Re: <nettime> Fwd: The .art TLD again: E-Flux are solicitingsupport for their bid

["Calin Dan" <adsl487504@tiscali.nl>]

Geert,

e-flux's commercial agenda is clear, and consistent with its
fast trajectory from a free announcements list targeting the art
"community" to a world-wide distributed art-events information service
charging substantial fees per announcement.

If anything, e-flux is/will be interesting for cultural anthropology
as a study case illustrating how business oriented practices can
be validated as politically correct cultural initiatives under the
label of cool. e-flux managed to build itself around a small group
of celebrities surfing between highly paid jobs, on one side, and
an agenda of - again - politically correct issues, on the other
side. This continuous double meaning/double goal strategy makes
both e-flux and its core partners symbolically part to the on going
confusion (strategically fed by both corporate and government players)
between business acumen and social concern, between cultural value
and compulsory public success. If my memory works right, e-flux came
of the first ideologically coherent manifestation of this cocktail:
the "art relationel", put in theoretical form by Nicolas Bouriaud
somewhere in the early 90s.

While the lucrative aspect of culture remains a fascinating
subject, and while the e-flux list is basically an ok instrument
for circulating information, the continuous feeling of a subsidiary
agenda makes one feel uncomfortable. I am not a prophet, but this move
towards genuine commercial control over TDLs equals a disambiguation
that might damage the pristine facade of e-flux to date. I also sense
it will be a flopped move, since - really - who cares to acquire an
.art name, unless there will be a global art government that will
decide that this is the only way to go.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Geert Lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>
To: <nettime-l@kein.org>
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 5:30 PM
Subject: Re: <nettime> Fwd: The .art TLD again: E-Flux are solicitingsupport 
for their bid

> Yes, this is all important but also local in a way. Art is an English
> word. So why not discuss .kunst? .amsterdam is clearly local. It was
> in fact bought by the city government, in fact to make money with this
> new gained symbolic monopoly.





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