Panel Statement

Panel: Short:Circuit:  Cross Border Communications in New Media Between US and Turkey

The­o­rist Gay­a­tri Spi­vak wrote of the pol­i­tics of trans­la­tion as being in­trin­sic to the con­struc­tion of mean­ing if one looks at lan­guage as being cen­tral to that locus of mean­ing.  But if we can use the dis­tance be­tween root lan­guages (Al­taic for Turk­ish and An­glo-Frisian for Eng­lish) as metaphor for dis­tance, be­tween cul­tures, to a sense of home, in trans­la­tion of mean­ing and iden­tity. In Amer­i­can cul­tural terms, the 20th cen­tury dream was that of as­sim­i­la­tion, or is now pos­si­bly that of het­eroge­nous in­te­gra­tion.  How­ever, for many artists cross­ing into the po­si­tion of ge­o­graph­i­cal oth­er­ness, the is­sues of trans­la­tion, dis­lo­ca­tion, and no­madism reemerge within the work.  To con­sider Shan­non and the idea of noise in the trans­mis­sion of ideas, in­clud­ing in­ter­per­sonal re­la­tions, how does trans­la­tion of al­ter­ity of space, time, cul­ture and iden­tity ev­i­dence it­self through the mi­lieu of cul­tural pro­duc­tion?  Ask­ing the ques­tion of why re­cur­rent is­sues emerge is not enough, but ex­am­i­na­tion of the phe­nom­e­nol­ogy of di­a­logue be­tween these mi­lieux can lend in­sight into the ex­pe­ri­ences of artists who have tra­versed spaces which, in their own way, have been every­thing yet noth­ing.  This would be Amer­ica, su­per­power with­out iden­tity, and Turkey part of Eu­rope, Mid­dle East, and Eura­sia and cen­ter of Byzan­tium. This pre­sen­ta­tion will ex­am­ine works by Turk­ish and An­glo-Amer­i­can artists who have ei­ther worked, stud­ied,or cre­ated in the other coun­try.  This dis­cus­sion will also ex­plore points of trans­la­tion, map­ping of mean­ing, and re­cur­rent themes, not in­so­far to re­duc­tivize this ma­trix of re­la­tion­ships, but to con­sider the role of lim­i­nal­ity as ex­pressed by the work of both sets of artists. This si­mul­ta­ne­ous locus of com­mon­al­ity and dis­lo­ca­tion be­comes the ex­pres­sion of “oth­ers” who have them­selves been in­flu­enced by that “other” place to re­flect on their own hy­brid­ity and al­ter­ity.

• Patrick Lichty (b.1962)  is a media artist, writer, in­de­pen­dent cu­ra­tor, an­i­ma­tor for the ac­tivist group, The Yes Men, and Ex­ec­u­tive Ed­i­tor of In­tel­li­gent Agent Mag­a­zine. He began show­ing tech­no­log­i­cal media art in 1989, and deals with works and writ­ing that ex­plore the so­cial re­la­tions be­tween us and media. Venues in which Lichty has been in­volved with solo and col­lab­o­ra­tive works in­clude the Whit­ney & Turin Bi­en­ni­als, Mari­bor Tri­en­nial, Per­forma Per­for­mance Bi­en­nial, Ars Elec­tron­ica, and the In­ter­na­tional Sym­po­sium on Elec­tronic Art (ISEA). He also works ex­ten­sively with vir­tual worlds, in­clud­ing Sec­ond Life, and his work, both solo and with his per­for­mance art group, Sec­ond Front, has been fea­tured in Flash Art, Eikon Milan, and Art­News. He is also an As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Media The­ory and Ex­per­i­men­tal Gen­res at Co­lum­bia Col­lege Chicago, US.

Full text (PDF) p. 1530-1535