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the network and not the meetings. Second was the spam mail campaign on the mailing list by the aggressive artist Netochka Nezvanova. Around that time automatic filtering technologies started entering mailing list culture. As soon as the messages were blocked by filters, people spent less time following what went on the list and did not protest against the spam. The highly professionally organized exhibition of young Albanian artists marked the third event, which indicated that there were no relevant differences between Eastern and Western Europe anymore. Although the Syndicate mailing list still grew rapidly (in 1999 it had around 700 interested subscribers and their number continued growing), these three reasons together led the founders to the decision to discontinue Syndicate’s work. A new mailing list, Spectre, was created in its place – again from the beginning. But unlike its predecessor, Spectre is a mailing list only. Broeckmann explains the difference: ‘In the Syndicate days, in people’s minds it was clear who is on the list. Fifty, sixty people, of who at least five knew each other personally, some of them knew even more than thirty others personally. For newcomers (of the Syndicate list), they had a feeling that there is a spirit. Also they realised that there are these meetings during which people talk, and after meetings exchange information. Such personal communication was important also for those who didn’t attend these meetings, and it also differed from Nettime. Nettime had only one or two initial meetings, but they never had an intimate feeling there.’ (Broeckmann 2009) The case of closing down Syndicate shows how fragile collaboration networks can be, that they are not immune to inner disagreements and attacks and that eventually such personal conflicts may tear the structure of a network apart. In August 2001 the newly operating mailing list Spectre maintained a similar circle of subscribers. Also, the topic was similar – media art and culture – only this time in ‘deep’ Europe (deciding that it wasn’t necessary to highlight the context of Eastern Europe in any special way as it was back in 1996). Syndicate, the previous mailing list, was moved to the server of the Oslo media arts center Atelier Nord54 and continued its work administrated by other people. Among media art mailing lists based outside Europe I also would like to mention here the art server Rhizome55, established by a media artist group from New York in 1996. Currently, Rhizome is an extensive community of young media artists that has grown since its beginnings. Nowadays it involves artists, curators, writers, programmers, students, educational staff and new media professionals from 75 countries and five continents. Since 2003 the Rhizome initiative has moved to New York’s New Museum where it continues to grow and to sustain the community of net. art artists, discussion forums and net.art archive. Slightly more recent is the Empyre mailing list in Australia, founded in 2002 and focusing on new media art practice from the perspective of professionals – curators, critics, philosophers, and others. There are many other local mailing lists in other languages instead of English (for instance, Rezone in Latvian often republishes relevant announcements from its translocal neighbour the Spectre). Although being ‘only a mailing list’ nowadays, Spectre continues to be the virtual platform for European media art, which not only publishes almost all of the latest information in the field but also can be considered as a media art ‘source’ from where information ‘flows’ further to other translocal and local networks and communities.
54. http://anart.no. 55. http://www.Rhizome.org.