BALTIC SEA MEDIA SPACE & NET.RADIO
October 31 - November 4, 1999
Co-ordinator: e-lab, Riga, Rasa Smite <rasa@parks.lv>
http://re-lab.net

Media Space Network: http://nice.x-i.net

The meeting of New Media initiatives from the Baltic Sea Countries (and beyond) will be structured to concentrate on developing media arts' exchange and exploring networking possibilities in this region; with the aim: to establish Baltic Sea Media Space - network and virtual platform for collaboration.

The workshop on cultural politics will concentrate on the topics of 'micro-cultures' and 'sovereign / minor media'; including the issues about the importance to create the networks for independent new media and micro cultural initiatives in order to create independent infrastructures and to co-operate in getting the funding (Interfund as option).

The more practical part will consist of live net.radio/streaming audio web-casting sessions and the planning of an Xchange net.radio meeting in August, 2000 in Riga. The workshop will be closed on November 4, with the party in the Meteori bookshop.

Escape from Marginality!
Eric Kluitenberg, <epk@xs4all.nl>

From November 25th 1999 onwards Tallinn will host the third Interstanding conference on networked culture, after earlier editions in 1995 and 1997. At the verge of the Y2K bug, Interstanding intends to go "Beyond the Edge" (as the title of the event declares), to attempt an escape from marginality. In many ways the Baltic countries are states at the edge; on the edge of the European Union, knocking on the door to get in, on the edge of a new networked economy, at the edge of the Russian Federation, beyond the edge of the former Soviet Union, at the edge of history, in the deep northern edge of Europe...

The third Interstanding will not be an exercise in self-pity. It rather seeks to question the meaning of the edge-concept: Does it really apply in the age of global information and communication? Does it apply in a world dominated by global economics and politics? And where is the space for alternatives? -> Alternative life-styles, alternative economics (gift economies, virtual money generators), alternative cultures (translocal and trans-historical), alternative sex, alternative love, alternative peace, alternative states (of being), alternative soundings and alternative visuality.

Should we no longer ask about the "where" anymore, and move beyond the edge of the borders that used to confine our existence, because they have become meaningless?

Is this the radical program net.culture should pursue?

Critical cultural activity has always identified itself with an existence at the edge of society, but that position has become increasingly dubious. Increasingly we seem to be living in a society without clear and fixed boundaries: A globally interconnected economic and social system with constantly shifting borders.

Our time seems to be one of limitless possibility. Ideas and money travel at the speed of light through virtual networks, and capital can accumulate in boundless quantities.

Our time also seems to be one of limitless brutality and violence (Rwanda / Kosovo). A time of limitless political transformation, where empires disintegrate without a clear reason (SU). A time also where new economies collapse even more quickly than they emerged (Asian Tigers). Where the dream of independent economic success is bought away overnight by foreign investors (Estonia and other newly 'emerging states').

The boundaries of society have become so fluid and open that any attempt to define what exists 'inside' and 'outside' of the social framework becomes irrelevant. The edge of culture can quickly be turned around into a profitable mainstream trend. The outsider becomes the trend-setter, the oblique the eccentric, the perverted the exclusive. Otherness is embraced as a market opportunity. Meanwhile, authoritarian politics implode, but re-emerge shortly after as if nothing ever happened (Juganov).

The role of the avantgarde artist, finally, becomes a tragic joke. The advertisement industries have long understood the shock of the new, and make art look retrograde. The utopian visionaries have become entrenched in an increasingly self-referential art-scene that propagates itself through exclusive coffee-table books and glossy international art-zines.

So, where is the edge?

The third Interstanding "Beyond the Edge", should be understood as an attempt to get away from the clichés of what supposedly constitutes the edge in culture, in social live and in politics (be it regional or international). By leaving behind the false oppositions between "system" and "opposition", between mainstream and so-called sub-culture, it could also be an attempt to escape both repressive systems as well as a marginal existence 'at the edge'.

The aim is to map out a new territory of culture, social live and power that reveals new opportunities and new discontinuities for critical cultural activity; inside society, as well as in the shifting constellations of the international community.

Net.radio has been one new field of experience, where the edge seemingly has begun to erode. With virtually no money Xchange became an extensive, hyper-active network of audio-artists almost around the globe. In the process Xchange also became a world-famous example of a new type of cultural sphere that is no longer bothered by the clichés of main-stream nor counter -culture. In the net era the utopian idea that "everyone can be a sender", not just a listener, was seized upon for an exciting adventure into acoustic space. It revealed a spatiality that radio has never been able to uncover. An acoustic space of sounds, music and conversation that Brecht could only dream about when he wrote his radio theory in the late 20s.

Is there really no edge anymore, to where the marginalised are relegated?? Nothing is really self-evident, least of all the battle for Bandwidth For All. But the networked acoustic space is an important new territory, that calls for further exploration, beyond the final frontier!

From the slogan factory:

It is necessary to map the new minefields, to avoid treading on a misplaced shell....

Eric Kluitenberg
Amsterdam, July 1999