Into the Neverlands

I discovered that a handy way to come up with interesting research projects in Media Studies is to look at the commissions on new books, such as the one for a networked book about networked art. Shame that my current observations are a bit of a remix rather than a cohesive theory (give me time...), but some of the concepts and ideas suggested are certainly very helpful. The joy of studying in the third Christian millenia! Looking forward to del.icio.usly wikiread the book.

Bookmark this post:

Tagcrowd offers an opportunity to turn anything into a tag cloud. Thought to try this out with my first post. I wonder what will it look like in the next couple of months. Few of the ones I'd like to see swelling are media, research, blog, identified.

Bookmark this post:

Few thoughts cross my mind. Among them questions like where have I been before and in what plateaus have I been treading previously. What have I been doing with the time given to me and what has time produced out of me.

Despite the fact that I only spent a few months in my new Alma Mater yet, I have already discovered myself swamped by the flood of information and the fact that the field I have chosen to study - new media - is so terrifyingly dynamic that it is quite possible I will not necessarily stumble across anything new with my research. Once again I find myself on the first step of the ladder of competence - unconscious of my incompetence and stunned at how much has already been done.

By Lithuanian standards of blogging I am no newbie - I've blogged for over two years and quite successfully some might say: with quite a few 'thank you' letters from across the globe, constant comments, a bit of media coverage, a part time job proposal in the Irish media once I started to blog in English and even my grandma's keenness to purchase online newspapers she heard of writing about her granddaughter - only later on I explained to her that they were online. Oh the vanity of self-ordained fame!

For the past couple of days I have been brainstorming myself for a paper proposal I have to come up with for the course Spatiality/Temporality that would touch upon the aspect of mapping. The ideas are still in the metaphysical stage, but while thinking I realised how much is out there to be discovered and deciphered through the matrix of the hypertext. Moreover, how much has been done already... Last night I came across Danah Boyd's blog , which she started ehem 11 years ago. Christ, where was I then? :)

I was 15 and I didn't have a computer yet. My first encounter with surfing was in a parsonage. :) I remember desperately trying to log on to this new space and after successfully dialling-up with the information abyss I didn't know where to go... One of the first things I did was to set up an email. I chose the domain europe.com. I identified myself with belonging to wider terrains than my minuscule and relatively new country had. In other words, it was the sense of belonging and simultaneously a certain degree of escapism that drew me into the whirlpool of the world wide web. Driven by the same motivation I started my blogs which mainly focused on emigration/immigration issues as I found myself asking why and whether had I become an (im)migrant. As with many endeavours women launch, it was a self-exploration and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Those who might want to know more about the whys can go to my previous English blog emigration-etc where I have spend lots of time and energy on discussing the matter publicly and ultimately identifying myself as a voluntary nomad.

I started this blog with a determination to continue to post my observations about life (a)broad, yet I can't keep up to date those more or less creative cultural rants and ponderings as I find myself immersing into the research subjects of my studies deeper and deeper. On the other hand, they are not that far from exploring certain neverlands and positioning myself within them. I'm particularly interested in networking, social networks, locative media, identity representation, power relations.

I humbly bid a warm farewell to those who discovered the Neverlands as another blog with random tirades on cultural differences and I am grateful for being found and for your kind comments. Cultural differences will always remain there - it took me a few years of living abroad to realise they would never disappear, yet the beauty lies in the diversity of shades. However, from now on I would like to designate this blog for tracing my research and findings within the infinite field of media and us in it, because 'we live in media, as fish live in water'¹ . Recently I have discovered too much exciting new material in order to leave it within the footnotes of my previous musings and I need more logic in organising my folksonomies. I decided to keep the title, because I am still treading the Neverlands - the discourses that are still fresh to me, perhaps vaguely touched upon by my empirical approach yet without definitive conclusions. I'll see where this takes me. You are very welcome aboard. Please comment, suggest, argue and immerse yourselves in other forms of participation. We are all in this together, as Ben Lee sings (a rather cheesy melody, but the message is correct).

PS As for creative content, one day you might encounter it assembled in a book, yet it has to be written first. I might have the first page.

1 Nelson T. (1974) Dream Machines. In N. Wardrip-Fruin and N. Montfort , eds. The new media reader. 2003. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Bookmark this post:

Thinking of making a few changes, restructuring the content and making the blog more fun - for you to read and me to write. Still exploring the Neverlands, yet the concept might expand. Give me a week or so...

Bookmark this post:

Bookmark this post:

A quote of the top of my head (getting into the habit of compulsively referencing interesting quotes I come across), but when one looks for a research subject, one should look for questions that trigger, that make one uneasy and pose even more questioning.

It is the approach cultural theorist Stuart Hall proposed and applied half a century ago. When explaining the reasons for the emergence of cultural studies in the UK in the crossroads of 1950s and 1960s, he said what was driving him and other founders of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham was the need for an answer what was post-war, post-colonial Britain and what was that umbrella term 'British', under which millions of people were huddling.

Slowly, with some detours, I am threading my thoughts through the hypertext and the dusty corridors of the library which seems to be preoccupied with drilling rather than providing conditions for peaceful scholarship. (Speaking of which - the Neverlanders built the country on the water, but I am not sure why they don't come up with an idea to carry construction works during the night in educational institutions, just like the road workers do, for instance.) On the other hand, scholarship is anything but peaceful and I think this is how we (particularly students) should keep it.

A number of complains have been hovering above Drift in Utrecht lately, where majority of the classes OGC students are enrolled in take place. My naivety that whatever is from the West is innately progressive, thought-provoking and challenging various status quo has been shattered a number of times lately. Juvenile hopes of a girl from European suburbia. However, I am not suggesting the superiority of our Alma Maters - oftentimes they claim profound history, yet they could definitely work on their present. Obviously, over there, in the far East of the Western world, in the plateaus that for decades remained within the footnotes of the former Soviet Union, much is influenced by the factor that is not an issue here, in the Neverlands, at least nowhere as near an issue as it is there. In other words - the finances, that mostly, quite frankly and sadly, are singing romances. But let's leave the East for the meantime and focus on the West.

There have been a number of complaints during the past block among my fellow students and I enjoy the fact that the content and the quality of the studies are open to discussions here - at least there are certain professors who understand that the ultimate threat of education lies in stagnation. Yet these discussions could be much more feisty and I wonder why only a number of students try to stir debates and show the initiative in implementing changes. When a respected professor in front of 60 research master students used the word 'negro' a month ago, nobody questioned her on the usage of the word in the auditorium of one of best European universities. Latter on I found out the professor came from a well-to-do family. She said the 'negro' was her cook. Some professors emphasise we should aim to become public intellectuals, but we don't have the guts to question matters among 50 people or so.

On the other hand, some professors still wonder whether we should aim to become public intellectuals. As a friend of mine said yesterday, here we are discussing epistemologies, while a million of children in Kongo are facing disease, hunger, sexual abuse and recruitment by armed groups.

The owner of a health shop asked me a few days ago whether I will become part of a movement when I finish my media studies. 'What movement?' I asked. He thought I was studying journalism and I tried to explain in plain words that it is not that kind of media I am studying. 'So what can you do afterwards?' A seemingly simple question, yet whenever I face it I think that I probably won't invent the cure for AIDS or cancer and might not produce a very utilitarian scholarship. The more I think of the answer, the more I understand that the question is drilling to the very core of my brain and soul. And I believe this is exactly what we ultimately should engage in - drilling. It is the act that does not and should not have geographical restrictions. Because the West needs it just as much as the East does. Peaceful scholarship doesn't exist.

Bookmark this post:

Apologies for failing to update the blog on a more regular basis. Don't even have much time to follow other blogs either.

Here's another photo of the city in hope that I will managed to post something more substantial this week.

Bookmark this post: