Steve Dietz wrote:

>I suspect Larry was being polemical, but I am intersted in people's
>ideas about a related question. Some institutions, for instance,
>insist on photography as a separate field of endeavour while for
>others (such as the Walker), it is essentially a subset or a merged
>set of visual art. Is "new media" just contemporary art or does it
>need/deserve/require/better off as a separate (but linked) field?
-----
Institutions have to do both if they are to reflect artists' intentions. In
the case of photography there has long been two approaches to this as a
creative medium...by those who regard it as pure and essentially distinct
from other artforms and then those who regard it as another aspect of a
non-media specific artistic practice. The same is true for, particularly,
experimental film and, to a lesser degree, video art.

In the case of new media we see the same situation developing. There are
those media artists who want to see their work contextualised within the
discourses of contemporary art and then there are those who believe that
they are in the position to create and participate with new discourses that
are unique to and the product of a new media paradigm. There are a lot of
artists out there who seek to swing and have it both ways, seeing no
conflict between the two approaches.

All of these artists are right...and anybody, institutional or otherwise,
who wishes to interface to new media art practice will have to do so in a
multifaceted way. It is not a singular art movement, it is not a single
medium and it is not to do with any single sub-culture or like-minded
community. It is dynamic, motile, fractured and uncertain.

It is also important to remember that audiences do the same thing as
artists in the above respects.

In another post Barbara London said that mainstream art was currently
unfocused and that now was the moment of opportunity for new media
artists...which might be, except that new media artists are equally
unfocused. They do not constitute a single group anymore than painters or
photographers do. Many no longer define their practice in terms of the
media they use.

best

Simon




Simon Biggs
London GB

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Research Professor
Art and Design Research Centre
School of Cultural Studies
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield, UK
http://www.shu.ac.uk/