Re: <nettime> ISEA 2011 fees

[Andreas Broeckmann <ab@dortmunder-u.de>]

dear kevin, folks,

thanks for these interesting thoughts and your 
description of the academic validation aspects. a 
crucial problem seems to be that at ISEA two 
different types meet: the academic e.a. people 
who can raise money to speak at a conference 
(unlike at cultural events, you pay to be on 
stage, whereas in istanbul the people in the 
audience get in for very little money), and the 
independent art people who (rightly) expect to 
get rewarded for presenting their work. how to 
reconcile these different reward expectations?

even though i think kevin's proposals are partly 
unrealistic (this is speaking as someone who has 
been involved in the organisation and fundraising 
for quite a number of events of different scale), 
they are also a refreshing shake-up to the debate 
and, in my eyes, well worth considering. 
(however, for instance: the conference has around 
100-150 speakers in every ISEA edition - how do 
you get all those presentations into the annual 
journal? and isn't Leonardo that journal, with 
its own editorial and economic particularities?)

the internet and relatively cheap flights have 
created the desire and the possibility to move 
and meet friends and colleagues across the globe; 
even though this practice is unsustainable in the 
long run, we are yet enjoying it naively. how can 
the desire for a complex exchange be regionalised 
(?) and made less costly (money-wise, and 
ecologically)? (and what do we learn from the 
failure of the ElectroSmog festival that eric 
mentioned? keep on trying?!)

greetings,
-a

ps: what i find most curious is the total absence 
in this debate of the ISEA Foundation Board that 
is responsible for the continuity of the 
symposium. it is, i guess, one of the strange 
peculiarities (maybe virtues?) of ISEA that it 
has a weak, slow and virtually invisible 'core'.

pps:

> Kevin writes: What none of us need, I would 
> argue, is participation in the 
> conference/festival/tourism market of hotels and 
> conference centers.

???
kevin, in what kind of venues do the conferences 
take place that you go to? who organises those 
conferences? and where do you sleep when you go 
to a city where you don't have friends or family? 
- your claim reminds me of the wise graffiti on 
one of the Yorckbrücken (bridges) in berlin, 
under which in the 80s there was always heavy 
traffic: "You're not standing _in_ the traffic 
jam, you _are_ the traffic jam." by analogy: 
"kevin, you're not _participating in_ the 
conference market, (if you go) you _are_ the 
conference market."

ppps:

i confess: i like the big conventions with 
excessive programmes of varying quality and a 
totally unlikely mix of people getting together, 
exchanging ideas and having fun together. i'm 
convinced that, like other communities, the 
people in this one need bodily proximity from 
time to time.

> My suggestions for how to productively preserve, 
> with great care and caution, both the academic 
> and spectacular dimensions of ISEA:


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