Syndicate: syndicate.ostranenie.txt

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

[this text appeared in the ostranenie 97 catalogue]


A Translocal Formation: V2_East, the Syndicate, Deep Europe

by Andreas Broeckmann


'There will be difficulty defining the appropriate structure because it
will always be mobile, i.e. in process.' Robert Fripp


Globalisation as a general cultural and economic trend is a scam. There is
no overall unification of the 'Global Village', and the 'New World Order'
is a slogan used by those who would like to define its terms. What we
experience is a situation in which different levels of locality are
enmeshed in a complex 'felt' of layers: local and regional traditions and
cultures, national and international politics, international financial
markets and transnational incorporations. Rather than by 'globalisation',
our situation is characterised by translocality, in which different local
agents, individuals and initiatives, operate within a networked
environment. Translocal means that you are dealing with individual local
situations but they are distributed within a larger geographical and
cultural system. The global is locally embedded. In the best case, the
global is a learning process. If we want to understand the global as
something that we can work with, we have to understand its forces and
layers and also to understand how it is connected to the local.

The effects of the described situation are, in East/West Europe,
exacerbated by the political changes in the former Eastern Bloc on the one
hand, and the restructuring of Western Europe in the name of the European
union which is still, more than anything, a European economic community.
The tensions arising from this remapping of Europe can also be felt in the
arts sector, and we felt that we could tackle and diffuse some of the
problems by connecting to others, asking questions, telling stories,
exchanging ideas, and working together.

In the winter of 1995/96, V2_Organisation launched its 'V2_East' initiative
which has since been a conceptual attractor for different network,
collaboration and presentation projects that were held in Rotterdam and
elsewhere. V2_East is dedicated to enabling and enhancing contacts and
co-operantions between people interested in media art and media culture in
Europe. The most important result of the V2_East initiative has been the
formation of the 'Syndicate' network. The name came from a comment that
Vladimir Muzhesky from Kiev made during the initial V2_East meeting at the
end of the Next 5 Minutes conference in Rotterdam in January 1996:
'Individually, we are rather weak when it comes to negotiating with funding
bodies and governments about support for new media and electronic art
projects. However, if we could join up and form something like a syndicate,
then we would be able to speak with one voice when it is strategically
necessary, and become more powerful than we are now.'

Since that first meeting of 30 participants, the Syndicate network has been
growing steadily. It arose from an East-West co-operation idea and is now,
in the late summer of 1997, a network that connects more than 170 people
from 28 European and 3 non-European countries. The East-West axis is
becoming less and less relevant for defining the character of the Syndicate
which is, at the moment, turning into a European platform for media culture
and art. We meet regularly in the context of festivals and conferences,
like at the DEAF festival in Rotterdam (September 96), the Video Positive
festival in Liverpool (LEAF, April 97), the Hybrid WorkSpace/dX in Kassel
(Deep Europe, August 97), or at the ars electronica in Linz (Net.Shop,
September 97). We organise publications, either by producing cheap readers
or by editing special issues of magazines. There are always more ideas and
possibilities than can actually be realised, but high on the current
wishlist are a Syndicate Publication Series, the creation of a Translators
Network, and the formation of a Student Fund for Digital Media Training.
The most important communication channel of the Syndicate is a mailing list
through which we exchange information about upcoming events, about projects
and ideas, and which we use to circulate texts that are interesting in
relation to our work. A website is used for archiving messages from the
list, for collecting Syndicate-related material, and for linking to the
websites of the members of the network.

There is a continuous discussion about the different labels that we use:
the 'East' dimension can be seen as a neo-colonialist effort on the part of
Westerners; the 'Europe' dimension has become increasingly problematic at a
time when the continent is as much of a cultural and political patchwork as
ever, when war is waged about competing versions of history and identity,
and when the continental powers are trying to build a fortress against the
'rest of the world' which, after centuries of exploitation, is bringing
'reality' back home to the Europeans. As Calin Dan put it: ''Etre EUROPÆ?EN'
is both as weird and as dull as being no matter what other kind of
excessive minority. Because the EUROPEANS are a minority, and if the
political class developed from this complex an irritated attitude on both
home and global matters, we - the average EUROPEANS - should try to
experience it without such a ridiculous intensity. More relativism
concerning one's origins could do only good. And reversing the aggressive
question from the other to the self should be an exercise of polite(ical
correct)ness not only for the EUROPEANS but also for other fundamentalists.'

We therefore use the mentioned labels not as 'black holes of
identification', but as heuristic tools for describing a temporary
situation or for writing grant applications, and try to be as ironic and
reflexive about them as possible. The spirit is pinpointed by Vuk Cosic's
proposal for the Ljubljana Digital Media Lab to create the 'Ljudmila_West'
initiative that would support Western media practitioners and help them to
learn from the Eastern expertise.

For the Syndicate workshop at the Hybrid WorkSpace during the documenta X
in Kassel we chose the title "Deep Europe". We were looking for a term that
was neither East- nor West-specific, that carried some of the historical
baggage of the notion of Europe, and that was at the same time strange
enough to be easily understood as ironic. It was an experimental title that
turned out to be an interesting focus for thinking about the context of our
work. In the end, Luchezar Boyadijev's (Sofia) reading of 'Deep Europe' was
accepted by most participants: 'The notion is a metaphor which could be
problematic. In the logic of this metaphor, deepness or depth is where
there are a lot of overlapping identities of various people. Overlapping in
terms of claims over certain historical past, or certain events or certain
historical figures or even territories in some cases. It could also be
claims over language or alphabet, it could be anything. Europe is deepest,
where there are a lot of overlapping identities.'

This mapping of culture and of the depth of identities onto the mental and
physical geography stands not in contradiction to, but is a condition of
the work that is being done in electronically networked translocal
environments equipped with all sorts of telematic gear. After the workshop,
Branka Milicic Davic wrote: 'what is deep europe? is it real? is it safe?
my answer is - yes. deep europe is real. it exists. i do not need visa to
be there, i do not need an invitation letter to be there, i can simply sit
and think and i am there - in the land without borders, policemen,
elections, president, government.... where no radio or TV station will be
banned... whose citizens are speaking different languages without shame...
and lot more. deep europe is my homeland, my private mental space, which i
share with others. deep europe recognizes words like exchanging, sharing,
growing. and that's why i believe deep europe exists. because i went there,
and i can go there whenever i wish. to exchange, share, grow and
understand.'

On the surface, the Syndicate is an informal network and an 'intercom'
system for people in the media art community in Europe and beyond. At the
same time, this inter-communication effects a re-mapping of cultural and
mental territories that transcends the political, religious and territorial
separations which we regard as a temporary nuisance, rather than as the
last word on this imagined continent/container. Lisa Haskel (London)
concludes her Deep European 'letter from home': 'So perhaps, this is what
Deep Europe is all about. Not a political position, a utopia or a
manifesto, but rather a digging, excavating, tunnelling process toward
greater understanding and connection, but which fully recognises different
starting points and possible directions: a collaborative process with a
shared desire for making connection. There may be hold-ups and some
frustrations, quite a bit of hard work is required, but we can perhaps be
aided by some machinery. The result is a channel for exchange for use by
both ourselves and others with common aims and interests.' At some point in
the future we might reach a situation in which the heuristic tool V2_East -
as was formulated from the very beginning of this initiative - will have
made itself obsolete.

http://www.v2.nl/east/
http://www.v2.nl/east/archive/deep_europe/
http://www.v2.nl/mail/v2east/