[Reader-list] spectre, a new list from/for deep europe

[geert lovink]

Dear Readers,

in early 1996 the Syndicate mailinglist was founded and for a good five
years functioned as an important trading ground for ideas and information
about European new media culture (and increasingly also beyond 'Europe').
Its main focus was to establish an exchange between former West and former
East Europe. The list boomed and almost crashed during the Kosovo crisis in
1999. This arts and culture got intensely tense between those who favored
the NATO bombing and intervention and those who criticized it. Syndicate
carried a lot of first hand reports from the region at time. Never having
recovered from this controversy something slowly went wrong with the list.
Like reader the list was open and unmoderated, unprotected. Dialogue faded
away. Announcements took over. Silence set in. Then a few net.artists
started to use the list as their forum and posted immense ammounts of
self-promoting ascii art posting, full of hatred. Syndicate got deserted and
in a matter of weeks was destroyed by a hand full of people. You can see it
for yourself: http://www.v2.nl/mail/v2east/. In my opinion it's a good
lesson what can happen to list. Now a new initiative has been launched by
the same people called Spectre. It's an interesting read what they learned
from this bitter case of so-called net.art destroying a community:

SPECTRE is an open, unmoderated mailing list for media art and culture in
Deep Europe.

Initiated in August 2001, SPECTRE offers a channel for practical
information exchange concerning events, projects and initiatives organized
within the field of media culture, and hosts discussions and critical
commentary about the development of art, culture and politics in and beyond
Europe. Deep Europe is not a particular territory, but is based on an
attitude and experience of layered identities and histories - ubiquitous in
Europe, yet in no way restricted by its topographical borders.

SPECTRE is a channel for people involved in old and new media in art and
culture. Importantly, many people on this list know each other personally.
SPECTRE aims to facilitate real-life meetings and favours real face-to-face
(screen-to-screen) cooperation, test-bed experiences and environments to
provoke querying of issues of cultural identity/identification and
difference (translatable as well as untranslatable or irreducible).

WHAT IS (A) SPECTRE?
1. "There's a spectre haunting Europe ..." (K. Marx/F. Engels)
2. S.P.E.C.T.R.E.: Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism,
Revenge and Extortion (James Bond 007 movies)
3. spektr was a module of the MIR space station focussing on the research of
micro gravity
4. Les Spectres de Marx (J. Derrida)
5. Craig Baldwin's latest movie: Spectres of the Spectrum (2000)
6. to be continued...

NETIQUETTE ON SPECTRE:
- no HTML, no attachments, messages < 40K
- meaningful discussions require mutual respect
- self-advertise with care!

SUBSCRIPTION POLICY:
SPECTRE is initially hosted by Inke Arns <inke at snafu.de> and Andreas
Broeckmann <abroeck at transmediale.de>. Requests for subscription have to be
approved by hosts. Subscriptions may be terminated or suspended in the case
of
persistent violation of netiquette. Should this happen, the list will be
informed. The list archives are publicly available, so SPECTRE can also be
consulted and followed by people who are not subscribed.

*Subscribe
http://post.openoffice.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre

or mail to: spectre-request at mikrolisten.de
subject=subscribe

*Unsubscribe
mail to: spectre-request at mikrolisten.de
subject=unsubscribe