,] What about the readership?'

A few months ago, I was asked to respond to a questionnaire on 'What is Contemporary Art' by C-Arts magazine (http://www.c-artsmag.com). A brief report of the questionnaire was published in C-Arts #2 (March/April 2008). The discussion is still ongoing, and I feel multiple platforms should address these issues. N.E.W.S. is one of these platforms, and hence I would like to challenge the contributors to consider the issue of 'Contemporary Art: 'Now' or 'Never'?

Below is a copy of my full (unedited) answers to the questions posed by C-Arts.

More n.e.w.s. on this to come from others, I hope...

C-Arts Magazine

In 2008, in my role as Senior Research Curator at the Casula Powerhouse and the Center for Contemporary Art & Politics, College of Fine Arts/UNSW in Sydney, I organized the Forum 'Extra/Ordinary Cities: The Cultural Dynamics of Urban Intervention'Extra/Ordinary Cities: Extra/Ordinary Cities: The Cultural Dynamics of Urban Intervention. The Forum was held in associated with the 2008 Biennale of Sydney: Revolutions - Forms that Turn.