*For Immediate Release*
Report from the Frozen Zone:
"Alt-x e-book launch party": join Mark Amerika
and co-hosts Rhizome.org and Cristine Wang

with images from Mark Amerika's "Filmtext", music by Twine,
special appearances & commentary by:
TINA LAPORTA, PAUL GARRIN, AND ALAN SONDHEIM

media sponsor: NY ARTS magazine

Last Saturday night, a small crowd gathered from the net.art community to venture into the fringes
of the "Frozen Zone" below Canal Street in New York City, where traffic is restricted to livery cabs, delivery trucks, EMS workers and firetrucks; where pre-September 11 days, black market communities gathered from the Fujian provence in Chinatown's East Broadway, to trade wares, meet--where no one asks questions, and anonymity rules.  However, all has changed and it has been transformed into a combat zone of emergency flares, soldiers with mitras, and military helicopters flying overhead, and the
incessant plumes of smoke making it closer in feeling to a 21st century Stalingrad.

Running late, and hoping to not be confronted by the "border control" / "checkpoint" at Canal street and the Bowery, we decided last minute to hop into a cab, waving our identification papers instead. We passed luckily without any questions past the first "checkpoint" at Canal Street, then met a second minor blockade at Madison Street.  Weaving our way around the base of the Manhattan Bridge we finally made it.

We passed those once familiar doors, and there was some comfort in that little detail from our
"normal life" pre-September 11...

We tried to provide some sort of platform for those who wanted to say something to do so, and so I asked some members of the net.art community (which has a big presence on the rhizome.org listserv) to speak up.  Since that is what I think is in the best possible scenario--what online communities are created for--on differing listservs, is a "shared belief" or "ideals", and it was great for some who had never met each other before (off-line, and in the flesh), to do so...

For those of you who missed Mark Amerika's video projection of "Filmtext" and sounds by Twine this
past saturday, you also missed some comments from the net.art community on September 11 reverberations and commentary by Alan Sondheim, Tina LaPorta, and Paul Garrin among others:

http://ova.zkm.de/perl/ova-raplayer?id=1001289653&base=ova.zkm.de

**Video shot by the Taiwanese filmmaker Lee Songe of IS Studios**.

Thanks to everyone who came by!  And that  includes: Andy Deck, John Klima, Jenny Marketou, Matej Mljac, Joseph Nechvatal, Randall Packer, Christiane Paul, Lewis Stein, Scott Weinkle, James Andrews, and others...

Also special acknowledgements to Mike Low (Rhizome.org events coordinator), John Morton (tech support) for making sure the event happened and we had the infrastructure support in order to voice our opinions in this time of trial.

relevant urls:

http://www.altx.com
http://rhizome.org
http://cristine.org