with contributions by Geert Lovink; Zdenka Badovinac, Eda Čufer, Cristina Freire, Boris Groys, Charles Harrison, Vít Havránek,Piotr Piotrowski, and Branka Stipančić; Anton Vidokle, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov; Hu Fang; and Franco Berardi Bifo
www.e-flux.com/issues/40-december-2012
e-flux journal iPad edition is now available.
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—Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle
In this issue:
Geert Lovink—What Is the Social in Social Media?
If the social is no longer the once dangerous mix of politicized proletarians, of the frustrated, unemployed, and dirty clochards that hang out on the streets waiting for the next opportunity to revolt under whatever banner, then how do social elements manifest themselves in the digital networked age?
Zdenka Badovinac, Eda Čufer, Cristina Freire, Boris Groys, Charles Harrison, Vít Havránek, Piotr Piotrowski, and Branka Stipančić—Conceptual Art and Eastern Europe: Part I
There was this feeling that something was giving way, that the old order was becoming defensive and dogmatic in an effort to protect its boundaries, and that modernism itself was a type of orthodoxy fraying at the edges. I remember my colleague and friend Michael Baldwin talking about that period. He was an art student in the mid-1960s. “Modernism had become like shifting ground,” he said. “You put your foot on it and it would float away from you.” The system was breaking up. Sol LeWitt’s announcement in 1967 was like the manifesto of a movement. What mattered was not the appearance of the object, but the vitality of the idea, and that was its crucial, distinguishing characteristic.
Anton Vidokle—In Conversation with Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
Despite the fact that everything has changed, there is no such perception of the end of the old world. The new world was supposed to carry the perception of the cosmic. A new cosmos. All ideas come from the cosmos, and not from social life. The Russian avant-garde believed that a new cosmic era had begun. Technology, steamships, airplanes, steam engines were all perceived to be signs of the cosmos. There was no such cosmism in the West. Italian Futurists come the closest to this, but they are too technological.
Hu Fang—The Door to Sunset
With these tangible and intangible encounters, we enter into a context saturated in contradictions and vitalities. Over there, slight changes in thinking would lead to consequential effects in reality, like the butterfly effect. So far, we cannot distinguish its beginning or end; our senses of the progress of time are limited, and our understanding of haste is as limited as that of speed.
Franco Berardi Bifo—Nightmares and Screens: Notes on Two Movies
Should we take shelter? Should we go to the bank and ask for a loan, and invest in protecting our future? Should we take our premonitions seriously? Should we accept the idea that paranoia is the proper understanding of a danger we cannot dispel, or should we avoid paranoia? Nichols answers our questions: investing our energy in building shelter is the way to fall into the trap, to accept the dilemma of depression and catastrophe. When the tempest comes, we won’t be home anyway. We’ll be too far away from the shelter.
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