posted

neoscenes

I’ve been using the neoscenes pseudonym, brand, art-name, label, whatever, since 1983. I came up with it back when I was living in Santa Monica, California, around the time that I was beginning to print and mail a lot of postcards. Yes, back when I was a passable-but-not-very-talented surfer, back when Reagan’s brain disease became very apparent, and when Suicidal Tendencies was just a band. Back when I used to dress in a three-piece suit and drive a Fiat Spyder convertible down the Santa Monica Freeway to the Harbor Freeway into Downtown Los Angeles up to five days a week, exiting opposite the Bonaventure Hotel, parking in the underground garage under the corporate headquarters of Union Oil Company of California and marching to the elevator, riding to the third floor, often with the CEO, saying hello to that blond girl, Carol? Cindy? who worked the front desk, and, cruising down the hall to the right, past Lida, my secretary, to my office from the window of which, if you leaned up against the walnut-paneled wall and it wasn’t too smoggy a day, you could see THE HOLLYWOOD sign that has been such an icon for the movie-going world… Enough said…

The connotation of neoscenes as a “new scene” — an idiosyncratic personal vision — has been invoked in the creative art icons in a variety of forms that are generated and sent out. Network, time-based, and other electronic media works are signified by a ©19-or-20-something hopkins/neoscenes. All the hundreds of snail-mail postcards, which have decorated peoples refrigerators, walls, galleries, and studios around the world, carry this identification. You never know when you’ll run across a neoscene …

The neoscenes.net domain was reserved back in 1998 or so, and although there is an interior design consultancy in Mauritius ‘neoscenes.com’ and a piece of video editing software ‘neoscenes’ that both came later to the web, neoscenes.net dominates any searches using the name.

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

Kerho

springtime. rugs being shaken out, though I didn’t see anybody using the tubular steel frames outside of every other home made especially for rug beating. days later, I query Pirjo, as we sit with Bernice and John in Kerho, the “teachers” bar, about the name of these contraptions, mattoteline – and the communal place on the river where rugs are cleaned, the mattolaituri. anyway, cars being washed, gardens being raked, and, sure enough, the river is rising today, it started yesterday or the day before. about 60 cm so far, but another 2.5 meters will be happening soon. it seems early this year. and I am a little surprised to understand that this is the fourth year that I have been here in Tornio at around this time of year.

posted
  • place: Helsinki, Finland

neoscenes occupation: an international network-building project

[ED: written and published as part of the acoustic.space initiative established by friends Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits at the re-lab in Riga, Latvia net audio issue 1999 ISSN 1407-2858.]

acoustic.space #2 (1999 ISSN 1407-2858), Riga, Latvia, September 1999

In September of 1998, neoscenes occupation (nso) was formally launched as a networking project in the second Open-X venue at the 1998 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria.

The basic concept for the project is rooted in several facets of my former and current involvement as a networker, and my broad experience in arts and design education in Europe and North America during the last fifteen years.

Having taught or lectured in, and visited many tens of art and design institutions, and engaged in wide-ranging discussions with many educators, I had gradually come to the conclusion that much of the (formal) educational process in the developed world is irrelevant, dead, or dying. I viewed neoscenes occupation as a vehicle for the re-creation and renewal of the learning process—applying a series of conditions to make it an “omni-directional flow of energies with a force multiplied far beyond the meat count and with a reach that is far ahead of the game.”

Rhetoric aside, the project has several interlinked concepts and goals relating to creating a viable independent social network of people who share creative aspirations.

Dialogue is at the core of the whole nso idea — dialogue as the bi-directional movement of energies between any two people who engage each other in honest and open exchange. Dialogue that moves in opposition to the oppression of monologue and centralized patriarchal infotainment; that stands as two quiet voices versus the blasting inferno of social emission. Dialogue, as pure expression of heart and soul, is the core of all meaningful activism. more “neoscenes occupation: an international network-building project”

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

Western Lapland Polytech – College of Art and Media, FI / neoscenes occupation project 2 :: June-July.99

Sixten Therkildsen, Minna Nikola, Mikko Rönkä, Eija Mäkivuoti, Heikki Männikkö, Joona Jarvela, Mari Keski-Korsu, Riikka Makinen, Mindaugas Gapsevicius, Kjell Hansson, Norris Koppel, Elina Hartzell, Tiina Ekosaari, Sirpa Vaara, Nadja Franz, Pasi Lehtinen, Hanna Tuominen

neoscenes occupation project 2 rattles and rolls along with a fine bunch of international art&media students!

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

nso 2

so much in the last ten days gone down — life has gone through many cycles and swings, some negative — the college in Tornio has slighted me rudely on the eve of the neoscenes occupation project 2 which finally did begin last Monday. when I was away in Helsinki, they took the belongings I left in the flat that was reserved for me for the summer, tossed everything pell-mell into my suitcase, and moved me to a single room — this for when Loki arrives in a week or so. fuming. and angry over the phone to folks. but the week in Helsinki was a jolt of pure bliss after a long hard year of teaching.

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

neoscenes occupation (nso) project

Presently the neoscenes occupation project consists of semi-annual collaborative online happenings, along with heavy-duty networking and communications behind the scenes. The neoscenes mailing list now has around 200 subscribers in 40 countries. During the years since its inception (1998), it has functioned as a vital tool for the distribution of pertinent info about online events, educational possibilities, subscriber’s research and projects, and related trends. Sustaining active contact with so many of my former students allows me to frequently cross-connect them in different locations with energized results.

text from the original launch of nso:

Much of the educational process in the developed world is irrelevant, dead, or dying. neoscenes wants to re-create and re-new learning, making it an omni-directional flow of energies with a force multiplied far beyond the meat count and with a reach that is far ahead of the game. Join neoscenes occupation, speak, act, make a difference in your own head and body and soul. The revolution will not be televised, it will simply be a praxis embedded in the network that is community. The occupation is of the network, is of each others lives, is of being, is of body, it is of it all.

neoscenes is about the creation of personal spaces where-in the individual realizes the potential of individual and collaborative creativity. It is about seizing the opportunity presented by the internet and contemporary tele-communications to create active spaces that are autonomous from the traditional “institutions of higher learning”. It is about sharing.

neoscenes established a primary level of mechanisms for this engagement in the basic technologies of the web (this site), irc (internet relay chat), and the neoscene listserv (mailinglist). IRC, a live text-based communications medium is widely available on any networked pc; the neoscenes mailing list allows distribution of information via email, and this website will become a central point to network neoscenes participants and their relevant web-based information. Other means of collaboration including iVisit, CUSeeMe, ftp, ISDN, streaming media, and other technologies as they become available are employed as participants determine whether they facilitate human-to-human connection. The all-important flesh-factor is incorporated into the plan whenever possible!

On the invitation of curators at Ars Electronica in the spring of 1998, neoscenes occupation was initiated and submitted as a project in the second incarnation of the openX networking venue at the fall 1998 InfoWar Festival. Several neoscenes students from the neoscenes “networking and creativity” workshop at the Western Lapland Polytech (LLAKY — now Lapin AMK) attended the festival in support roles.

posted
  • place: Lahti, Finland

sysadmin

permutations of Helsinki, as typed by fingers on ancient keyboard interfaces include Helsniki, Heslniki, and Heslinki. just can’t type no more. sitting in Carroll’s — the burger chain that is consuming Finland — sitting looking at my burger and fries, and I hear a small, then larger wail coming from behind me, then I see a guy sitting in front of me leap out of his seat and run to the door where there is a little tyke, maybe three years old with his finger caught in the door hinge that just closed behind a customer going out. the mother, sitting next to my table was right behind the guy. the mother doesn’t say anything to the guy about his quick action, probably she is a bit traumatized about the accident. the little boy cries for some time, but seems not the worse for it all. the guy sits down and I make an “oh shit, I bet that hurt, and that’s too bad for the kid” face that he returns at me in affirmation. the wailing goes to my stomach. I have been thinking about Loki a lot lately — thinking how far away he is, and of the times we spent in the US this summer — how he will grow into this mixed and different life. whether he will grow strong or weak for living with his mother in Iceland and seeing me only on occasion. multi-culturalism is a position of power in the time we live in, but that advantage can be wiped out by (culture) wars in a moment, depending on the position of the cultural heritages. Presumably, being on the fringe of both the Amurikan and European spheres of power will serve to his advantage, but one can never tell. And anyway, what is politics in the actual scope of life, anyway?


Choose no life. Choose sysadminning. Choose no career. *****
Choose no family. Choose a fucking big computer, choose hard * *
disks the size of washing machines, old cars, CD ROM writers * A *
and electrical coffee makers. Choose no sleep, high caffeine * D *
and mental insurance. Choose fixed interest car loans. Choose * M *
a rented shoebox. Choose no friends. Choose black jeans and * I *
matching combat boots. Choose a swivel chair for your office * N *
in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose NNTP and wondering why * S *
the fuck you're logged in on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting * P *
in that chair looking at mind-numbing, spirit-crushing web * O *
sites, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose * T *
rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last on some * T *
miserable newsgroup, nothing more than an embarrassment to * I *
the selfish, fucked up losers Gates spawned to replace the * N *
computer-literate. * G *
Choose your future. * *
Choose sysadmining. *****

— Joona hunts that down in his fight to keep several servers up and running smoothly in Tornio…

posted
  • place: en route Kiel, Germany - Linz, Austria

sustained teaching

yet another workshop over. surprising, it crept up on me. done for this school year. ending with not a bang but a whimper. okay, I can deal. well, not a whimper, no need to be negative about it. actually it went okay, in the sense that my energy level is not diminished. I seem to have found, for the moment, a means. a mechanism to sustain teaching indefinitely through a careful cultivation of collaborative energies in the classroom situation. and the balanced positioning of my own ego-system within the milieu that evolves within the group. activating students to creative expression has the goal of nurturing the collective energies. thoughts keep racing forward to Linz and the performance on Wednesday evening, and the subsequent thing in Budapest which is even more unplanned. spontaneity is so bloody dangerous that I can’t even begin to express the stress it sets up in my head, although at this point, I have learned to deal with the physical effects by activating my own physical movement when things get underway. I know how to grab energies in the air, push ideas, concepts and other parameters around, physically. this, I have noted in previous events, has a lot of power on the Others involved. connection in Frankfurt. a throng of Japanese tourists sweep by heading for a flight to Rome. my neck tenses up, and it threatens to head toward a migraine. brain is not functioning in true travel-style. and this will continue for the next year again. I have committed to the movement, and two other schools have responded to my ad for workshops. so far Eindhoven, Arhus, Trondheim, Kiel, Tornio, Lahti will be part of the tour, and I suppose Reykjavík and Akureyri if I have the time. maybe next year I will have to do the same thing in the USA just to see what will happen. plans to deal with next summer with Loki in Europe are next on the agenda. trying to figure things out. clearly, however, texts like this are not worth writing here. already the beginning of this work is waiting for re-writing. into something better retrospecting on the surface of things. shaking meaning from the continuous stream of events that impinge on my body. or not even that, just ensuring that the future becomes what it is planned to be. stupid plan — to try and ensure what cannot be controlled. why try? avoiding the spontaneous negative, the spontaneous positive is destroyed simultaneously. energy. how to bind energy in to the text. to be released in TIME. to the proper receiver. no idea for the performance tomorrow evening. F.E. Rakushan is the partner in the evening, along with Maggi and Christa. What will this bring? (I need to have a recording of this event forwarded (and real-audio-ed). oh, and the lecture at Kiel tape copied, and… now here. exhausting day of travel, thankfully, Christa meets me at the small Linz airport. it is HOT, at least as measured by my recent experience, and the whole long winter.

posted
  • place: Tornio, Finland

walk around the island

Well, I continue with the monologue started late last night. It is now early morning, 0100 to be exact, and it is getting brighter already. The sun did go down, but only for an hour, and in that time, it passed less than 2 degrees below the horizon. Brightness. I missed dinner by fault of my own intransigence. A hungry man is an angry man … I hope to sleep, but I doubt sleep will come. I hang up the bedspreads on the window to make it darker. The next day, or whatever. I wake up early, still not sure why I can’t seem to make my small alarm watch function properly. So I wake up when my eyes open. Small ways of moving. A long evening walk with Steve, Genie, and Juliette around the north end of the island that Tornio is built upon. Birch trees that are warm to the touch from the rush of rising sap. Whimbrels fly raucously away at our approach, circling widely until we pass their territory. The island is built up completely, including a small brewery where they make Lapin Kulta beer. Houses are for the most part modern, although there are a few older wooden structures. Midnight and it is Light completely.

posted
  • place: en route Reykjavík, Iceland - Stockholm, Sweden - Helsinki, Finland

media base & swimming

Well, I arrive after another numbing leg of travel, car (thanks Niels for the ride at 0500 from the house to the bus), bus to the airport, plane to Stockholm, plane to Helsinki, bus to town, and I give Kati a call to let her know I have arrived, and a long, long walk to her place. Here at MUU MediaBase, very happy to be online again with a fast connection. Spend the day catching up on some urgent emailing and this web site, where I have to up-date numerous things. In the afternoon, Kati sends me off to the Olympic Park swimming pool which has just opened for the summer. Good choice. I actually do a rather heavy workout and am invigorated (well, except my back) by some good sun and water. Met with Tapio and Susanna last night at Moscow Bar, he was just back from Tornio checking the situation for the Polar Circuit project which starts in a couple weeks. They are off tomorrow to Undisclosed Locations for a REAL VACATION before the summer activities seriously kick in. I headed home early to rest my back which is seriously aching these days.