As part of go_HOME, Danica Dakic and Sandra Sterle have developed their own personal daily diariesto record events and reflections that evolve during their time in New York this fall. They are translating this everyday personal language into technological projects that will be widely available online. During this process, we have been navigating the gulf that exists between the personal vernacular and sophisticated mass communication. Why is there is such a strong desire to bridge these areas, and how does this process, with the need for expensive equipment and technical expertise affect the status of the individual artist? Can this artistic language, developed on the Internet, be related - or not - to the ways in which communication technology mediates the experience of migration, whether via fax, email, radio, telephone, film, television, or video?

At the heart of go_HOME is the investigation of the relationships between private space and language of home, notions of community, and modes of public communication and journey. How does technology’s influence on our mobility and our imagination impact migration? Does it, as cultural theorist Arjun Appadurai asserts, influence more people to migrate now than ever before, and how does this work in tandem with other factors that have historically led to mobility or displacement? In this scheme, does language persist as the basic facilitator of communication or become a boundary? Is our "mother tongue" the most basic connection to home, or do we now inhabit a migratory and multilingual era which shifts the emphasis to other sensory evocations of belonging such as tastes, textures, tones, smells, and gestures?

In New York are: Martha Wilson (performance artist and Director of Franklin Furnace), Elizabeth Cohen (visual artist), Shelly Silver (video artist), Beka Nanic (language instructor and visual artist), Slavko Kacunko (art historian).

At "Mama", in Zagreb there are: Sanja Ivekovic (visual artist), Branko Franceschi (curator), Ljiljana Filipovic (philosopher), Thea (Centre for Women Studies) , Swen and Maja (editors of Libra Libera Magazine), Mladen Stilinovic (artist), Lejla Topic (art historian), Zeljko Blace (Mama) and members of WHW: Natasha Ilic, Sabina Sabolovic and Ana Devic.

WHW (What, How and for Whom) organized this event in Zagreb as one project in the series of events: "Broadcasting". For this occasion they are web-streaming to us here in New York and are receiving our web-stream. They are sitting and discussing (among themselves and with us here in New York) having a dinner (Chinese take away) and drinking wine

Elizabeth Cohen: I think there is a shift that is taking place into the pattern and random quality, because computer technology is organized around this pattern randomness quality. I think we are also seeing it in our own lives. The way we live our lives according to these patterns and getting to know each other and the information according to these patterns. It is different from a while ago when it was more about presence and absence and things like that...

This is very much how it is affecting me, I feel I had a continuous relationship and then I’m interrupted, these are a kind of burped interruptions that are somehow random, but very structural in a certain way.

Sandra Sterle: Talking about computer and streaming as new media (if this is what interests us right now) we could talk about the difference between this new medium and other media. The big difference is, I think, that this medium is so unstable, it is even considered to be one of the definitions of this medium. You very often hear the expression new media/unstable media. Because you very often have a situation of half communication, not being able to finish your sentence, just getting bits and bits of reality.

We start to be satisfied with this kind of reality. There is a question though: are we really satisfied?

Slavko Kacunko: I went from Croatia to Germany in order to study further in the field of video and media art theory. The first thing that I noticed I was missing there was the language. As an art historian, I noticed I don’t have my gadgets. It is interesting that the first thing I did was learn German very, very fast. Waiting for the bus, I was repeating some words from Goethe, or something like that...

Many artists, who were surrounding me at that time, took their time and didn’t learn the language so fast. I understood than the ambivalent nature of the language. Boundary or shelter on one side, and on the other the basic facilitation of communication.

There are many people today, foreigners, who don’t make that step and don’t learn a new language. Even if they do it is often not good enough, because they didn’t learn all of the codes, idiom etc. Take for example, let’s see do you really understand the David Letterman show

Language, on one side is a closed system of rules (dictionary) and on the other side it is an open system of interaction. Is there a similarity between Internet and language?

Beka Nanic: My students are mostly Asian - Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese.

The majority of them are artists. The more they feel accomplished in the field of art, meaning they have a language to communicate: photography or painting or whatever they are doing, they are not so concerned about the English. They know they will convey their message and idea across, even if they are using some broken English or have a heavy accent. But, if there are students who want to go into bushes, who go into concrete things in life, than they are very ambitious about the language, trying to be very very precise, asking what does this mean, can I say it this or that way. If language is your only way of communication, than you are trying to get hold of the language much more than when you have an additional tool or a crutch or a gadget where you can be understood.

Katherine Carl commenting after the dinner: For me, the effect of communicating in a number of mediums at once (live video image, text/typing, communication at the table) was really incredible. Streaming communication has a completely new rhythm and multi-layered texture. Thank you so much for all of your work Drazen and Sebastian and others at Mama to make this such a huge success!

Thank you so much Sabina and Natasa and Ana for being interested and gathering such great people at the table there. We had a very good discussion, and the things that you all brought up about collaborations across the Atlantic and the international art scene are really compelling issues. It feels like this is just a beginning of a larger discussion.