Rachel Greene
Since the beginning
Works in New York, Nebraska United States of America

BIO
Rhizome is friends and family for Rachel, who has been involved with the org. in one capacity or another since 1997 when it was rhizome.com!!
Rachel wrote a book on internet art for thames & hudson's well-known WORLD OF ART series: it was published in June 2004. She was a consultant and catalogue author for the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She has also written for publications including frieze, artforum, timeout and bomb.
Discussions (824) Opportunities (20) Events (0) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

QuickView on Software Art


QuickView on Software Art
Amy Alexander, Florian Cramer, Matthew Fuller, Thomax Kaulmann, Alex McLean,
Pit Schultz,
and The Yes Men, interviewed by Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin.
http://runme.org

Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin: Why are you personally attracted to
'software art'?

The Yes Men: We are very interested in software art because of its potential
for automation! We can use these technologies to replace the artists. A
wholesale replacement. Followed by leisure!

Alex McLean: Because making code is empowering, but generally taught very
badly. The act of programming is portrayed as systematic and uncreative.
This may be appropriate for working on quality assured credit card
transaction systems, but why apply it to programming as a whole? Software
art might give us a place to look at the creation and use of software
outside of formal business constraints, and the stereotypes thereby
fostered.
I'm also repelled by software art, because I see artists trying to employ
software thoughtlessly. Hopefully software art will draw on its hackerly
heritage enough to sidestep readymade wizardware.

Thomax Kaulmann: Software art can be a manifold thing. It can look nice in
source code or at runtime. It can influence culture or can give an
impression of the present culture.
Software art is just another art discipline and it is not defined.
Art is always a matter of intention, there can be different media to
transport one's vision: stones & hammer, canvas & color, camera & video or
computers & software. An artist is intrinsically motivated to translate
his/her ideas to a broader culture, through software as well.

Amy Alexander: Hmm, it's a little like asking "why are you attracted to
art?" isn't it :-)? I'm not sure verbal answers to such questions can be
entirely satisfactory or productive. But to give a partial one: I think
because software art is a mode of non-verbal expression relevant to
contemporary culture - just as photography, video art, etc., were to the
times in which they first appeared (and still are.)

Matthew Fuller: Perhaps the conjunction of two highly productive and
inventive forces, neither of which really wants the other is always going to
make for something interesting?
What is named as contemporary art has responded to networks and computation
by taking on certain of the characteristics of networks - the formulation of
'the relational aesthetic' for instance - without actually dealing with the
specific technologies.
On the other hand, software cultures have only very rarely considered
themselves to or have acted in a manner which is reflexive, in the way which
is most usefully and richly developed over the last century and a half or so
of art.
Various conjunctions of these two patterns of activity, their mutual
interference, seem to be generating some exciting or annoying or disruptive
or inventive effects. One cannot claim this for all of the work that
operates here of course, but it is an opening to new conjunctures.

Pit Schultz: Software art is attracting me because it is carrying a
seductive promise that possibly software production could be seen as
cultural production; that writing code has more meaning as making a program
run or crash or sell. It might place media art into the history of
contemporary art with the passage of conceptual art for example.
It poses questions of artisanship, and pragmatic aesthetics of code, a kind
of surplus that is not technological in terms of efficiency.

Florian Cramer: If one defines (as the Read_me 1.2 jury did) software art as
art that is either based on formal instruction code or which is a cultural
reflection of software, then there has been a lot of interesting artwork
lately in this field that has a attracted me and which justifies to engage
with this concept. Jodi's work of the past few years, which has radically
shifted from browser art to manipulations of computer software, is one
striking example. But aside from that practical observation, I am also
attracted by theoretical issues, since, being an academic in comparative
literature, I research the borders and grey
areas of writing, executable code and art, from the permutational poems of
the late antiquity to lullist and kabbalistic language speculation to up to
the very new situation that instruction code has become a mass commodity and
a material appropriated by artists in all kinds of ways. I thus would never
limit software art to craftsmanship of programming (i.e. software art as a
Donald Knuth-style "art of programming"), but consciously take speculative,
unclean, or even non-computer-related approaches into account, from certain
forms of poetic play and conceptual art to the use of machine code fragments
as private languages in artistic "codeworks" like those I collate, together
with Alan Sondheim and Beatrice Beaubien, into the "nettime unstable
digest".
I should also add that I am a Free Software activist who perceives operating
systems (particularly those which don't create artificial frontiers between
"users" and "programmers" - i.e. Unix, Plan9, LISP machines) and software as
ways of thought and cultures that are in no way aesthetically, culturally or
politically "neutral". It thus follows that software and art, as modes of
both cultural reflection and construction, are closely related to each
other.

Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin: Which viewpoints on the issue you find
most interesting?

Alex McLean: That of the programmer, because I am one myself, and that of
people using the software, because there is often great disconnection
between software creators and their audience.

Amy Alexander: I have a few interests: critical, political and algorithmic.
Critical: Software art helps us examine the biases and the influences on
culture of software at large. Most non-art software pretends to be neutral
and objective technology - devoid of human influence. Software art opens
itself up to examination of its human-created biases and its
human-experienced influences - so it helps us understand how these factors
operate in "normal" (non-art) software as well.
Political: Governments and corporations use software and information capital
to exert influence. But artists and others can use software to
strategically redistribute information capital in a more equitable, useful
and entertaining manner. (Mi datamine es tu datamine.) In other words, I
think it's important to realize that data and algorithms are separate
things. Even proprietary data can often be publicly accessed (search engine
databases, etc.) But how it's used is in the algorithm - strategically
written algorithms can provide a lot of leverage and be very handy as
tactical media tools.
And algorithmic for its own sake: the visceral, improvisational nature of
art and communication through algorithms and coding.

Matthew Fuller:
Yes, it is the way in which various software art projects reveal the way
software is embedded within wider currents of social and aesthetic
composition.
How does software manifest, reproduce or invent new relations, say of class,
or of processes of work and activity? How is it racialised? Is it so
precisely in its 'universality'? Does it have a way of doing things built
into it that enhances certain kinds of
sociability, or act against them? We can ask these questions in a number of
careful ways, but also in a manner that acknowledges our embeddedness within
software as culture. Part of these discussions are already part of office
culture, think of the drippy compensatory humour of 'Dilbert' cartoons;
consumer culture, where it exceeds itself as simple passivity, the inventive
intermediate role of 'power users'; and, perhaps most usefully in this case
in the way that particular scenes invent new forms of software and new ways
of dealing with established forms - think of the now long term tradition of
the demo-scene for instance.
At the same time, it's useful to work from the 'opposite' direction. There
are some interesting currents that take advantage of the specific material
qualities of particular kinds of coding culture. Think of some of the games
mods or some of the generative code work that really take advantage of the
idiosyncratic, perverse and particular nature of code practices. Exploiters
of bugs. Make the machines stammer, speak in tongues.

Amy Alexander: The algorithm is also very important here. The algorithm that
generates the output is an important and subjective thing, and in commercial
software, it often hides behind the veil of innocent, technological
neutrality. An obvious example is Google's PageRank algorithm, which
determines which sites appear towards the top of Google's results, and which
don't appear at all. The algorithm is very biased toward big sites,
especially if they own lots of other big sites.
But in their description at http://google.com/technology, Google explains
that they rely on "the uniquely democratic nature of the web" and that
"Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results
extremely difficult." Didn't humans write the algorithm?
That is a very direct example. Software artists approach the subjectivity of
algorithms in different ways; some are more formal; many are more subtle.
But because software art opens itself up to examination of its subjectivity,
and the fact that interface is driven by human-generated algorithms, it can
help us think about the broader software context.

Pit Schultz:
Which viewpoints? The view from the 'folkloristic' aspect of programmers'
cultures, writing gimmicks. The aspect of generating a tree of knowledge
out of existing material, by changing the viewpoint to it. The question if
there's something else than an unlimited numbers of readymades to be found.
The archive aspect of an area of production, which is not yet bounded,
territorialized. Something ambivalent that was already attracting me to the
possibility of net.art. A strange attractor for the possibility of existence
of such a genre?

Florian Cramer: Georg Philipp Harsdoerffer's "Mathematische und
philosophische Erquickstunden" ("Mathematical and philosophical
recreations") from 1636 -- perhaps the first attempt to systematically
combine poetics, mathematics and algorithmics into a playful whole, Abraham
M. Moles "First manifesto of permutational art" from 1963, Jack Burnham's
exhibition "Software" from 1970, Geoff Cox', Adrian Ward's and Alex McLean's
2000 paper "The aesthetics of generative code", Matthew Fuller's 2000 paper
"It looks like you're writing a letter: Microsoft Word", the (to date: four)
jury statements of the Transmediale and Read_me juries, to some extent also
Larry Wall's papers on Perl and postmodernism. We could use more cultural
criticism of software in general, and especially a criticism that sees more
than surface screen visual and which doesn't fall into the trap of
simplistic analogies between structures in software and structures in
society.

Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin: Programmers don't seem to be interested
in submitting their works to art festivals and competitions. There is a huge
body of their work that might be interesting culturally and artistically.
What are the possible strategies and interfaces that can help to make those
works visible in the extended software / art context?

Alex McLean: Yes, programmers don't need institutionalised art festivals or
competitions. They have the Internet, and the grass-roots fact-to-face
meetings that result from their online projects and discussions.

Amy Alexander: Programmers don't need art festivals - hooray! Rewind back to
"net artists don't need museums", and multiply by a factor of two (because
programmers typically don't consider themselves in the "art" field at all.)
So a programmer's work might be culturally and artistically interesting, but
you have to go where it lives instead of making it come to you. First we
should ask ourselves, "is this a problem?" Personally, I don't think so.
Centralization causes marginalization of whomever is not in the "center."
Not to mention structural weakness (single point of failure - when the
"center" disappoints, the whole can fall apart.)
Do programmers feel the urge to be pulled into the "art context?" If not,
then to do so might be to open a software art zoo and hunt down projects to
bring them into captivity - so we can gawk at them without getting our
fingers dirty. Many authors won't want to be involved in "art"
contextualizations at all. Others will if the context and culture seems
inclusive and relevant to them. Programmers (among others) are turned off by
artspeak, or if every discussion refers back to postmodern philosophy. These
conversations exclude people, and it is in fact possible to have an
intelligent, culturally relevant discussion without these as the focus.
Also, it is helpful for non-programmers to read about, learn about, and
experience geek culture. It is a culture, and it's about people, not
technology.
So anyway, hopefully runme.org takes a couple of positive steps: it's, we
hope, easy to submit work to - you don't have to spend a lot of time putting
together a big press kit with lots of artspeak to impress some jury and
mailing it in ... and you can invite someone else's work in, if they're too
busy or too shy to submit it themselves... it also tries to respect that
software art comes from both "software" and "art" genealogies but is its own
thing. I think it's a problem when people try to interpret software art as
strictly "software" or strictly "art." Time will tell if our diabolical
plans have been successful. :-)

The Yes Men: There are many examples of amazing "outsider art" that isn't
recognized as
such by the producer.. So I would think merely pointing them out, or finding
them and making contact with the producers is what would be most important
first.

Alex McLean: Yes, runme.org may be a start, allowing existing communities of
people interested in creative aspects of computing to share their view.

Florian Cramer: I personally think runme.org is an excellent step in this
direction. With its function as a download repository and weblog-style
interface (as it was pioneered by Free Software websites like Slashdot.org
and Freshmeat.net), it clearly overcomes some (so-to-speak) interface design
issues of the festival/competition/exhibition-oriented art system, although
I still think that both channels could and should co-exist. I find the
exhibitions "I love you" (at MAK Frankfurt 2002 and at transmediale.03
Berlin) and jodi's "install.exe" (at plug.in Basel 2002 and Buro Friedrich
Berlin 2003) very successful presentations of software art in the language
of the traditional art system, and the presentations are necessary to
address a larger non-geek audience. Since runme.org got headline coverage on
Slashdot.org, I am quite optimistic that this is the way to go. In general,
Free Software self-organization provides good blueprints to software art
self-organization.

Pit Schultz: The question is what constitutes the 'software art context'?
The software repository is known from shareware and other kinds of
downloadable software tools. Is it applicable to the area of 'art' too? If
we talk about context, the question is what kind of 'institutions' make
software art exists, where are its boundaries? Who constitutes these
boundaries and how? And of course, is there a history of software art,
assuming that it exists.

Matthew Fuller: Roland Barthes suggested that a truly interdisciplinary
object is one
which is nameable by none of the disciplines that in part contribute to
making it, or that congregate around it. Such an object is owned by no one
set of ideas and approaches. It demands that traditions become strange to
themselves.
So what is set in motion when art approaches the irritating subject of
programming, what happens when the 'art' insistences on being incidental, on
being amateur, on being able to go wide-eyed or cunning into any context,
comes into some relationship with technical
skill?
Equally, what happens when computing enters a context wherein every stage in
a process has aesthetic effects? What happens when computing's in-built
judgments about what is 'optimal' or what is 'trivial' are subject to
question and reinvention, or may even usurp its capacity to rule, to make
rules? The revaluation of the trivial, of waste, of the past, of what has
been shat out, and conversely, what it founds - the new - is one of the
powers of art.
I don't think that this work then that you ask about, that of programmers,
needs 'help'. It doesn't need to be 'made visible'. We don't need gestures
of sympathy such as those repetitiously awarding Linux the name, 'Art' in
order to make things possible. What is
needed are more specific alliances with particular currents of programming
and other strands of making culture; deranging gestures that bring new
worlds to light; prison break-outs; sustained and thoughtful work that makes
itself available for use.

Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin: Software art seems to be quite an open
field yet, possibly due to the reason it is very diverse and in many
respects is based on the programmers' culture that is hard to grasp. While
contextualizing grassroot movements like this one and thus, providing an
access to
interesting practices to larger audience, we are at the same time inevitably
packaging them for easy appropriation by art institutions. How do you think
we can deal with this problem?

Alex McLean: Having people with broad knowledge and experience of
programming
languages forming part of art institutions. Critics should become literate
in some of the many languages of software art before trying to understand
its context. Right now I think many art institutions are too software
illiterate to be of any interest to software artists.

The Yes Men: Yes! Just like the outsider artists... Well, it seems the
important thing
is to respect the desires and intentions of the creator... See if they want
to be appropriated first. If appropriation involves a compromise of
integrity, then figure out in each instance how to make the work useless to
the dominant narrative...?

Pit Schultz: How did other types of 'immaterial art' deal with this problem?
How did early computer graphics deal with it, or certain kinds of Fluxus?
The question is for me first of all is there a 'style' a kind of common
'ductus' which one can see after the years surrounding different forms of
'conceptualism'. The suggestion is that there is a difference
to be made in relation to other forms of art, which are based on the
postulation that a new 'form' is found, only through the use of a specific
'new' medium. The autonomy of media art in relation of contemporary art has
to be questioned, on the other hand the way the art operating system
processes incoming 'new forms' has to be questioned too. Software and the
net allows to run a 'museum' with much less funds than elsewhere, this poses
questions of what defines the needed power relations of representation which
are constituting an art form.
"Software art" insofar is not new, but it reflects, enhances, explores the
role of software in a post-industrial society and afterwards. What is the
role of the original, the author, the object, can one apply other basic
questions of the predecessors of this potential art genre in a new way? How
do seemingly successful works function gaining a market? (rhizome list etc.)
What kind of criteria they seem to fulfill? Is there any place of
constituting itself outside of an institutional interest? As with any art
I'm also interested in the art which hasn't to be called art.

Matthew Fuller: This question might also be posed from a different
perspective. If art institutions are treated simply as a particular and
distinct part of a number of interlocking, but also partially differentiable
processes and institutions it is useful to use them and take part in them
for those things that they do well.

DISCUSSION

The Balkan Matrix


Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK

www.cornerhouse.org <http://www.cornerhouse.org/>

8 March until 20 April 2003

Gallery 1

The Balkan Matrix

Stevan Vukoviae and Mihael Milunoviae

The Balkan Matrix is an artists? residency exclusive to Cornerhouse. A
continually evolving work, it examines both the West's perception of and its
relation to the Balkan states, encouraging visitor participation in the
shaping of the Balkan identity in both real and virtual space.

The title of the piece is inspired by the film The Matrix (1999), in which
the hero (Keanu Reeves) awakens into the ?real reality?, a virtual world
controlled by a mega-computer. The piece integrates the concepts of virtual
and real space, using installation, text and web technology to establish
parallel Balkan living spaces which exist on-line and in the gallery. The
ordinary objects that fill the room reveal a traumatic history as the
interaction develops - the sofa where Milosevic once sat, Causcescu?s
distinctive hat, trophies that are really weapons used in recent conflicts.
The original perception of the room?s homely domesticity is soon displaced
by a sense of horror and threatening possibilities.

Stevan Vukoviae is an art critic, curator and editor for several magazines in
Yugoslavia and Montenegro. Mihael Milunoviae is a visual artist who has
exhibited extensively both in Belgrade and internationally. They are
participants in the project Balkan Konsulat, Graz, Austria.

A new website is under construction: http://www.balkanmatrix.com
<http://www.balkanmatrix.com/> -- a virtual mirror of the installation in
Gallery 1, provides informational links to the objects in the room. It will
eventually include documentation of the construction of the room, and
comments from visitors to the Gallery during the Artist?s residency in
Manchester.

Gallery 2 & 3:

Imaginary Balkans

Curated by Breda Beban

Artists: Tanja Dabo, Vladimir Martek, Zoran Naskovski, Vladimir Nikoliae,
Mladen Stilinoviae, Dragana Zarevac and Igor Grubiae.

Curated by award-winning artist Breda Beban, this exhibition draws together
photography, video and installation work by seven Serbian and Croatian
artists. Breda Beban fled Zagreb in 1991 and now works in London and
Sheffield. Unable herself to deal with the antagonisms created by the recent
unrest and the situation faced now by the two nationalities, this selection
of work from Zagreb and Belgrade expresses her own personal reflection on
the turbulent territory of her former homeland. Beban focused her selection
on the artists who remained in their countries during war rather than leave
as she did.

Each artist defines the term ?Balkan? through their work in sometimes
melancholic, yet often very witty and celebratory ways. Mladen Stilinoviae
explores the routines of everyday Balkan life, the themes of pain, death,
money, work and poverty dominating his style. The negative stereotypical
perception of Balkan ?macho men? is amusingly explored in Dragana Zarevac?s
Perfect Marriage. Vladimir Nikoliae?s playful piece Autoportrait comments on
the post-communist situation in which ownership of a (Western) car has
become one of the strongest symbols of male identity. Vladimir Martek
investigates ambiguous and contradictory meanings of the Balkans through
geographical maps.

The exhibition catalogue, with texts by Chris Darke and Breda Beban, is
available in the Cornerhouse Gallery Bookshop at a special exhibition price
of ?5.00, and through Cornerhouse Publications (see p3) at ?7.50
www.cornerhouse.org/publications or tel: 0161 200 1502

Imaginary Balkans is a Site Gallery, Sheffield Touring Exhibition

Funded by The National Touring Programme through the Arts Council of England
and Visiting Arts

DISCUSSION

LAB 3D


Cornerhouse

Greater Manchester Arts Centre Ltd

70 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5NH

Tel: +44 (0) 161 228 7621 Administration

+44 (0) 161 200 1500 Box Office

Fax: +44 (0) 161 200 1504

www.cornerhouse.org

Lab3D

16 May

DISCUSSION

Re: Prix Ars Electronica 2003 Call for Entry!


is it just me, or should they have been posting about this deadline sooner?
or have I just completely missed their previous announcements?.... rachel

> Prix Ars Electronica 2003 - Competition for CyberArts
> Welcome to participate!
>
> The deadline for the entry is March 20, 2003 (postmarked)
>
> For the 17th time, the Austrian Broadcasting Company, Upper Austrian Regional
> Studio, as the organizer of the Prix Ars Electronica, invites artists,
> scientists, researchers and developers from all over the world to participate
> in the annual CYBERARTS competition in the categories:
>
> Computer Animation, Net Vision / Net Excellence, Interactive Art and Digital
> Musics.
>
> The total prize money for the Prix Ars Electronica 2003 amounts to Euro
> 100,000 (USD 98,650 app).
>
> If you are interested to participate please send us your work. Detailed
> information and registration forms are available online: http://prixars.orf.at
>
> Should you have any questions as a participant in the category Net Vision /
> Net Excellence, please feel free to contact: iris.mayr@orf.at
>
> Please forward this information to interested parties!
>
> best
> iris
> + ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php

DISCUSSION

FW: <nettime> Interview with Isabelle Massu


------ Forwarded Message
From: N Bookchin <natalie@action-tank.org>
Reply-To: N Bookchin <natalie@action-tank.org>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 07:49:07 -0800
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Subject: <nettime> Interview with Isabelle Massu

Hi nettimers,

I know its hard to think about much right now except for the actions of
the axis of evil: Blair, Bush and Aznar, but for a diversion, here is an
interview I did with freedom I mean french artist and activist Isabelle
Massu in the fall for 2002 for a spanish journal Red Digital You can read
it in spanish with illustrations here:
http://reddigital.cnice.mecd.es/3/entrevista_comp_2.html

best,
natalie

Isabelle Massu: Between Two Worlds: An Interview with Natalie Bookchin

Isabelle Massu (isa@aux2mondes.org ) is an artist currently working on a
Net art project called aux2mondes. She has a longstanding involvement with
public art and alternative media. In 1995, she collaborated with Margaret
Tedesco on a year-long collaboration with a group of homeless people from
San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness. Parlor Game: a Popular Version
was a series of board games depicting the city rules and regulations San
Francisco's homeless had to bypass or confront in order to survive. Six
different board games represented the different issues and branches of the
association such as Housing - Not Borders and Shelter Outreach. The games
were displayed as posters on Market Street in downtown San Francisco,
and as an insert in the coalition's newspaper "Street Sheet"
(www.sf-homeless-coalition.org).

In 1996 Massu joined the French feminist association Les Penelopes
(www.penelopes.org) which had, at the time, the only significant Internet
presence representing the feminist movement in France. They produced a
newsletter and a Web TV program offering world news on women's issues and
feminist analyses of neo-liberal globalization. Les Penelopes is more
than a media outlet; Massu traveled throughout Africa, Europe, and Latin
America giving workshops to women on media literacy and the strategic use
of new technologies.

In 1999 Massu became a member of La Compagnie, (www.la-compagnie.org), an
artist collective and an exhibition space in the heart of downtown
Marseille, in a neighborhood called Belsunce. The majority of Marseille's
substantial North African residents live and work in Belsunce, which has,
since the nineteenth century, received immigrants from across the
Mediterranean. Belsunce and Marseille are both currently the targets of
local and European Union funded "rehabilitation" initiatives, the latter
known as the Euromediterranee Project. Approximately one and a half
billion Euros are being invested in Marseille with the hopes of
transforming the city into a booming commercial center and a tourist
attraction. This is the largest amount ever given to a European city by
the EU, and the funds are being allocated for downtown real estate
development and restoration projects, aimed at attracting international
investors and businesses. Downtown is being "cleaned up," pricing out its
current occupants to make room for a new population of professionals,
businesses, and tourists. A new high-speed train linking Paris to
Marseille has been installed.

Marseille's considerable immigrant population and its rampant unemployment
and poverty are an aftermath of another era's commercial (and more overtly
racist) enterprise, French colonialism. During the height of colonialism
in the nineteenth century, Marseille, nicknamed `Porte de l'Orient,'
flourished as the main port for travel and trade to the French colonies.
Throughout the twentieth century, immigrants, primarily from the Maghreb
countries of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, were recruited to France as
"guest" workers. Men were shipped over without their families and offered
deplorable living conditions to discourage settlement when the work ran
out. Recruitment and immigration accelerated in the 1960s during France's
economic boom and into the 1970s, when an estimated two million North
Africans immigrated to France, many remaining in Marseille.

With the end of colonialism, activities around the port of Marseille began
to dwindle, ushering in widespread unemployment. The end of the Algerian
war in 1962 brought massive migration from the newly independent country,
including about 150,000 pieds-noirs, French citizens who had settled in
Algeria, returning to their homeland. Many of the guest workers who had
stayed on after their work had finished were permitted by the French
government to send for their families. With the sudden increase in the
population, unemployment and poverty, already a problem in Marseille,
became endemic. The middle class began to abandon the city, leaving the
poor and the immigrant population to deal with its crumbling
infrastructure.

In 1999, Massu her current collaborators inherited La Compagnie from a
collective of artists who had previously run the organization for five
years. The new collective began to put considerable effort into defining
their role and position in relation to the uneasy situation in Belsunce.
Their goal has been to bring diverse cultural activities to the
neighborhood, but they are also very cautious of the role their existence
can play in accelerating the gentrification process. They have initiated,
supported and developed a variety of projects including aux2mondes.With
aux2mondes Massu and her collaborators are developing an on-line game and
archive exposing the gentrification strategies of the city and the current
situation in Belsunce.The rules of the game will be inspired by city and
state political rules and regulations. They are planning the release date
to coincide with the inauguration of a new public library in Belsunce, a
major event and symbol of the "rehabilitation" project.

Natalie Bookchin: What brought you to live and work in Marseille?

Isabelle Massu: I lived in San Francisco for 10 years. In 1996, I decided
it was time to return home, and spent a year looking for places to live. I
am originally from Paris and didn't want to go back to a place that felt
so familiar. I visited a friend in Marseille and fell in love with the
city. Part of my attraction was that, like San Francisco, Marseille is a
cosmopolitan port city, and although it is France, it doesn't look and
feel like the rest of the country. Mediterranean culture is very present.
It is a very intense city, partly due to its geographical positioning at
the edge of the continent. After all the orderliness and quaintness of San
Francisco, I was looking for a city with more of an edge. Marseille is the
second biggest city in France, yet had been generally disregarded by the
French government until recently. It is the only city left in France
where the downtown is poor and the immigrant population, the majority of
which is Algerian, lives in the center of the city. The two other large
French cities, Paris and Lyon, have already "rehabilitated" and gentrified
their centers, which are now richer and whiter, and the immigrants have
been pushed to the suburbs.

When I came to Marseille I moved to Belsunce, a small neighborhood
sandwiched between the main train station, the entrance to the city's
freeway, and the port. Belsunce brought back familiar feelings and
sensations of growing up in the suburbs of Paris. When I was six years
old, my stepfather decided to move to the projects, which was typical of a
French proletarian family in need of a bargain apartment. The projects had
just been constructed, and were being sold as attractive, new, and modern.
This was the 1970s and the projects were also being used for temporarily
relocating some of the newly arriving Algerian population. We were in the
minority as so called Francais de souche, (roughly translated as "old
stock or native French). This was the first time I encountered immigrants,
and I witnessed a lot of racism. The immigrants were seen as intruders.
Their religious practices, which were completely unfamiliar to us, were
seen as evil and barbarian. From the dead lamb in the cellar to the henna
on my friend's hands and feet, I had a lot of questions that were never
answered by my family or school. France's role in Algeria was not
discussed. We learned about World War II, but never a word was mentioned
about what amounted to almost a century of French colonization. No one
talked about the protectorates, yet the schools were suddenly filled with
kids from these places. Returning to Belsunce in France in 1996 reminded
me of the confusion I felt as a child, and I began to think about the
situation as an adult. I felt very comfortable in Marseille, feeling that
I simultaneously belonged and didn't belong. I knew there was something in
this that I wanted to investigate, but I didn't know exactly what form
that investigation would take.

NB: You left France when you were twenty-two and spent ten years, much of
your adult life, as an immigrant in San Francisco. Now you are back in
France, and carry an American and a French passport. You have worked in
activist organizations as an artist, and in artist collectives as an
activist. You are attracted to Marseille as a city located between the
north and the south, between France and North Africa. Your project
aux2mondes resides between physical and virtual spaces. It seems that you
value the "in-between" not as a transitional space, but a place to locate
oneself and one's work. Can you talk about your interest in the
"in-between?"

IM: I don't know if it's an interest as much as a way of being in the
world, something that I have had to be all my life. I don't want to be too
psychoanalytical, but I will say that the first "in-between" was between
my mother and my father, who divorced when I was very young and lived in
different places. It was between the two of them that I really found
myself, and still do. I have always been drawn to the interstices, whether
it is between places or identities. To be "in-between" is to not have a
closed-in, secure, or fixed position. Maybe it's not a very determined
way of being in the world, but for me, any other position is too
constraining. Being fixed in one position does not allow you to see the
other side, whereas being "in-between" allows for movement and insight.

And of course one can talk about the strategy of the "in-between" in
aux2mondes. The project is based in Belsunce, where most people are
between two worlds, between Algeria and Marseille, between the secular
state of France and the religious state of Algeria, between being welcomed
as a citizen and being an illegal alien. But the in-between aspect of the
project really lies in how it structures and defines public space.
aux2mondes looks at both the limits and possibilities of physical spaces
and the virtual spaces. We are using the Net as a public space to reinvent
situations, propose alternatives, and denounce the progress of
gentrification. aux2mondes needs both spaces: the physical space of La
Compagnie is a direct and critical link with the people who are threatened
by the gentrification.

NB: Marseille seems to be trying to erase Belsunce. If the local
population is made invisible, there is no need to address them. Can you
talk about how aux2mondes works against this process?

IM: The city, the state, and the newspapers praise the expansion of urban
renewal plans. The process is said to be socially, economically, and
culturally enriching, but for whom? The rhetoric is always addressed to a
privileged population, as if the population being displaced did not exist.
Politicians describe this center as the "throbbing heart that it once was"
before the arrival of the immigrants. The politician's goal is revealed
through their vocabulary: rehabilitation, restitution, reanimation,
reorientation, reinforcement, resurrection, and above all re-conquest. We
intend to give a more realistic picture of the so-called "enhancement" of
a city. By collectively writing another story, we reiterate the universal
droit de cite.

This is in some respects how we are depicting the situation as a game in
aux2mondes: like most popular games, we are recreating a real situation.
Think of Monopoly, Sim City, Europa, games involving commerce, city
planning, colonization. In aux2mondes, the city and state political rules
and regulations are our sources of inspiration. We are inventing another
site, inventing a "counter" Belsunce,another Belsunce, another public
space, one where we could strategically play with equal opportunities to
win or lose, one where voices could be heard, a public space where one
could interfere, exchange, network, a non-static net within the net. It is
the Net, and it is fluid, not fixed in space or time, allowing us to
continue the story we are experiencing here, and to invent other stories,
strategies, and challenges, as the gentrification process continues here
and everywhere.

"the population in downtown is for the most part people with a very low
income; we need to crush this phenomena."
la Marseillaise (local newspaper) 24.05.96

NB:You are now in your second year of working on your project, yet do not
seem to be in any hurry to publish anything on the Net. Can you talk a bit
about your work process?

IM: The whole first year we did extensive research into the historical,
social, and political situation in Belsunce. We have been conducting
workshops and interviewing people who are or have lived in the
neighborhood. For a year, Martine Derain and I have been working with a
group of local women. Other members of the collective are working on
other projects and workshops, such as Johanne Larrouze who organizes
workshops for kids and adults that relate to the events taking place in
our space. She and David Bouvard, another member of the collective, are
working on a mini festival of Scopitone films for next year. Scopitone
films were the 1960s precursor to today's music videos. They were
distributed on 16 mm film with sound and shown on a Scopitone film
jukebox, found in bars across France. Joanne and David are focusing on
scopitones made for immigrants. Most of them were about working hard in
France, leaving the country, wanting to go back or wanting to remain. A
lot of them had strong sexual connotations, perhaps in an attempt to
entertain lonely male workers who were brought over without wives and
families.

Debates and lectures at La Compagnie often address problems in the
neighborhood, such as the local economy, as well as national and
international issues such as rehabilitation projects in other cities and
how other collectives and associations work with immigrants. We also have
an artist residency program, which tries to introduce an outside
perspective on the situation. Martine and Dalila Madjhoub, two members of
La Compagnie, are currently working on a proposal for a public art piece
in Belsunce in collaboration with two French architects. Their extensive
research on city politics will be added to the database of aux2mondes, as
will the work of the others mentioned above. We are calling the archive
and database of aux2mondes "The Library." It will mirror the "real"
library currently under construction, which is viewed as a major symbol of
the gentrification process in Belsunce. Its strategic geographical
position is supposed to placate the local population. However, it will
also attract students from nearby and newly constructed universities,
which are attracting a younger generation to the area. They will probably
be among the first new settlers in Belsunce. Therefore, as most locals
would agree, this library is not really for them.

"When you go to Aix Street, they give you low income housing for around
3000frs. What does it mean? It's not the poor people who are going to live
there, especially with "Marseille-habitat". If you want an apartment
they'll know where to find you one, a one room in Belsunce or a 6 room
apartment in the north of Marseille. The choice of course is quickly
made!"

"La Cite de La Musique, they did not build it for us. The minimum you
need to pay for classes for your kid is 400frs!! I'm telling you, this is
not for usS The library, I don't think it's gonna be for us either, I
really don't think so!"

Fatima Rhazi, resident of Belsunce, 2001

NB:Can you talk about the workshops you have been running with the women
from the neighborhood?

IM: The workshops came partly out of my feminist experience, and from
working in a neighborhood where public space is mainly inhabited and
controlled by men. Women appear primarily in private spaces, mostly at
home. What really stood out for me is their invisibility. Muslim and
Algerian women are doubly invisible: they are invisible as Muslims and
Algerians in France, and invisible as women in Muslim culture.

The women would come to La Compagnie with their kids. The men from the
neighborhood would come and go, but some women kept on coming back. We
began to develop friendships, while simultaneously developing a series of
workshops. They wanted to learn how to use the Internet. It seemed that
after one year what was most important to them had to do with
communication: email and forums. The Net became a way for them to have a
voice and to access information on their own, without having to rely
solely on television or reports of the outside world by the men.

For some, the interest was to feel closer to their home country, and they
would participate in online forums dedicated to Mzabite culture (a group
well known for its puritanism in Algeria). The anonymity in this context
allowed "feminist" voices to come out. These were forums where it appeared
that only men were chatting, but, as would happen in an ideal public
space, they were suddenly filled with women's voices, challenging
misogynist beliefs in a very direct manner.

Later on, as they became more at ease with the use of computers, the women
started to write their own stories of their arrival in Belsunce. They
trusted that their voices would be heard but their identities never
revealed-some of them are illegal aliens in France. We will make audio
and text material from the workshops available in aux2monde's Library.

NB: Tell me about the funding of aux2mondes. Are your funders aware of
your intentions?

IM: We have been given fairly substantial funds from the city and the
Ministry of Culture despite the fact that Marseille doesn't have much
money for culture and the arts. I believe that this has to do, in part,
with our strategic location in Belsunce and our potential as artists in
the neighborhood to placate the population. Politicians believe that if
people are distracted by culture they wont need to dwell on the
unpleasantness of their situation. The cultural events are supposed to
act as a crutch, to compensate for what the city is not offering them-a
decent education, parks, and playgrounds. None of this exists in Belsunce.

In a neighborhood which has been labeled as disreputable, La Compagnie
bridges the different populations throughout the various events we
organize in Belsunce. As artists, we have to be very diligent about what
we are offering in this context. We need to constantly look very
critically at our own position and the one placed on us by the government,
which believes it is useful to have a public art space in this "targeted"
neighborhood. We are not fooling ourselves into thinking that we can
restrain gentrification that has been happening for over ten years. But at
the same time, we are not willing to fully satisfy our funder's
expectations, and we refuse to permanently occupy the position they
outline for us, though at times this position is unavoidable. For the most
part we have been free to do as we please, but I suppose aux2mondes will
trigger a lot of political debate once it is online.

NB: Why do you assume that gentrification is inevitable? Is there any
attempt, from your group or others, to resist the rehabilitation project,
which could prove to be disastrous to the hundreds of immigrants living
and working in the neighborhood?

This rehabilitation project has been studied by sociologists, urban
planners, and the city for quite some time now, and has convinced much of
the population that it is being done in their interest. And some of it
probably is, but lies and promises are being used successfully as
strategic weapons. For example, the city is offering families the same
rent to move into the projects on the edge of the city as they now pay to
live in Belsunce. This could be seen as a good opportunity for some, but
others, like old and single men living in cheap hotels (a substantial
portion of Belsunce's population), do not want to be displaced or isolated
one from one another. The working population does not want to have to
commute long distances to work in downtown Marseille. Why should they have
to be the ones to move to the projects?

Resisting an underhanded, tricky government is more challenging then one
that is blatantly violent. Some groups are organizing to inform people of
their rights as citizens and tenants, but there is not much being done for
the illegal immigrants. It is difficult to fight for people's right to
stay here when technically they do not have such rights. Our form of
resistance is at times made up of small daily gestures. We are offering a
critical perspective, and that is in itself an act of resistance.
aux2mondes has no pretenses about changing the world, and locates itself
in between activism and art. But from both perspectives the intention
remains the same: making its participants visible. That is our plot in the
game.

www.aux2mondes.org
The first part of the project will be on-line October 2003.

Edited by Claire Barliant and Natalie Bookchin

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