“Organized Innocence and War in the New Europe: On Electronic Solitude and Independent Media” presented by Lovink
Symposium:
- ISEA95: Sixth International Symposium on Electronic Art
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Presentation Title:
- Organized Innocence and War in the New Europe: On Electronic Solitude and Independent Media
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Abstract:
Nietzsche would be laughing about Europe. He wouldn’t be complaining about the impending loss of national identity or the power of the Brussels bureaucracy. He would look down disdainfully at the bumbling, pompous Euro-citizens who, confused and without Witz or Idea, are trying to sidestep their own history. Europeans have the greatest difficulty putting into words the current dialectic of construction and demolition which manifests itself around them. The last intellectuals are still doing their best to characterize the post- 1989 juncture, but they are not succeeding. The amalgam of the war in former Yugoslavia, the strange new media, capitalism without an enemy, the Tigers in Asia, grassroots neo-liberalism, the Shell’s oil platform The Brent Spar and French nuclear tests, foreigners and refugees, the devastation of Chechnya – it’s all impossible to grasp anymore. One group believes it’s arrived in the 21st century, as others are catapulted back a couple of centuries. What one sees as progress spells sheer destruction for another. We observe developments with worry, but can no longer associate them with conclusions. But that’s no longer necessary, for what occupies Europeans.most of all is the development of one’s own lifestyle. And no one is laughing at the little worries of the middle classes.
