Dear Beryl and other list members,
My apologies for taking so long to respond, but the pressures of work
(writing & translating) and family life have made it impossible until now.
I hardly had time to read the posts, but now I've finally done so, I'd like
to make a few points.
As a "jobbing reviewer" (mainly for Art Monthly - in the "quarantined" area
at the end of the mag, as Pauline put it) , I felt it was (and is) my job
to draw readers' attention to interesting works, projects, books, CD-Roms
in the field of "new media". I don't need an overarching theory for this -
I'm not trying to define the "language" of new media (re. Manovich, I also
have reservations, especially his espousal of "data" as the generative form
of art), but I do think I have been speaking the language of contemporary
art (both in theory and practice) for the last 30 years (specifically
non-traditional art forms such as Fluxus, video, photography,
installations, social and collaborative projects, performances, mail art,
etc. And I've been doing this both as practitioner and critic- I'm less
fluent when it comes to issues concerning painting and sculpture). It is
this 'fluency' that informs the pieces I write for Art Monthly - and I'm
just as likely to discuss a Tracy Emin show as the latest Internet project.
As an unrepentant, unreconstituted 60's afficionado I'm afraid I do still
believe in the concept of an avant-garde. (;-)
Years ago (let's say 7 or 8 years ago) not that many people (let alone
artists) had Internet access. There were a few pioneering artists on the
Net and I liked what they were doing. In 1996 I initiated an online
magazine devoted to Internet art called 'Why not Sneeze?' (which still
exists - at www.mediahaarlem.nl/sneeze, but has not been updated since
1998!). One of its sections was a guide to 'art on the Internet' -
thumbnail, opinionated sketches of around 40 sites. At that time there was
very little writing devoted to Internet or digital art - the art journals
had no knowledge of it, so it was left to magazines like Mute to fill the
gap (and an admirable job they did, and are still doing, though I do
sometimes get annoyed at the brevity of some of their art coverage). And of
course there have been the online forums and magazines and lists like
Rhizome. But you now have to pay to get Rhizome, which perhaps highlights
one of the problems of online criticism - nobody gets paid for it! Writing
for an established print journal, however, does usually bring in some
income for reviewers. But basically it's just about sharing (and
justifying, if possible) one's enthusiasms.
One point I would like to raise in this forum is the possibility of
developing new forms of art criticism that make use of the non-print,
non-linear capabilities of the Net itself. While I'm wary of the hype of
Hypertext, I do think there are ways in which the Net can provide a richer
content and context than traditional print-based media. I made a couple of
attempts at this myself (viewable in the archive section of 'Why not
Sneeze?') dealing with a symposium on Objects vs Pixels and Documenta X.
Can we develop new FORMS of art criticism, or are we content to remain with
the established form of the (short or long) review/critique/essay in
magazine or book form (and its concomitant style of writing)?
Anyway, I'm glad to be finally taking part in this discussion - let's see
where it goes from here.
best wishes to all
Michael Gibbs
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