72
THEORY ON DEMAND
Nettime meeting and conference ‘Beauty and the East’ in Ljubljana, 1997. On the left: Critical Art Ensemble, Patrice Riemens, Inke Arns, Josephine Bosma – Ljubljana. On the right: Konrad Becker and Peter Lamborn Wilson – Nettime field trip to Piran.
Nettime meeting and conference ‘Beauty and the East’ in Ljubljana, 1997. On the left: Marleen Stikker, Geert Lovink, Richard Barbrook, Josephine Bosma – Nettime field trip to Piran. On the right: Raitis Smits, Rasa Smite, Pit Schultz –dinner in Ljubljana. Photos from: http://future-nonstop.org/ (A Living Archive for Digital Culture in Theory and Practice. Project by t0.)
I have referred to my own personal experience here in order to reflect on the significant difference between the way networks were created back then and today, and also what the motivation was to join back then and now. Nowadays, networking happens in a completely different environment – the Internet has been publicly accessible for more than 15 years and anyone can create a profile in a setting that is already prepared, within the possibilities offered by social media platforms (Draugiem.lv, Facebook, etc.). Whereas back in the mid-1990s in the beginnings of the Internet, in order to take part in translocal collaboration networks, it was crucially important to overcome other kinds of borders, including technical, physical (geographical), psychological as well political, cultural, and others. Regarding technological aspects not only a computer and access to the Internet were required; an entirely new set of knowledge was needed for creating websites, and especially for setting up and maintaining your own Web, mail or live streaming servers as a network community. The Internet was a worldwide novelty, thus acquiring skills to use this new information and communication technology was relevant for both Western and Eastern European participants, whereas the mobility problem was more of an issue in Eastern Europe. Particularly, artists from post-Soviet countries were facing this problem due to the visa regime still existing in the 1990s and to high airline ticket prices. Overcoming boundaries was not only an issue of ‘geo-politics’ but it also referred to barriers such as language (English language skills were very poor for many Eastern European citizens), social communication (at first, it was psychologically difficult for post-Soviet artists to approach the new ‘gurus’ of Internet culture) and, obviously, there were differences in the 20th century cultural experiences that existed between the Eastern and Western creative