zkp3.2.1 intro


The volume you are now holding is adressing two groups of people, one of them containing a subgroup:

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the part of the introduction for the slovene audience

Nettime is a group of media theoreticians, atists, activists and journalists that have met in Venice in June 1995 (and after that every three months in various places) to discuss the posibilities of what was then named net.criticism.

After the Venice meeting, a mailing list was made where the writings by nettime members were published, and slowly (or quckly - who will tell the speed of the net?) the number of subscribers grew, from the original 15 to actual 300. For the meetings in Amsterdam, Madrid and Budapest, the postings to the mailing list were selected and xeroxed in 200 pages volumes entitled ZKP1, 2 and 3; this happened in january, june and october 1996, to give the exact coordinates.

The ZKP3.2.1 is a book that is trying to filter the nettime postings all over again, and offer those that are of interest to the net.artists community that's in the proces of articulating their own doing, but the texts published here should also be intriguing for the broader audience of art theorists, critics and historians, since it tells the story of where art went when it left the galleries and the art system. Of course, this book offers no remedies for any pain. Just like Pit Schultz insists in the introductory text for ZKP 3, issued in remote october 1996:

"Small media like nettime has other tasks to do then defining and controloing the public sphere. The diversity of the flow of texts represents a diversity experienced on the street, in a bar or a club. There is a certain social selection, but it never reaches the censorship which is done under the principles of creating scarcity and excluding ideas and intensity through 'professional quality control'. Nettime is existing and used because there is no other media for the same purposes available on the net. Nettime brings in a simple way specialists, authors, editors, artists of a special interest group together."

Ta knjiga je umetnisko delo.

intro for the nettime subscribers (+ global audience)

Nettime list is now aproaching it's second birthday, an eternity in relative speed of the Net. After about a thousand postings, most of them by authors submitting their net.critique essays, a large enough text soup is created to permit multiple readings and filterings. This basicaly democratic feature of nettime is now undergoing it's first actual test, but as far as we know, there is a german compilation in preparation, and a croatian one too. This is nice.

This particular selection is leaning on what Pit Shultz have announced at the end of introductory note to ZKP3: an attempt of slight profiling, a small step towards a subgroup filter project. In the following pages we are offering a paralel reading of nettime archive, with the accent on texts related to net.art, and art texts in general. As you will see, the texts are divided in four groups:

the ZKP chapter contains some postings that led to the making of the previous three books. They are here as historical evidence.

the POLIT chapter is obviousely offering texts that are supporting the idea of a socialy active artist, theorethicaly, but also as invitation to action.

the ART chapter is focused on those postings that are works of art them selves, and also some theoretical essays that conceptualise art practice in the age of networked digital reproduction.

the NOISE segment of this book, simillar to the zkp section, is turning the glove inside-out, recording the part of the text stream that usualy never reaches the compendiums, and jpb has his very own role in this.

This book is a work of art.

Vuk Cosic,
Nov. the 1st 1996

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This volume is appearing as a first book in the DRY series, published by Ljudmila (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab), part of Open Society Institute - Slovenia.

DRY used to mean Digital Revolution Yearbook, but now means Do Radikal Yourself.