`Newsgroups: workspace.recycling_the_future`

previous    top    workgroup    thread    next

Subject: Re: As the Recycling the Future team descends on the Hybrid WorkSpace... From: liz <werks@thing.at> Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 12:44:52 METDST * * * * * Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 10:29:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Tom Sherman <twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu> X-Sender: twsherma@hydra.syr.edu To: ajblack@mailbox.syr.edu cc: kunstradio@thing.at, hgrundmann@thing.at Subject: 2nd Recycling message from T.S. The Recycling the Future team has unpacked their equipment and they're ready to roll...errr, they're already rolling! Tom Sherman, Remote Volunteer <twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu> Port Mouton, Nova Scotia, July 19, 1997 In the future everyone will work in the comfort of their own homes. God, it's lonely over here. Everyone is so busy there that they haven't had a chance to assign me anything to do. I'm ready for my marching orders, but I haven't received any e-mail or faxes or phonecalls or telepathy or anything. Don't get me wrong...I really like working in the Hybrid WorkSpace. It gives me a sense of belonging to an organization and when you're working by yourself and for yourself most of the time, it's good to find yourself in an office with co-workers and colleagues and people who are just plain sharing the mission. I mean naturally there are problems whenever you work with people and depend on other people to get things done, but you just can't beat that corporate feeling when you believe in the people you choose to work with-- and share the goals of the mission. Let's all join in and accomplish something! Anything! Do you mind if I play a CD? I'm listening to Sluts'n'Strings & 909 and I've got it turned up so fucking loud the putty is falling out of my windows. I swear to God, the big black shiny spiders in my cellar run and hide when I turn the Sluts on loud. That's one of the things I like about working at home. I can play my music as loud as I want without bugging my co-workers. Where I would probably be annoying as the next person there, in person. You know it's rare for artists to find a way to work together, to agree on anything. And wasn't it clever to set up a physical site for this happen. A showplace for interdisciplinary cooperation-- or at least the pleasure of 'playing' in parallel. You know, the independence and diversity thing. Autonomy and all that. The only thing I've ever heard of that resembles the Hybrid WorkSpace was a thing that happened a long, long time ago here in Canada, something called the artist-run centre. Back in early 1970's the government funded these physical spaces where people could get together and meet and they put together media facilities in these sites and they set about solving the problem of finding ways of connecting themselves to the world. You see, the artists and writers and poets and musicians felt alienated and they wanted to change the world for the better. They hooked up with social activists who had some organizing and some knack for being annoying and provocative and they started to cook, making beautiful noise all across Canada. The governments thought this was a good cause, plus they could kill two birds with one stone. They managed to stabilize and control and tame a bunch of, from their point of view, pretty kooky people, and they were able to make examples out of the projects that emerged. They showcased a group of citizens trying to make a difference in a sea of apathy. For good and bad, political correctness was refined in these centres. There had to be rules to keep people from killing each other. Collaboration can be nasty business. But they worked things out and promised themselves they'd continue to do good deeds for the taxpayers, in exchange for grants. That's what public money and such a bright spotlight can do for chaos--it can engineer consensus behaviour favourable to the taxpayer, for the good of society. Talk about the mysteries of emerging social order. Most of these artist-run centres are deader than doornails today, after a quarter of century of compromises. But this is history and we're supposed to be recycling the future, not mucking around in the past. Things happen very quickly today and things will probably come together even more quickly in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if the Hybrid WorkSpace plays out the whole history and evolution of the artist-run centre movement in a couple of months. Concrete deadlines and real time-lines can make people real efficient. This is good because government officials suffer from attention deficit disorder, just like everyone else. So we'll probably see a creative social movement compressed into a snappy model event we can hold up as an example of pure energy, intelligence, economy and goodwill in the future. Maybe it will function as a catalyst for generating change or engineering employment or involvement or commitment in a world immobilized by depression and cynicism. I don't know. I'm rolling up my sleeves and I'm ready to pitch in, but I need something real, the real vibe from the centre. It's lonely working at home. Please send word of what I can do so I can really feel part of the Hybrid WorkSpace in the immediate future, like maybe later today? ---T.S. 7/19/97