Henry Jenkins Talks to Wu Ming

A two part discussion between Henry Jenkins and the Wu Ming Foundation. Enough said... The conversation is compelling and stimulating - and that is hardly surprising.

Here's one of my favorite passages (emphasis added):

"In short, I started to expose my brain and body to all kinds of popular culture at a time when the Internet didn't exist. I've always been in love with pop culture. All the other members of Wu Ming have similar backgrounds: sci-fi, comics, martial arts, rock'n'roll - two of them played in punk rock bands, one of which was fairly famous in the Italian underground. I think that if you don't know pop culture, you don't know your culture, thereby you don't know the world around you. If you don't know shit about pop culture, how can you be on the cutting edge of anything? If you don't soil your hands with pop culture, if you snub and sneer at today's participatory culture, you can't be "avantgarde", no matter how hard you try." (Wu Ming 1)

Part one. Part Two.

Lost and ARGs might be innovative but Wu Ming was (and still is) truly revolutionary. Aesthetically, pragmatically, and politically.

Update: Wu Ming has added some comments to the post. To read them click on... "comments"

Comments

[Wu Ming 1]

It's true, man, don't you remember the kind of coverage that anything related to the Web had in the Italian press in the mid-Nineties? Tons of urban legends, unreliable gossip, stupid things, demonization. They didn't even have the words to describe what was going on. Traditional media operators, with a very few exceptions, were totally unprepared to the shift around the corner, and we all were already *on* the corner. That's why when Luther Blissett turned up, providing an anthropomorphic shape for some aspects of that change, journalists were all too eager to identify his stunts with internet activism tout court. Hundreds of articles can provide countless examples of this, take a look at the archives @ www.lutherblissett.net. Even such events as the Hackmeetings were described as lairs of Luther Blissetts, which wasn't true, and any Internet cyber-activist was often identified with Luther Blissett, even if he wasn't part of the network. Here's a clear example of the latter trend: http://www.repubblica.it/online/internet/pirati/pirati1/pirati1.html I agree that it's better than Lost 3, but it's what used to happen back then, I just described it as it really was.

[Wu Ming 1]

At first I got the tone of your post quite wrong, I didn't understand the Lost reference. I thought you were saying that my description of the way the media thoroughly identified Luther with the Web was as fictional as Lost. I thought: probably this guy doesn't remember very well how things were in the old days :-) That's why I pointed you to some pieces of ludicrous 1990's coverage. Which, of course, is always a useful thing to do! Sorry for misunderstanding.

[matt]

I totally agree - my comparison to "Lost" was not derogative at all. I use the tv series as a sort of benchmark-paradigm for a series of interesting media phenomena. The overwhelming majority Italian press is dramatically unable to think critically, let alone understand (or even process) a transmedial phenomenon like Luther Blisset. Unfortunately, Italy has an extremely conservative culture: innovation and diversity are ostracized by the same pundits that celebrate them if/when they become popular. In the digital age, however, fringes can become powerfully visible - the old gatekeepers are impotent against what Pierre Levy calls 'collective intelligence'. Bottom line: the conversation between Jenkins and Wu Ming is possibly one of the most interesting pieces that I've read in a long while.

[Wu Ming 1]

Oh, I see you added praise for us at the bottom of the post. That's too much, man, too much. We're just humble workers in God's grapevine (what a wonderful sentence! That guy Ratzinger writes terrific copy!)

[Wu Ming 1]

Hey, you also changed the excerpt, which retroacts on my first comment! That's great, it's like some sort of theoretical ARG. Very Blissett-like.

[Matt]

LOL!

Consider it an homage to Luther Blisset.

By the way, here's the original excerpt:

"WM1. In the Italian press, from 1994 to 1999, "Luther Blissett" (whose advent coincided with the rise of the Web) became almost a synonym for "Internet activism" and net-culture. Traditional journalists felt both fascinated and threatened by this "new media" thing, it was growing so fast and they were totally unprepared, unable to understand. They couldn't find words for such a complex social trend (an epoch-defining shift from top-down communication systems to horizontal networks and personal media!)." (Wu Ming 1)

(hence, the Lost analogy)

...And did you notice that the links to "part one" and "part two" in the main body of the post are deliberately inverted? ;-)

Peace out.

[Wu Ming 1]

Is that because the URL of the second part -- rather mistifyingly -- ends with "1"?

Peace on earth.