On Tuesday 16 September, n.e.w.s. was presented at Basekamp. Joing us from various places in the world on Skype audio: Aharon from Brighton, Prayas from India, Magda from Brighton, Stephen from Paris, and Mia from London via IM. Scott, Mary, Garrett and I were in Philadelphia. It was great to have everybody online, even in the wee hours of the morning for some. We were able to facilitate a two-hour conversation about n.e.w.s., the goings-on so far and some of the problems that need improving as well as supporting its experimental and discursive nature. In this blog entry I will try to rehash some of the keys issues and explain how we structured the conversation. There will also be a soundfile and Skype chat on the site if you want to listen to and/or read the conversation.

We

n.e.w.s. has been invited to make a presentation at Basekamp. This evening the general n.e.w.s. website will be addressed: the launch, how we go further, what's needed, what needs to be deleted, etc. (see http://www.basekamp.com)

Both Ingrid Commandeur has already alluded to something like what I'm about to talk about, and so has Stephen Wright. Though here I've divested it of its locational/global factor, it still relates somewhat to territory. In this post, I'll describe some practices I'm attracted to in relation to this discussion. In the next post, I'll propose one hypothetical exhibition strategy, or non-exhibition strategy, produced in response to the wish to work with such practices.

Web 2.0 is often referred as type of social networking providing “power to a user and democracy for everyone (...), as incubator of innovative forms of media and free cooperation” among its users. But, what if another point of view is added to this innocent image? We simply have to be able to comment, discuss and criticize something that is loudly (and successfully) represented as a new form of “information superhighway” bringing everyone “equal rights” to create and distribute content.

When I met Renée and Sannetje, and they introduced me to n.e.w.s., I was drawn to participate in large part because I saw the website as a potential tool for greatly facilitating collaborative projects which involve regional networks.

I’ve been asked to be the moderator for this first phase of n.e.w.s., and I’d like to offer some reflections on what’s been happening so far on the website.

The exhibition “TV Gallery” has been conceived in order to contextualize and represent specific television production (“TV Gallery”) that was created at Belgrade Television and broadcasted on the Yugoslav TV network from 1984 – 1991. The exhibition is dealing with cultural policy, conditions of art and cultural production, public television and production and broadcasting of video art in territory of former Yugoslavia.

PUBLIC NETBASE: NON STOP FUTURE, New practices in Art and Media - New book about Public Netbase t0, edited by New Media Center_kuda.org and published by Revolver.

http://t0.or.at/nonstopfuture/

One of the leitmotivs of n.e.w.s., I take it, is precisely the idea of shifting, displacing, moving with an eye to all the cardinal points of the compass. Though real “geographic diversity” is mentioned in the project presentation, geography - like the sort of conceptual mobility also foregrounded in the write-up - provides a metaphor for understanding the condition of art today and its blithe refusals to acknowledge its disorientation and recalibrate its sextant.