9.11. Networks

A media congress in an intermedial and multimedia ambience: lectures, installations, performances, webcasts.

1. Concept
The relevant social practices are not guided by moral philosophical imperatives, but by an instrumentalizing orientation. Independently of the co-ordinates of each actor, something can emerge when this orientation is combined with viability. The leading difference is not a relation of congruence, but a relation of viability. The concept of viability is semantically opposed to inadequacy, but it must not be misunderstood as a claim to superiority or hegemony. Rather, viability understood in a radically new constructivist way is coupled with responsibility and an appropriate ethical dimension. Biogenic programs which virtually regulate the system of action in the constitutional context of person, role and expectation, are combined with programs of a technical kind. People and machines form socio-technical ensembles. Survival is simultaneously the preservation of complexity in a cybernetic media world.
The concept of network circulates today mainly as a buzz word which, depending on the context, carries a different ideological charge and is inseparably connected with globalization. In order to avoid misunderstandings from the outset, following the sociologist Ulrich Beck we want to distinguish between globalism as the theory and practice of neo-liberalism, globality as the general state of networking the world and globalization as the process of worldwide networking which requires shaping by all people. It is precisely the drifting apart of social and system integration because of globalization which presents completely new challenges on all levels of society which must also be recognized as an opportunity for processes of democratization. "For a democratic politics of globalization, this can only mean that on the level of supranationality it must be liberal, but as a counterweight to this, on a local level it must be constituted more in a republican way" (Stark 1999). The latter can be conceived more clearly under the concept of civil society (cf. Lefort, Claude; Gauchet, Marcel 1990).
Viewed more closely, the concept of network is an offspring of modern world society and accordingly has long since grown out of its children's shoes. But enough of metaphors. Leaving aside the thesis of the increasing temporalization of complexity and other explanatory models based on a social theory through the phenomenon of communication, it is evident that the frequency and intensity of relations of observation in the system of modern society have rapidly increased in the course of the second half of the 20th century. And this applies of course on all levels. No matter whether it is individuals, organizations or social systems as a whole, the relevant units in each case observe and describe each other, "supported in this by the potentials inherent in the dissemination of communication" (Stichweh 2000: 255). This presupposition develops a mechanism which is being discussed in sociological analyses as "global diffusion" and was conceptualized theoretically especially in American neo-institutionalism. Even though global diffusion, which Rudolf Stichweh has supplemented with "institutional models", explains processes of modernization in the system of world society, there can be no talk of a worldwide convergence to a single institutional standard. Of course there is a certain limitation which is set by a worldwide repertoire, but a theory of world society does not predict that with the worldwide copying of models, unconditionally and inevery case, worldwide standardizations will arise. >From a certain viewpoint, this would even be something to be welcomed in many areas of world society, but as the facts clearly show, on the contrary, world society must be understood as a system of reproduction of inhomogeneities and inequalities.
That is not surprising if we accept the system-theoretical definition that puts the beginning of modern world society in the epoch of 1450-1640 when one of the social systems no longer wanted to accept that there were any others besides itself and by virtue of its resources re-formed "this non-acceptance into structural reality" (Stichweh 2000: 249). It is no coincidence that a revolution in communication took place on the threshold to this epoch, namely, the invention of the printing press around 1445. In this period, the budding process of expansion of European-Atlantic society consolidated which is characterized by the conquering of countries of former trading partners, colonization, exploitation and genocide. In the pre-Columbian period, for instance, an estimated 4.5 to 11 million people lived in Mexico. In 1650 there were only 1.5 million (cf. Paczensky 1979: 130 f.). "The process which the Spanish and Portuguese colonial rulers had begun hesitatingly was adopted by the other European colonial powers, refined, systematized and even made into a principle" (Datta 1985: 22). The beginning of modern world society is accordingly simultaneously the beginning of modern world trade. This beginning was based on the slave trade, a triangular trade between Europe, Africa and America which did not correspond to the original understanding of trade because it was subjected to the dictates of the European colonial powers, European-Atlantic society. Along with this triangular business arose the systematized profit-making machine which had never before existed with this efficiency and which is the foundation stone for the "achievement" of the present-day world economic system. "The rise of European capitalism therefore led to uneven development and to an increasingly pronounced division in the world, namely, into developed and underdeveloped countries..., into exploiting and exploited countries. The triumph of capitalism toward the end of the 18th century consummated this development" (Hobsbawm in 1978: 221).
For more than two decades, the strategic instruments of American and European economic policy, deregulation, liberalization and privatization, have newly moulded the structural configurations of hegemony worldwide under the slogan of "the fight for the liberation of capital". The architect, Oscar Niemeyer, brings the consequences of neo-liberalism into focus in a television documentary made about him in 2000 when he says with regard to his past life, "earlier on the poor fought against the rich. Today the rich fight against the poor" (television documentary by Marc-Henri Wajnberg: Oscar Niemeyer - A Politically Committed Architect, France 2000). For many years we have been experiencing the greatest concentration of capital in the history of humanity. Today, the five richest banks in the world have more assets than the government reserves of the United States, Japan and Germany put together (cf. Martin/Schuhmann 1997). When international trade in stocks, bonds and foreign exchange, the banks, investment companies and insurance companies coalesce electronically into a single decentralized organism, with this expansion via digital capital, the global banks with their convoluted magnitudes will also gain enormously in power.
But it is not just multinational corporations which profit from the processes of globalization, but also the non-government organizations or NGOs which mobilize a critical public against the strategies of hegemonic maintenance and extension of power. And those organizations are also not to be forgotten which in spite of all their differences have a common enemy and which since 11 September 2001 are subsumed under the label of international terrorism. What is notable about this is that these organizations too have emerged from a functional differentiation of religious-fundamentalist social formations which, similar to other social systems, form a functional system which realizes a communication network that is simultaneously specific and global.
Stichweh calls the "global diffusion of institutional models" a remote action theory because in the relations of observation and comparison, direct contact between those observing each other is not necessary. This is completely different from the situation regarding global interrelation and global networking which Stichweh understands as a close proximity theory, with correspondences to network theories, system theory and also the globalization theory of Anthony Giddens. In this model, the individual communicative acts gain in relevance by being understood as a network tie embedded in other network ties. Globality is executed here locally "by networking communicative events or networking ties which postulate a local propagation of effects which are becoming globally effective" (Stichweh 2000: 257). From the standpoint of the virtualization of the social dimension, the phenomenon of network culture provides a good example of global interrelation and global networking. Examples would be the countless chat fora which are concerned not simply with an exchange of information but with initiating social relations. No matter whether it is via e-mail or online communication, groups and milieus arise which in turn generate informal and popular identities. These new social spaces also contribute to overcoming traditional ideas of identity such as national identity. "A small world," Stichweh says, "works perhaps as the effective infrastructure of global interrelation precisely because it cannot be transformed into a global system of interaction under any circumstances" (Stichweh 2000: 258). System of interaction is understood here as the reciprocity of perception or response presence (cf. Goffmann 1983; Luhmann 1975).
The concept of network no longer stands merely for a universal method and theory within the discipline of sociology, but for a new form of structural formation in world society in which communication is freed from conditions of spatial proximity and co-presence of interaction. Network is accordingly a concept of decontextualization which replaces conventional concepts for phenomena of medium range such as group and community under the changed conditions of the virtualization of the social dimension.
The title of the symposium is undoubtedly conceived as an eye-catcher, but at the same time it marks the threshold to ultramodernity whose beginning is defined by a new order of world society not least of all on the basis of the digital revolution. Those who have been invited to the symposium, artists and theoreticians, are contemporaries who will each present their own work independently of the symposium's title.
F.E.Rakuschan

Literature
Beck, Ulrich (1986): Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, Frankfurt/Main.
- (1993): Die Erfindung des Politischen. Zu einer Theorie reflexiver Modernisierung, Frankfurt/Main.
Datta, Asit (1985): Welthandel und Welthunger, Muenchen.
Goffmann, Erving (1983): The Interaction Order, in: American Sociological Review 48.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. (1978): Vom Feudalismus zum Kapitalismus, in: P. Sweezy, M. Dobb, K. Takahashi, R. Hilton et al, Frankfurt/Main.
Lefort, Claude; Gauchet, Marcel (1990): &Mac220;ber die Demokratie. Das Politische und die Instituierung des Gesellschaftlichen, in: UlrichRàdel (ed.), Autonome Gesellschaft und libertaere Demokratie. Frankfurt/Main.
Luhmann, Niklas (1975): Interaktion, Organisation, Gesellschaft, in: Soziologische Aufkl‰rung 2. Aufsaetze zur Theorie der Gesellschaft, Opladen.
Martin, Hans- Peter; Schuhmann, Harald (1997): Die Globalisierungsfalle, Reinbek bei Hamburg.
Paczensky, Gert von (1979): Weisse Herrschaft. Eine Geschichte des Kolonialismus, Frankfurt/Main.
Stichweh, Rudolf (2000): Die Weltgesellschaft. Soziologische Analysen, Frankfurt/Main.

2. Installation
STR will construct a digital media installation which can be physically entered as the main field for action. This installation offers the possibility of submerging, of excitement and relaxation. It is a living space which will exist for one day. It is supposed to assist those attending to actually stay the distance of the marathon since the symposium will start at 2p.m. and finish around two or three in the morning. The conference will take place in the Mousonturm foyer and in the large theatre. The installation will begin in the foyer and then proceed seamlessly to the theatre. The antiquated separation between the performance space and the lounge will be done away with.
Immaterial visuals and sounds flow together with the materialized set-up of the installation. Projectors and monitors and also exhibition objects made of specially printed materials will be used. A P.A. system will fill the space. The art is digital and fluid, the surroundings are material, created by high-tech means of production. It entices with the softness of the materials. Modular units define the installation.
Art objects, individual pieces, created by STR especially for the conference, will be put on the art market afterwards. Processual art which has arisen for the conference.

3. Live performances and symposium
The large theatre is to be used for the symposium and for live performances.
Artists and groups of artists will be invited to perform their new audio-visual works live.
Performance and discourse: normally conferences are organized and staged in such a way that at first the theory takes place over several hours in a sequence of lectures by the invited speakers, and later on, as an evening or recreational program, the party takes place with VJs/DJs and/or performers. At this conference STR consciously does not want to act within the framework of this rigid sequence. Theoreticians and performance artists should therefore engage with each other in an apparently chaotic sequence. A lecture of one hour is envisaged followed immediately by a mini-performance.

The theory is supposed to have an interchange not only with the installation, but also with the performances. We regard this as of central importance because as media artists we are concerned with the artistic deployment of the media and never exclusively only with describing them. Precisely this aspect has been neglected over the past few years at various festivals and the event provides an opportunity to take on this subject in this project.

Topics which will be ultrascanned:
Networking, net.art and web.art, webcasting, POP, mobile computing, audio-visual performance, critique of networks, viability, media and system theory, youth culture, silver kids, "Has everything already been done?", retroesque as an answer from the entertainment industry and the market ...

ad: Networks:
What networks exists in the context of art, on the internet which act and do not only react? Major topic.

ad: Has everything already been done?
Consternation is prevalent throughout the economy and in the avant-garde. Retro seems to be the answer of industry, the mass media and the entertainment industry. But retro was never the answer. A clear stringent development away from the old law-like regularities to new ones which was last hoped for at the beginning of the nineties cannot be made out at the moment, can it? Retro, often packaged as remix, as a permanent threat, as standstill? Isn't it rather a matter of the recurring retroesque attempt to put old contents into new packaging and new forms of expression into old environments?

ad: Pop:
Recruiting innovative artists from the pop music scene who have unknowingly placed their talent at the disposal of a global subversion is a thing of the past. It is also understandable since today any composer can reloop their image via PowerBook. This is different from 1967 when an appearance on television with long hair was sufficient. At this symposium we are presenting people who have counteracted this tendency while of course also simultaneously contributing to it.

ad: Mobile computing:
Are we speaking here of a next step in communication? Who is already able to work or play with it? Is everything just propaganda from the industry, or is there are more to it than that?

A publication is planned.

4. Webcasting
STR will setup a STReaming transmission studio. The entire day and night marathon will be STReamed in real-time to www.stationrose.com.
STR will remix the conference in real-time. All the material is digital feed. The real-time aspect of 9.11. will decide what is streamed and thus recorded forever. The marathon is simultaneously raw material with announcements and uncommercials.

5. Guests
(list not complete yet)

art:
pingfm.org/Prof. Ralf Homann (Bauhausuniversität Weimar, Mkl. für Experimentelles Radio)
Dr. Thomas Feuerstein
Station Rose/Elisa Rose & Gary Danner
var. performers

theory:
Malcolm McLaren (artist, producer, London)
F.E. Rakuschan (freier Wissenschaftler und Medientheoretiker, Vienna)
Dr. Thomas Feuerstein (media artist and writer, Vienna)
John "Tex" Coate (net activist, San Francisco)
Dr. Richard Barbrook (Hypermedia Research Center/University of Westminster)
Prof. Ralf Homann (Bauhausuniversität Weimar, Meisterklasse Experimentelles Radio)
Gary Danner, Elisa Rose (Station Rose, Frankfurt)

Konzept:
Elisa Rose & Gary Danner Frankfurt 069-466633 fon+fax gunafa@well.com