The recent thread on museum salaries brings up the whole issue of the role
of museums. There have been a number of interesting online discussions this
summer connected with Documenta X in Kassel and the upcoming Ars
Electronica in Linz, Austria where the issue is one of many threads weaving
through the forums.

The following is an excerpt of an interview with Documenta X director
Catherine David by Marleen Stikker, co-director of the Society for Old and
New Media in Amsterdam. It was posted on the NETTIME mailing list and the
full text can be found in the NETTIME archive:
http://www.factory.org/nettime/archive/0917.html

The interview was conducted as part of the  "Hybrid Workspace"  project  of
Geert Lovink and Pit Shultz at Documenta where discussions have been
revolving around the issues of bandwidth. David and Documenta X have been
given a somewhat hostile reception in the cultural press because of the
lack of what some consider proper objects on display.

As I sit in my studio this muggy New York morning in shorts and bare feet
I'm accessing the "global virtual  museum" through my phone line -- global
in the computer search sense, virtual as in potentiality and museum as the
meeting place of the muses. I can't help but marvel at this ability to
create a portal between a small American Historical site struggling to
survive, the Getty wondering how best to spend its millions and cities like
Kassel, Muenster and Venice that allow themselves to be laboratories for a
summer.

The URL for Hybrid Workspace:
http://www.documenta.de/workspace


CD:[...]
>We should perhaps be going back to the first idea of the museum, the one
>in Alexandria, which was well known as a meeting place of the Muses. I am
>afraid we do not have Muses anymore, but the concept of the museum as a
>meeting place, which is a little distant from the immediate resolutions,
>which is for me the definition of a critical space, could be, again, a
>very interesting possibility.
>
>MS: A last question: would you like to have more bandwidth yourself?
>
>CD: Is it very important to have more bandwidth, but we should also
>think of alternatives, of situations where there are no computers at all.
>To take a step back, and asking also for more "bare feet-technology". And
>again, not being mechanistic. Access might be a human right, but we
>should also be able to articulate the dialectics of those without
>access.

Robbin Murphy
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<i> i o l a </i>  http://artnetweb.com/iola/