Rachel O’Reilly
The call for papers for Re:live 2009 was broad: art-science-technology; biology – life – bioart; environment – sustainability – ecology; liveness –performance –networks; innovation – accident – alternative futures. While clusters of themes seemed purposefully solicited in this way, it was individual papers that stood out. This was partly because of the way sessions were only very loosely programmed as a series of discrete paper contributions, partly to do with the sort of reflective space opened up by longview scholarship and compelling close readings of difficult to access work, and partly due to speaker cancellations and facilitation constraints placed upon a rescheduled program.
There was of course much discussion of liveness throughout the four days, this being increasingly pronounced when history-work is equated with archival relations, preservation and re-presentation. Here, the large-scale cross-programming of A-life and robotics papers alongside theatre scenography and biomedia practices tended to productively destabilize discourses of life and liveness made use of, often interrogated. A number of philosophically sophisticated papers gave elaborate readings of individual works, practices and sci/tech moments, contributing greatly to specific histories and aesthetics: Andres Burbano on Konrad Zuse, punched film in the first computers; Caroline Langill on Norman White’s Helpless Robot; Danielle Wilde and also Laura Beloff on wearable technologies; Joanna Walewska on Edward Ihnatowicz’s early cybernetic sculptures; Monika Gorska Olisinka on Polish Digital Poetry; Morten Sondergaard on Thorbjorn Lausten. It was a shame a small chunk of anticipated papers fell out of the program at the very last minute, including McKenzie Wark on the history of nettime.org, Ana Peraica on the tendencies towards historical self-erasure of politically responsive media art, and Anders Carlsson on creative hackers and the demoscene.
Highlight presentations demonstrated quite profoundly the things that theory can do with objects and archives, formed and – most importantly – unformed, that go well beyond the bounds of traditional media/art historical inquiry. Such papers especially Gitelman’s and Kahn’s keynotes took advantage of the depth of focus and interdisciplinary literacy that the Media Art Histories vehicle can promise and expect of speakers and audiences, to combine under-researched objects with explicit, reflexive adaptations of rigorous method-work as genuinely new cultural theory about media in/as art history. In retrospect it seemed difficult to really breathe ‘liveness’ in to a paper inside of the MAH context without this kind of ambitious double-focus on objects and pathways. I wondered why the background, programmatic trajectory, and status of Media Art Histories as a unique research vehicle and delightfully “untame field” was not more explicitly invoked, framed, and interrogated through attention to methods within the program architecture and facilitation in this way. Perhaps a greater foregrounding of this co-inquiry into methods (plural), this ‘doing media + art + history’ – specifically via the MAH vehicle now (that question), on the back of Re:fresh and Re:Place – might have resulted in more elaborate exchanges between speakers-hosts-audiences, taken better advantage of a rare convergence of international scholars, and opened up the historiographics and narrative strategies of papers to their participation in the event itself? The Leonardo Education Forum was of course geared toward some of these more strategic academic meta-musings (see Darren Tofts’ report here) but the absence of such explicit, extensive structural attention within the conference itself, particularly upon opening and closing, may have been a sacrifice of eventfulness. The accelerated posting of proceedings online at www.mediaarthistories.org could have been capitalized upon further by opening those ‘live’ published texts up to online (and reciprocally more longview) comments and discussion, during and after the event itself. Strategic attention to the continuation and recording of critical dialogue around the event, apart from its publication incentives, was generally lacking.
A brief unscheduled conference debrief did take place in the last session on Sunday, after a final virtual paper was cancelled. Responding to concerns about the number and sheer diversity of papers and sessions, Sean Cubitt suggested that while the sessions at Re:live repeatedly brought up questions about methodology “the methodology conversation is difficult (because) the field doesn’t have one. We have professional curators, artists, archivists, media and communications specialists…systems analysts…living archives (as) people…younger scholars” etc. The media that many scholars are engaging with are incredibly ephemeral, and resources are “fugitive”. Cubitt emphasised the duty of writers in these contexts to be “as accurate as possible about description. We race in to theorization but we need the verbal records.” Oliver Grau’s presentation on the demise of many archives in Europe and elsewhere was in this context a uniting concern. Was a specific centralized server for a Media Art Histories archive necessary to organise around? Nina Wenhart spoke against centralization: “it makes no sense to wait for formats to be invented – the dispersal of cultural heritage often means it is more likely to survive”. Other archival concerns raised included: the impact of copyright hindrances; the increasing urgency of video restoration; the “interoperability of archives” as prioritised by the PFA and the Whitney; archiving strategies that deal with the complexities of IP regimes and copyright, but also investigate alternatives to these – different methods and strategies from the ‘aristocratic’ and nationally oriented.
Comparisons were made between the organisation, scale and “conceptual focus” of Re:live versus the tighter and more interactive Superhuman Symposium, but this was difficult to do, given Superhuman was an actual reduced theme, confident of its own contemporaneity, and with it’s own biopolitical elephant in the room. Arguably the MAH vehicle cannot be honed in, in the same way. Asked one participant, “Is it about everything?” This question about scale and cognitive energetics expended in Melbourne (over a much longer week of programming) was also, it was pointed out, about economic viability: Superhuman was expensive and purportedly failed to match expenses to registrations; Re:live programmed three tiers of concurrent sessions over four days, and included “virtual” skyped in presentations. While the latter were advertised as such in the program, and these proved comparatively un-engaging for audiences (with the exception of Stelarc and one other) and made panel discussion very difficult – the event was viable precisely because of its mass scale and programming intensity: “you have to make money from speaker registrations”. Alternative scheduling models were suggested as a priority for the next event.
The online print on demand version of the proceedings can be downloaded at the conference website. Images will soon be online there too, and a CDrom made available. Organisers Paul Thomas and Sean Cubitt also announced interest in publishing a Re:Live book, modelled on the strengths of the first Re:Fresh publication.