English

Welcome Clemens. Clemens has just joined the Peer Preview Group. He has been with us for a while and has also shared some articles with us, such as this one:
http://www.thenextlayer.org/node/165 and also this one http://www.thenextlayer.org/node/520
Now Clemens is about to write chapter 1 of his thesis and once done will share it with us he said. So maybe others would also like to say hello to him and maybe Clemens might want to add to this introduction. As an Austrian living in Berlin, how do you get on with the Prussians?

This is a reading list featuring Marxist economists and theorists writing on the history and philosophy of science and technology. The list was compiled with the help of Richard Barbrook over two long evenings and consolidated by more research online.

As promised, Geert's chapter on media art from his book Zero Commments. I think some of points are valid, although on the whole the critique is too sweeping and presents a one sided picture of what media art is. Leaving all the critical threads out and then saying its all too conformistic if obviously a polemical move. My final opinion I have not been able to formulate as I feel I can currently not write an opinionated article. I would rather do more research and then write something well founded which does not need to be polemical to be convincing.

Non-radical notes from the beach.

This is a relatively short mental note to myself, an attempt to address a basic methodological issue which I have been thinking about while reading economic and political theory over the past few days. I don't mean to address all the issues relating to practice-led PhDs. This is also not specifically about my own work, although I am affected by it. The problem which poses myself in renewed urgency is as follows.

Towards a film; a few written notes from many mental ones that are mainly in my memory.

The Blind Spot of an Old Dream of Symmetry

Animal becomes and animal succumbs.
Narrative allows a human place in a system devoid of explanation.
It was not our fault.
The mischievous spirit, the witch, the seal.
Misfortune in the village.
A woman who talks.

The skin is a beholden for the man who finds it.
man covets, man keeps, man writes.
The word is that She caused the trouble.
But there is a child.
The womb is troublesome as it tells its own history,

I just wanted to post something in uncommons that was not related wholly to any one topic but addressed a few points in a language that is not too formal. I am slowly getting around to the reading of your first chapter doll, a more detailed reading of armins chapter first then yours.

Notes on Das Altern der Moderne1 by Peter Bürger. Peter Bürger, Professor emeritus for literature and aesthtic theory, author of the Theory of the Avant-Garde2, a seminal text in art theory of the 20th century, in this collection of articles written between 1983 and 2000, re-examines some of the main concepts already at the heart of his earlier work, such as the difference between Modernism and the avant-garde, the historic avant-garde's often repeated ambition of bringing art and life together, and what constitutes the failure as well as the success of those movements. While the hopes of the historic avant-garde of permanent transformations of the social world were not rewarded, avant-garde ideas, slogans, strategies and aesthetic methodologies of the Futurists, dadaists and Surrealists have found a permanent place in the cultural 'history' by having entered the endless recycling relationships of contemporary culture via popular culture. Slightly different the case, then with Modernism, because it never had, or purpoted not to have, such a strong social agenda, yet here the name of the art movement is identical with the name of an age: modernity. In this respect, Bürger asks the fascinating question about the aging of modernity and how we became postmodern (or not).

• 1. Bürger P. 
  2001.  Das Altern der Moderne : Schriften zur bildenden Kunst.
• 2. Bürger, Peter. 
  1984.  Theory of the avant-garde.

This book by the French master historian is probably one of the most influential in research methodologies. One point of critique to be kept in mind is by F.Kittler who says that Foucault's method only works for periods in history which are mainly marked by book production and that he had no way of transferring that methodology to the age of electronic media. Not entirely sure if Kittler is right as he puts so much emphasis on the 'media apriori'.

hello on a rainy sat morning in vienna,

as you may have noticed i did an upgrade yesterday, which was 3 hours of cold sweat but succeeded in the end. pictures now also can be edited again with all the tags, etc.

some further small improvements have been made:
pictures can now be posted also in groups, which means that if the right group is chosen and public uncheckled the image is only visible for logged in group members.