"It Must Be Free & Downloadable": Internet Art Communities As Flourishing Gift Economies

Art constitutes a non-rival material good if it is shared - the giver and the receiver would enhance the welfare of the artistic or creative community they both are a part of. This idea of sharing / gifting art would expand and diversify sites of access, collection and dissemination of art and associated writing or reponses. The web with its potentiality to circulate art works, projects and texts (widely and quickly) can massively expand artistic and creative communities.

Members of these online creative communities are producers (creating internet art or contributing to its creation in some way) as well as consumers (people are able to access the art works easily), as this system is about open, fluid and reciprocal gifting and exchange. It offers us an alternative to the prevailing art market or dealer economy (characterized by the impersonal exchange of commodities, or more specficially art, for money) as it is based on sharing and community building.

A gift economy is defined as “an economic system in which the prevalent mode of exchange for goods and services is to be given without an explicit agreement upon a quid pro quo.” It is distinct from the market economy in that it does not exchange commodities, the PennSound project is a good example. The mp3 sound files available at PennSound are not commodities that can be exchanged for money. Bernstein asserts that their will be no problems with rights (all are given to the poet) and there is no profit to be gained - because they can be accessed and downloaded by anyone who has been granted access to the Internet for free. They are gifts given by the poets to PennSound (given permission to use the sound material), an organization that then gifts to the Internet - using public free and downloadable poetry sound files. The site asks its users to reciprocate by way of providing any bibliographical information they might have about the material – a request for direct reader input. This idea of reciprocity in part relies on users to proliferate the ‘message’ and disseminate the concept of poetry readings as a social enterprise as widely as possible.

The gift economy will flourish in a cultural context where there is an expectation of reciprocity, in this sense the gift is always moving. This creates a ‘feeling bond’ which works to establish a community. The gift economy that is fuelling an internet art or web-based art community is built upon the very notion of trying to create community, an environment where ideas may be freely expressed and shared.

Harrison’s essay, which particularly focuses on the emergence of web poetry communities, demonstrates how the internet allows for a successful operation of the gift economy, and illuminates the potentiality of creating an interconnected community where the act of writing is no longer isolated to the individual. Art can be continuously disseminated if we take advantage of the technology the web offers, in terms of it being widely and easily accessible (although there are still issues of the Digital Divide that may render this piece somewhat utopian) and offering creative potential. Hopefully the resistance to commodification will keep the goals of the community at the forefront and combat any issues regarding sustainability that may arise.

References: Joel Harrison 'Web Poetics & the Gift Economy'

Reference break-up: now enter “ Alakanak or anywhere”

Reference in Berssenbrugge’s ‘Alakanak Break-Up’ is veiled with ambiguity. Reference is full of possibility and potentiality in conjuring up images in the reader’s mind those that we “can see,” and those we cannot which are created through prose language, becoming an image-making operation. Here reference functions dualistically. Impossible worlds may be created. Essentially language can only take us so far in the text’s literal situation. While deictic expression brings us immediately to aspecific moment and situation reference propels us beyond, into a more imaginativeand abstract zone, that can be seen through language or imagined. Reference conveysmeaning about something not present.

Something separate from the immediatelinguistic/ textual situation. Reference language is denotative and descriptive tying usto a physical or metaphysical world. Although it does not, necessarily provide clarity.It rather expresses multiplicity and transports the reader, with fluidity, from the deicticimmediacy, Berssenburgge’s descriptive reference pushes us beyond the specificlinguistic situation we are positioned in, however her poem does not depend upon it.The title ‘Alakanak Break-Up’ has historical and cultural implications of settlementand colonisation. We may bring, or we not may bring, this particular referential“reading of text” forward. The references to ‘frozen’ matter and rocks and silencemay evoke Alaska vividly or obviously, however these references are not used toprevent readers imaging some other place, or if they are to image, anything related tothe reference to Alakanak at all. Allowing us to ‘see’ through the language of the text to create image.

Instances where the language refers to something we cannot see must be imagined, as exemplified in ‘it splays out like contents its occurrence there.’ ‘Splays’, seems problematic and out of place. ‘Contents’ is spilt or poured out, we could imagine rock crumbling, or breaking up then imaginethe pieces of rock ‘its insides’ which are now exposed. ‘Splays’creates an image difficult to see, the implications of its use are not particularly clear. It requires, the reader to diverge from seeing the rock to imagining something, which splays outrather than is split, the reader must examine, how reference shifts through at onceimage-making and simile. ‘Splays out contents’ made me think of surgical procedures, incisions-openings-autopsy. The image of medical surgery does not see to belong in the setting of Alakanak similarly the word ‘splays’ disrupts a cohesive image. That of a broken rock. The image of human organs being splayed to be examined surfaces for me however it does not displace other images that could arise.

Ultimately the reader determines the image. This does not erase the landscape.Reference to landscape creates the space for image associations. Counter-intuitive it may seem. This idea of splaying the contents of the landscape as a referential moment is extremely dense, it may be read in conjunction with the social, cultural and historical readings of this poem. Moving from the specific situation to a space wheredifferent readings proliferate. To follow this progressing idea further, focusing on reference as mobilising language, we see ‘splays’ disrupting the image, but also allowing us to unravel them.

Alliance, between image and the words of images, is established so language is mobilised. ‘With silence as a material’. Like a material silence becomes pliable and shapely matter. This is at odds with our understanding of silence, still and empty. Silence as material becomes something we have to imagine a reference we cannot see as given in the language/ text. We may connect to ‘plane itself is silent’, although this intra-textual reference is not necessarily present, there is no origin to find – to give reference meaning. As the doubled reference ‘plane’/ ‘plain’ indicates. We connect these references through their sound.

Berssenburgge is playing with our expectations of referential language. How may we distinguish between ‘plane’ and ‘plain’. There is a disparity between what we see and hear. We may associate many things with these two words. Distinct low relief uniform colour without additions. Surface without slope aircraft level of existence. The reader invests in referential possibilities of the image created or not created through language.

Notes

Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge has been a really important poet for me over the last couple of years. Inspired particularly by Empathy (1989) I thought it would post a piece of writing about reference in her poem 'Alakanak Break Up' (I also have a component piece about deixis in the same poem that I will post perhaps another time). Decisions regarding how many words per sentence and the number of sentences were made in advance (closely following another piece of writing as a model). My expression was forced into a particular syntactic arrangement, creating fragmentation and anacoluthon.