1. SO... WHO ARE YOU? TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF! SOME CORE OF TRUTH WOULD BE NICE, BUT PLEASE FEEL FREE TO BE COLOURFUL...
No core but a lot of peripherals. Esther Saxey, currently residing in Brighton, finishing thesis on sexual identity narratives. Want it to be over soon. Hobbies include reading, lucid dreaming, pursuing ever darker chocolate.
2. WHAT DOES POLIS MEAN TO YOU, IF ANYTHING? GO ON,GUESS, EXTRAPOLATE...
All that frantic attempt for conceptual thought and its frameworks to catch up with the lived experience of urban life - modernist, post-modernist - but the city is _moving too fast_…
3. DO YOU HAVE ANY PARTICULAR INTEREST IN VIRTUAL REALITY/VIRTUAL WORLDS, OR GENERAL THEMES/DEPICTIONS OF URBAN SPACE?
Especially the sexgender/urban space intersection - Walter Benjamin's Arcade Projects, Mapping Desire, all that jazz. Tried being a flaneur, briefly, but got bored, cold hands etc. Lack commitment.
4. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE AN ARTIST, EITHER PRINCIPALLY OR AMONG OTHER THINGS?
Writer. Wouldn't refer to self as artist, even to self, in case self slapped self for being pretentious giftless bastard.
5. IF YOU ARE AN ARTIST, DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS FORART WORKS (OBJECTS, ACTIONS, WHATEVER) THAT WOULDEXPLORE POLIS THEMES OR IDEAS?
Probably. Pending.
6. WHAT ARTFORMS DO YOU CONSIDER MIGHT BE RELEVANT OR OF INTEREST TO POLIS?
Words and comix, but they're my favourite things anyway… Someone's already mentioned Perec - yes - Oulippo and its spinoffs are bound to yield good things. Objet trouve are fine but they're always a centimetre away from plain old student skip-diving and "Hey, I could make a really funky lamp out of this," so you can't afford to get precious about it…
7. WHAT IDEAS FROM ANY NON-"ART" FIELD DO YOU THINKMIGHT BE RELEVANT OR OF INTEREST TO POLIS?
Queer theory is just getting to grips with its metrocentrism and may produce some really cool stuff soon about urban space and desire.
8. DO YOU KNOW THE DADA, FLUXUS, OR BEAT MOVEMENTSDO YOU SEE ANY PARALLELS BETWEEN THOSE AND WHAT POLIS MIGHT BECOME, OR ANY INTERESTED LESSONS THEY MIGHTHAVE TO TEACH US?
Not well, but I think the central premise - of pressing together tolerably fine minds together at parties until great things are created with a subsequent implosion in a tumult of scrambled ego and someone shoots their wife sound like a good thing. My wife has already volunteered.
9. ANY OTHER MOVEMENTS WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT? THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE "ART" MOVEMENTS...
Transexual menace, slash fiction.
11. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IN THE POLIS MANIFESTO? DO YOU THINK THE MANIFESTO SHOULD BE TEXT ONLY? MULTIMEDIA? SUGGESTIVE OR EXPLICIT?
Suggestive because
a) there is no ultimate interpretation
b) even people who think there IS an ultimate interpretation can
squabble without end over what it might be, thus creating a similar
effect
So one may as well incorporate confusion into the very fabric of the beast and connoting is more inspirational than denoting, and one should be passionate about things which one has no control over and less knowledge of, it's good practice/se.Could you make a modular manifesto?
12. NAME ONE THINKER (OR DOER) WHO YOU FEEL SHOULDBE OF PARTICULAR INTEREST TO POLIS? HELL, NAME A BUNCH OF THEM IF YOU LIKE...
Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Ricki Anne Wilchins ("Read my Lips"), Sandy Stone, Rachel Bowlby ("Shopping with Freud" is most relevant)
13. DOES POLITICS HAVE ANY PLACE IN POLIS?
Politics was always already in Polis.
14. DO YOU THINK THERE SHOULD BE A DEDICATED POLIS WEBSITE, OR A DISTRIBUTED NET? OR BOTH? OR SOME OTHER ALTERNATIVE?
Hubs! Nodes!
15. DO YOU KNOW ANY PROGRAMMING/SCRIPTING LANGUAGES PARTICULARLY JAVA OR VRML? IF NOT, WOULD YOU LIKE SUPPORT IN LEARNING FROM MEMBERS OF POLIS?
Crawling through HTML at present - too much to take on, frankly, my dears.
17. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN TRANSHUMANISM, OR EVEN KNOW OR CARE WHAT IT IS?
Oh, indeed. I even still find academics wanking over Stellarc interesting. Although the transhumanism.org predicted scenario scale seems a little vague to me: at one end, species death, and at the other, a future "very wonderful and happy indeed." Righty-ho…
18. DO YOU KNOW ANY OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE INTELLIGENT, CREATIVE, AND MIGHT BE INTERESTED INJOINING THE POLIS GROUP?
I'm trying to keep them isolated, insecure and alone for fear of what they might achieve.
19. HAVE YOU SEEN "EVENT CITIES" 1 OR 2 BY BERNARD TSCHUMI (THEY'RE OBLIQUE ARCHITECTURE COFFEE-TABLE ARTBOOKS)
Nope.
20. ANY OTHER THOUGHTS, ANYTHING YOU'D LIKE TO ADD?
I'm writing this looking out over the crenulations of a 16th century castle. No, really.