Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 11:17:06 +0100
Subject: aesthetics - re-think the political


All

some discussion of aesthics recently on the list...

A new aestheticism has and is taking shape based on the developments of
the technologies of reproduction and the creation of new and extended
audiences. Like previous aetheticisms it is not transmitted
ideologically but through technologies. The practically worldwide and
near infinite reproduction capabilities of the media make the reflection
of all kinds of political activity possible. The time between political
acts and public representation and reflection is virtually real-time.
With the new technologies it is not necessary to record and then
distribute as it was with film and early TV now it is possible to
project the political and the everyday directly to the public and to
determine and influence the event through the reaction of the media
public. Through the activities of the state(s) and associated
institutions these media are directly operating as ideological apparatus
- but in the speed and the variety of distribution media exists a space
within the apparatus which enables and ensures the death of the 'common
culture' and opens fissures and breakages in the ideological apparatus.
The post-modern universalisation of the the aesthtics of the media has
also created the 'thinkings differend with what it does not manage to
think...this witness, the writer, the megaalopolis is quite happy to
have him or her, his or her witnessing may come in useful.'(Lyotard) -
The media witness also betrays the ISA by default -

Consider the events in Stockholm and the forthcoming events in Genoa -
real-time reporting and synchronisation of the growing rejection of the
globalised consensus...

regards
#
sdv