Online communities

José Luis Brea

"To these centralised systems, the authors oppose off-centred systems, webs of finite automats wherein any neighbour can communicate with another, wherein every individual is interchangeable; they are defined only as a state at any given moment, in such a way that the local operations are coordinated and the result is synchronised independent of a central instant"

Deleuze-Guattari, Rizoma

"These singularities, however, only communicate within the empty space of the example, without being linked by any common property. They are expropriated of all identity to take possession of belonging itself, of the E sign. Tricksters or loafers, assistants or toons, those are the representatives of the upcoming community".

G. Agamben, La comunidad que viene'

Presence and participation have been defined as the qualities par excellence of online artistic work. Independently, in fact, of the technical or linguistic determinations that can characterise the medium, what is specific to web art is its way of socialising. In other words, the peculiar panoply of reception strategies it articulates. Nothing distinguishes web art from other practices like the fact that its means of reception, its way of reaching the spectator, requires different guidelines for "cultural consumption", of reading or reception, from those to which he/she (the spectator, now the user) is accustomed to.

Meanwhile, indeed, these habits do not coincide with the conventional ways of receiving artistic practices -regarding their spatialised and physically conditioned presentation- to such an extent that we can even question whether they are adequately defined as artistic practices at all.

I am not referring -obviously- to the resistance on the part of artistic institutions against these new practices (a measured resistance, harmfully so), but rather to the contrary: to the resistance these practices, due to their specific qualities, exert against the art institution.

It may be that exploring that potential has been one of its greatest virtues -during the first years of what we now can now describe as its heroic period.

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When we speak of participation pertaining to art, it seems necessary to be extremely cautious. It is quite likely that the participation limit in a given work lies in the very act of reception, the reading -every reading is a hallucinatory process, said Benjamin. In other words, as Duchamp established long ago, no work accomplishes more than a certain coefficient of artisticity, and it is always the spectator who is in charge of complimenting the process. We could say that "the expectation" in itself, of the creative process, is already a participative act -or more precisely, that when such a participative act does not take place, there is, in fact, no appropriately artistic experience.

However, this is one thing, and another very different thing to maintain that, by clicking here and there, by achieving certain results from certain proceedings, one can obtain any level of added participation. Most of the time, it is just the opposite -and what occurs is that a larval technological despotism tries to slip through disguised by the whirlwind of falsifying promises of democratisation.

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For the sake of speaking about participation with propriety, we could consider a certain symptom: that the effect of our action is not produced only on the interface surface, on the total screen, but rather it arises from another subject of knowledge, situated on the other side of our procedure, of our practice. In other words, there is no real interaction -or it is an interaction that, in itself, entirely uninteresting- when the dialogue initiated by the work culminates in the work itself. There is no genuine participation when the interface articulates a subject-machine or subject-work interaction. An authentic participation only begins when the interface opens a subject-subject interaction (let us say subject-machine-subject), when, on the other side of our significant, expressive action, we still find a subject capable of interpretation.

As an example, in please change beliefs by Jenny Holzer, interaction starts to take place only at the moment that our interventions as users become accessible and, in turn, transformable by third parties. If the work offered us the possibility of embedding modifications that were not available afterward for viewing by third parties, then we would have to speak of something else -but never of participation.

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Now I shall consider, for a moment, the well-known first collaborative sentence, that long psalmody of writing that, like a long sutra, extends the length of an endless multiplicity of anonymous statements, added fragment by fragment. It is precisely the dumbness to which each fragment mutually submits itself that renders impossible any participatory act, but instead a sort of empty co celebration proper of ceremonies in which the construction of a community is settled by the negation of singularities. There is nothing to read in that long sentence, nobody participates in anything. The long chain prolongs an act of expropriation in which each subject is betrayed, separated from him/herself and sacrificed on the altar of this trifle. Nobody could seriously want to read it; it is a participative invocation, but more in the trifling of discourse, of the communicative discourse. It is the mad praise of isolation, of the fact that machines, while allowing us to share the space of meaning, prevent us from meeting each other, communicating with one another, on a meaningful level...

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Let us return, albeit only for a moment, to the first feature: presence -one we have quickly forgotten-. We could not speak about presence here in traditional spatial terms -we are not referring to the classic being present with the work that requires the auratic contents, still auratic, of the traditional form of artistic experience, that being before the work, sharing the same space in space and time, its here and now.

It is obvious that this time the presence cannot be the same, for whenever the presence of the work on the web is characterised by its delocalisation, its distribution over a ubiquity of scattered, diverse places. At most, there is a telepresence, which serves as a means of communication and sharing between people who do not share a common space, those who inhabit faraway places. That shared presence is now and above all an economy of time, not of place. It has to do with the simultaneous living "in the present", as when we say he is a child of his time.

The most characteristic form of presence related to work on the web has to do with this contact "in real time". If the aspect peculiar to the relation with conventional works seemed to be the encounter with a past time in a present place, what is peculiar about the presential encounter with web work is the coincidence with a now-time -outside of any defined "here-place"-.

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Indeed, the consequences all this bring to the dominant form of organisation of the processes of "expectation" are extremely important -I am referring to the consequences pertaining to the spatialised devices of reception and presentation of the work: museums, galleries, open spaces... always places, whether they be institutional or alternative, public or private.

Obviously, those consequences have much to do with the logic of technical reproduction, the analysis of which was initiated by Benjamin. Regarding the question at hand, certainly it is important to underline that the means of experiencing work through the web abandons the necessity of presence -or, let us say, admits as a valid form the mere telepresence of its distributed information, scattered by way of technical reproduction. But most importantly, from our point of view, it is the fact that the form in which this presence is required now only has to do with a time-sharing, with a "being online".

Hence, such pathetic results stem form attempts on the part of institutions to present works made for the web in the context of spatialised exhibitions. The productions have an effect contrary to that intended: the spectator can hardly connect, or be present. In addition, precisely because he/she does not have what is needed so that the work before his eyes can become present. Now what is required is not a place, but rather some time. Moreover, in those places (museums, galleries, spaces...), the spectator has anything but time...

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The law of the new media is the law of real time: of course, we are dealing with fiction here -there is nothing that resembles reality, not even when we speak of time-. The motto of CNN, "it's happening, you're watching it", presides over that deceitful ambition of the new media to caress the time of the event. But they know very well that this is a trap: it is not the "news speed" that distances us from the real time of the event, but rather a metaphysical distance; that which separates the spectacle of the real passage of the existent, of the dasein, of being there.

Certainly, the most interesting aspect of the body of work that the new media can develop, pertaining to the potential of the conquest of the time of the event -that saving jetzeit Benjamin imagined as a small messianic door open to the policies of active nihilism- involves precisely the entailment of the meaning of presence, as participation in a community time, in terms now strictly temporal, despatialised. An online community is, by necessity, a u-topian, de-spatialised community.

And its qualities are necessarily associated with the object of its exchange -which is no longer static representation, conditioned by objects, but rather moving images, as specific witnesses of the event (it is not surprising that some of the best productions offering these moving images have to do with film performances, with films of experience), of our offering ourselves in time, as economies of that which is fleeting, transitory.

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An online community cannot resemble, therefore, that cyber-cittá imagined by Paul Virilio (that city we would inhabit as "spectators of the same TV news show" on a planetary scale). Neither can it resemble that premature dream of the first utopian web users, that sort of new city of direct electronic democracy. An online community is nothing but a territory of presence and participation, a virtual dominion (I mean this in the web sense as well: a specific dns, as they say) in which to share the construction of discourse by way of participative dialogue, an attempt to recuperate the enlightened dream of the public arena -as dominion of collegiate dialogic interaction.

Its limit? The limit of this quite lovely fantasy? Doubtlessly: that community of media producers imagined by Brecht. A dominion or a means of public circulation of information, of the discourse and practices of symbolic production, in which all the participants intervene under the same title. In other words: wherein there are not two sides, that of the transmitters and that of the receivers, but rather a reciprocal delocalisation, an eccentric and non hierarchal dispersion (a rhizome) in which all the receivers are also, simultaneously, transmitters -at least potentially-.

This is what distinguishes the means of mass communications -vertical: with the informers falsifying the world on one end and the passive and annulled "consumers" on the other- from an online community, which only builds its tale, its specific narrative, in the circulating association of dialogue.

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Are there any examples of this, or are we speaking of something that never ever happened, that is only thinkable as a limit, as a utopia? To a certain extent, this is indeed the case. However, although it may be recognising that impossibility of achieving full realisation, it is necessary to offer some examples, which have come close, at least in asymptote.

The first amongst those I propose encompasses an entire genre, the debate forums maintained by way of e-mail lists. The paradigmatic cases herein are net time in Europe and Rhizome in America, although some isolated initiatives promoted by Blast or the Hybrid Workspace during the X document, demonstrated the enormous resource potential these instruments possess when faced with the opening of a reflexive and critical public arena. Obviously, whether these resources are fully utilised also depends on the historical and social circumstances in which they are developed. At this point, I would like to express a special sympathy with two specific cases of this type of forums: the first in the 7-11 list, a list which is itself conceived as a type of work of art, a sort of exquisite cadaver of e-mail art, in which the content debated is much less interesting than the very putting into inter (and hyper) textual circulation the most varied and outlandish gramatological explorations, the most delirious (post) scripted, graphomechanical dispositions. The second, very distinct regarding its objectives, is the small news and debate list or the net.artists from the former Eastern European states, Syndicate, and especially the extremely active role this list played during the bombing of Kosovo by the NATO forces and the support offered to B-92, the independent broadcaster in Belgrad, which, thanks to this support (and that of other lists and media and post media activist groups of course) managed for a time to offer independent coverage of a historical event about which a single multinational of distorted information maintained an unacceptable monopoly.

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The virtual sit-in is a second example of these attempts to utilise the potential of the new media to build a public arena, to further active participation on the part of the society at large in the collective conduction of political issues. The specific case it is impossible to avoid making reference to is that of Floodnet developed by the Theatre of Electronic Resistance, as an instrument of civil protest (it consists of software that, like an electronic sit in, blocks access to some place, in this case the website against which the protest is aimed) which permits citizens to express their disagreement with whatever policies. Floodnet was initially used against the Pentagon, the Frankfurt stock exchange and the Mexican government (in a celebrated electronic protest act which, convened during the festival Ars Electronica 99, drew some 20,000 users) but its real incidence is always very limited and its effective repercussions in terms of swaying of public opinion always depends on the resonance it has on the mass media -which will always manipulate, once again, the information on this matter.

Its limits arise, therefore, from its incapacity to generate an authentic public arena, if we take this to mean a space for the circulation of dialogue. These instruments seem to be more efficient as a means of achieving a circulatory discourse blockade (even as sabotage; they certainly resemble hacker tactics, although at times only simulated) than as the generation of spaces in which this is carried out unconditionally.

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When we speak of online communities, we are obliged to refer to the "collectivism" of the authors, of the large number of "groups" who, based on communitarian presuppositions, develop a work of symbolic, immaterial production, evading the traditional presuppositions of the "author" genius, of the eminent individual.

There exists an obvious technical groundwork, which explains the tendency toward the formation of teams and the "division of labour" within these teams (Jodi's case is paradigmatic: artist-designer plus computer technician), but beyond that technical groundwork one could say that there is an ideological or political groundwork that, in many cases, explains why the potentials of on web work, of networking, made possible by working on Internet, so frequently leads to collective and communitarian projects and practices. In fact, almost always, the most interesting work presented online spring from this type of molecular machinery represented by the assemblage of a multiplicity of singular efforts. In many cases, -Mongrel, the Critical Art Ensemble, IOD, La Société Anonyme, the very Teatro de la Resistencia Electro—nica- these efforts are dispersed over very diverse fields of activity, from theoretical or critical reflection to technical experimentation itself.

Even when this type of associative scheme does not specifically preside over the creative activity, the collectivisation of the efforts at distribution -at least during the historic period, in which channels of diffusion, other than those designed and managed by the net.artists themselves, did not exist- seemed indispensable. Thus, most independent websites, which have served as the channel through which these new practices reach their audiences, have been developed by similar strategies of net.working, by association and collectivisation of the efforts and resources -hence Teleportacia, äda-web or the Thing.

Beyond this, some projects -especially those arising from within a certain Italian neosituationism- have had a particularly acidic impact and effectiveness on these communitarian strategies, exploring and bringing into play all their criticism against the preconceptions of individual authorship. This is the case of projects like Luther Blisseth: a name used without specific control by a pleiad of anonymous authors, who, under this name, conduct a systematic criticism of the spectacular formulation of contemporary culture. Elsewhere, specifically regarding the ambit of Internet, the group 010001.org, a group of "plagiarists” that, by means of copies of sites dedicated to net.art and some "works of auteurs", have developed a frontal strategy of resistance to the process of commercialisation and institutionalisation of net.art.

From the encounter between some of these neosituationist groups and members of Knowbotics Research -most likely, the most rigorous collective in the realm of experimentation in the social dimension and implications of electronic art- 10_lavoro_inmateriale has sprung up. In my opinion, this is the project wherein the key question is best asked; what action is possible in the public arena?

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If we want to answer with objectivity, it would be utterly absurd to ignore the fact that a process of imperial colonisation of Internet -to use Negri's expression- is underway. Due to this colonisation, it has been gradually abandoning its original condition -as a diffuse and eccentric archipelago of temporarily autonomous zones- to slip into its present condition of complete submission to the interests of the large communications companies, transforming from its initial phase as an effective instrument for post media activism -at the service of the implementation of a "community of media producers"- to its current phase as a new "means of mass communications" -or rather, an apparatus forging a community of passive consumers of psuedo "informative" products.

In any case, within this transformation process, the interposition of constant and multiplied strategies of resistance is brought into play. These aim to impede the fulfilment of this destiny without leaving any fissures. The question is not what the aggregate result will be, but rather, how many zones of resistance will manage to embed themselves and how they will achieve this.

To a certain extent, the web is the inverted mirror of the exhaustive conditioning of contemporary life by the communication and entertainment industries. It is its subversive counter figure: while it produces -or intends to produce- "information", "reality" or "communication", it abolishes any presumption of "reality", leading us to the recognition of the "little amount of reality” that, as subjects of experience in the contemporary world, is our share to usufruct.

The existence, in itself, of the web is a testimony of the tragic shortcomings contemporary citizens have before the industries of mass communications. He/she does not find therein any of things that truly interest him/her. In addition, much less does he/she find in them the possibility of expressing what really interests him/her. The web is an irrevocable shout of rebellion that a humanity silenced about what is important to it, raises minute-by-minute -before the insulting mandate of journalists.

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In fact, the effect of the web's "globality" could never be realised upon the foundation of universality, which would mean the denial of differences, but rather precisely their multi-vocal expression. It is due to this fact that the idea of one single global web, of a macro-web, contradicts the multiracial and multicultural subversive character that characterises it. Only at the cost of thinking of it as "the web of webs", therefore, can we mention the web.

That which in the anarchic polyphony of the burst totality of infinite voices is mere noise, becomes dialogue and intelligence when centring the scoop, when adjusting the chorus of voices. What is offered as final for the universal community -for the global web-, merely adding redundancy, decommunication; for the micro communities and intranets, which reverberate within it, on the other hand, sharp and splendid relevancy is offered.

A community of micro communities, a web of intranets. The entire effect of political pertinence -and all the value of the production of significance- attributable to the web, owes to the capacity of activating what is micro -within an unlimited global paradigm- in which all effect of identity is held in suspense. The web is a territory for the systematic production of public microarenas scattered throughout a web of communicating vessels, the assembling place of the "impossible community": that community of media producers that would spring from the ashes of what Bataille described as the community "of those who have no community".

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"If men, instead of continuing to search for a unique identity in the now improper and nonsensical form of identity, would achieve the adhesion to this impropriety as such, to make of the self -not an identity and an individual property, but a singularity without identity, a common and absolutely manifest singularity- if men could avoid being this way, in this or that particular biography, and be only themselves, their singular externality and their features, then humanity would gain access for the first time to the community without presuppositions and without subjects, to a communication that would no longer know incommunication.

Selecting in the new planetary humanity those characters that permit their survival, stir up the subtle diaphragm that separates bad media advertising from the perfect externality that communicates only itself -that is the political task of our generation."

G. Agamben, The coming community

The aim, then, is to exploit the possibilities offered by the web to establish floating forms of communities -which only comes to express "community moments", specific vectors of a community of interests, of worries and desires, momentary and unstable lines of code established on the free flux of difference.

Not some community regulated by the effects of identity -ethnic, cultural, political: nothing of state or even individual- but mere fluctuating communities regulated only by the instantaneous and ephemeral expression of effects of difference -trans-identical, multiracial, multiform and pluricultural communities from the base up.

Within them, there would be no more "subjects" or individuals, but rather the circulation of pure effects of identity, devices and machines for the production of subjectivity: mere expressions of free difference.

In the force of that double exposure, the web could also make an announcement of "the coming community", thereby forcing us to wake up from the tyrannising delirium of an already millenarian system, which could indeed become its worst nightmare -and thus, the sweetest of our dreams.