Ivan Pope
Since the beginning
Works in Brighton United States of America

BIO
In the place where analogue and digital overlap, that's why you will find me in the kitchen at parties.
Everything is at my site, http://blog.ivanpope.com
Discussions (225) Opportunities (0) Events (0) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Nmherman@aol.com


I think I have to unsubscribe from this Nmherman@aol.com list. I thought it=
was some net art net discussion list, but I'm wrong again.
It's funny, but it seems that every list ends up as a tribute list to an in=
dividual.
Maybe that's what the net is for. Maybe there's a piece of work in there so=
mewhere.
Ivan
----- Original Message -----
From: Nmherman@aol.com

++ Man, none of your postings are original.

DISCUSSION

Re: http://www.cnn.com/POLL/results/170651.html


> John Walker Lindh, the American who fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan,
> entered a guilty plea as part of an agreement with U.S. prosecutors that
> could keep him in prison for 20 years. In exchange, federal prosecutors
> agreed to drop other charges that could have kept him behind bars for life.
> "I provided services as a soldier to the Taliban last year," he said in
> court. "I plead guilty."
>
> http://www.cnn.com/index.aol.html
Rule of law? You guys just make it up as you go along. Ivan

DISCUSSION

Re: re: that day


>I saw the buildings fall with my own eyes too,
> not through a camera lens, it was horrific ,
> it was not meaningless.
> Anyone who says it was just a death disneyland ride,
> they gotta broken soul.
> I'm still struggling with it.
> I probably will be struggling with it years from now.
> I hope that I am.

There's no denying the personal impact on millions. But, I'm not sure
whether its worthwhile to restate how horrific it all was to us
individually. I'm interested in how we react as artists. We can't help this,
its how the world goes round.
I once read that when the Germans arrived to beseige Stalingrad in WW2 the
first thing they did was shell the hospitals because they didn't want any
help available to the occupants of that city. In historic terms, September
11th was trivial, though like all human experience, not to those who
experienced it. This is how I contextualise the events. Maybe that makes me
a bad person. Maybe America wants the events of September 11th to be bigger
and badder than any other events because it is America.

>some of our reactions seem "shameful" and people are either
>loathe to acknowledge them or to discuss them.
I'm loathe to discuss some of my reactions, not because I feel they are
shameful, but because I'm scared of what sort of response I will get. I know
and understand my reactions. But I am a European whose jewish father came
from Lithuania via South Africa and whose mother was born in Shanghai, her
father being buried in Ho Chi Minh city. I can't but contextualise the
world. Actually, a few thousand dead people can (and are) created regularly
with basic military equipment (Sebrenica anyone?). The events of September
11th were fearsomely beautiful, which attracts everyones attention. And
apart from that, an understanding that a country that has unleashed terror
where and when it suits had experienced something in return. I'm not here to
mourn for the dead. The dead are just the dead. It's the living I worry
about.

I've said too much already. Ivan

DISCUSSION

Re: re: that day


Not to be square but I hear Ivan's point here again--what if "non-mediated
events" actually don't exist, but are the sentimentalize culture-life we all
eat here in disney land?

My ques to Ivan is: why is Kabul not disney land? Foucault says it is. I
think foucault will back me on this one.

-- If the gulf war didn't happen then events in Afghanistan certainly
didn't then events in New York ditto.
Well, of course Kabul is disney land to me, you etc. To the current western
political leadership its Storyland, one of those places where you can make
up whatever narrative you like and get away with it. Last time there was a
fight over Kabul 50,000 people were killed and that is a perspective
statistic for me. Who were those people? No idea. Who was killed in New
York? No idea. What do we know of New York? Kabul? Does such a place even
exist? Even when we live there its a construct.

Boltanski once said 'I like to make sentimental art'. I've spent the last
few years trying to figure out what that means in reference to his work, but
I like the idea. Sometimes the simplest phrases are the most difficult to
work out. I think Eryk's piece is sentimental art in the way that
Boltanski's is.

I feel a need at this point to crit Eryk's work in some way that relates to
new media or net.art or somesuch, but I can't. I just regard it as some
piece of work that I saw that references my world and adds to it. And then
we move on.

Ivan
++

DISCUSSION

Re: re: that day


> more on the distance/mediation thing:
>
> To be fair, I think it was *easier* in some ways for those of us who
> actually experienced it to deal with it. it was unreal enough as it was --
> my friends who happened to be out of town at the time needed to get back
> in, to see to feel to hear what was going on without the mediation. those
> of us who were right downtown watching had more to deal with sooner, more
> horror if you will, but we had the gift of our own senses, our
> insufficient physical and psychological "mediation" or self-protective
> devices. we didn't have to make that leap from mediated horror to register
> the reality -- it sounds crazy, but i've felt grateful that I had my own
> experience of it
>

I guess its a western luxury to be able to be grateful for the experience of
being in a city when it is bombed. This is, of course, an experience had
counteless times around the world by other individuals. Seldom do we hear
that they are grateful for the experience. The warring factions around Kabul
killed 50,000 by raining missiles randomly down on the city. I guess most
inhabitants weren't grateful and would rather have watched in on CNN etc.
Only it wasn't on CNN because the world had no interest at all.
Picasso made a work about Guernica, the genesis of bombing civilians, though
he wasn't there to experience it. Maybe he was the CNN of his day :)
Sow the wind ...
Ivan