new media center_kuda.org

n.e.w.s. is a collective online platform for the analysis and development of art-related activity, drawing upon contributions from around the globe, bringing together different voices, accents and outlooks from the North, East, West and South. Comments and feedback welcome! Please sign up as a user and contribute and/or subscribe to our newsletter for further announcements.

http://northeastwestsouth.net/

Paid Usership
March 21- May 1

Since its inception, n.e.w.s. has sought to maintain a model of payment (or partial payment) for content online. Contrary to mainstream practice – with its residual romanticism of solitary authorship and single-signature value – we at n.e.w.s. contend that value is always collectively produced through linguistic cooperation (polemics or just idle chatter) – that is, through the collective intellect. Because n.e.w.s. is a non-commercial platform, without any institutional structural subsidy, we have been investigating alternative models of exchange and collaboration, retooling our critical lexicon: instead of the seemingly self-evident binaries of producer/consumer, we have opted for the more inclusive and extensive category of usership – of the paid variety. n.e.w.s. is currently finishing a book, 'Arbitrating Attention: reinvestin g attention surplus in plausible artworlds', for which we (the n.e.w.s. collective) won the Competition of Ideas prize, to be published in 2010, dealing amongst other things with remunerated usership (online and off line) as an innovative way of equitably redistributing community-produced value. We would like to invite you to contribute to this forum, remunerated in some way of course, terms negotiated. Please read the post at n.e.w.s. for terms and conditions. Confirmed participants: David Graeber, Randall Szott, Scott Rigby, Aharon Amir, Branka Curcic, Geert Lovink, Patrice Riemens, Sebastian Olma, Marina Vishmidt, Stephen Wright, Prayas Abhinav, Renée Ridgway

Unspeakably More cont'd
April 23-June 1st

n.e.w.s. contributors Community Museum Project (CMP), a Hong Kong based collective, will be the next follow-up to Unspeakably More cont'd, a series of monthly forums that address the 'Lexical Turn'. According to Nishant Shah, in his post 'A brief treatise on the despair of meaning Or The Pointlessness of Everything', 'The Lexical Turn that we signal to in these discussions, is thus, about a crisis in language – not only about the material and discursive aspects of language – but a crisis in the very meaning making ability of language; especially the language in theory, practice and art in the times of postmodernism.' Is that so? Is there a crisis in the meaning making of language or just an inability to debunk the old speak? These were some of the questions raised during the weekend seminar Unspeakably More at Periferry on the Brahmaputra. To CMP, the word "Community" has three connotations: subject matter, settings and creative public interface. They not only will put forth new vocabularies such as 'social curating' and 'indigenous creativity' but also add visuals to illustrate their words. Community Museum Project was founded in 2002 in Hong Kong by Howard Chan (art curator), Siu King-chung (design educator), Tse Pak-chai and Phoebe Wong (cultural researchers).

The Art of Sustainability
ongoing

Last year n.e.w.s. and Khoj organised public lectures and a series of internal group collaborative meetings in order to brainstorm about the issue of ‘Art After Space’. To put it differently, the research also needed to consider curatorially speaking ‘art after space’, bearing in mind the performative paradox of that formula: art wants space; yet art’s condition today is post-spatial. For one of the great challenges today, both in curatorship and in social practices at large, is to insist upon plural temporalities, rather than conforming to dominant timeframes. How is the interface between a global online platform and the local, where is the public sphere and who patrols it, what are th e modes of production of art and curatorial activities and which terminology can we either appropriate, imbricate or invent to further the discussion? Arts Collaboratory generously funded this project and we thank them for their support. Now that all funding is finished we are starting over: The Art of Sustainability, the Sustainability of Art.

Upcoming forums

Besides 'Paid Usership' n.e.w.s. is still running 'Unspeakably More Cont'd' and ERRARE HUMANUM EST. Please see website for further details.

n.e.w.s. is presently supported by the enthusiasm and generosity of invisible people worldwide. Are you invisible?