Resisting the Canon
The V2_ conference "Understanding New Media Art and Research" sounds very
interesting - I would like to respond to the comments that Ole Bouman made
about the sheer lack of curiosity as a serious blockage in the art world,
and the slowness of the scientific process as a blockage in the research
world.
There are many reasons why both the art world and the research world are
having problems in processing new media practice. The very notion of 'new
media' resists the traditional geographical or chronological
classifications of the cannon while at the same time the multiple legacies
new media practices bring to their polygenre cause havoc in the
classification processes that art institutions are so fond of.
As curator of new media in an encyclopaedic museum which encompasses four
separate wings and where the art wing includes nine distinct curatorial
departments: European Art, Prints and Drawings, Israeli Art, Modern Art,
Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, Photography, East Asian Art,
and the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, as well as a six acre
Art Garden, locating new media in this hierarchy of artistic practice
becomes a daunting challenge.
Last month we opened a 'new media' exhibition Liquid Spaces and resolved
the classification issue in our institution by locating the show in the
Design and Architecture Pavilion.
http://www.imj.org.il/eng/exhibitions/2003/liquid/
Promoted as an interactive experience (all works incorporate some sort of
physically in the gallery and demanded embodied interaction of one kind or
another from the visitor) in essence the exhibition crossed the
boundaries between art, technology, and design and the design gallery
location provided the 'space' to be able to consider how all these
genealogies could come together.
The five artists exhibiting in Liquid Spaces came from a variety of
backgrounds: film, music, literature, product design and photography, but
came together to present born-digital, and hybrid installations that
represented physical computing in a series of works that required visitor
interaction. While our museum has exhibited an impressive roster of
contemporary exhibitions over many years we had no idea how this
exhibition would be received. To our delight, in spite of a drop off in
visitors due to the security situation over recent months, since the
opening of the exhibition the gallery is packed every day and is bringing
in curious visitors not just once but in return visits on a regular basis.
None of this is intrinsically new to all you new media curators - many
leading museums have already found ways to incorporate new media into
their canon. The year of the new media fest in my humble opinion was way
back in 2000 http://www.ninch.org/programs/report/hazen.html but watching
the metastasis of the blockages that Ole identifies in many mainstream
institutions, including my own has been instructive.
One of the major problems in new media work is their inherent vice - an
insurance term used to denote their fragility in that the physical
materials, electronic systems, coding, display mechanisms all have
impermanent elements already built in.
This of course not only concerns new media art practice but blights many
contemporary art collections all over the world - there was an interesting
article recently in the Guardian by Maev Kennedy - Experts discuss
decaying art
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1072306,00.html
Inherent in this built-in fragility are major headaches for all
participates in the food chain. Collectors are reluctant to purchase a
work whose technology may become obsolete with in months (not even years),
museums and galleries in the same way are less than enthusiastic about
accessioning them into permanent collections (an oxymoron if ever I have
heard one) and curators have to work overtime to avoid that ubiquitous
little sign that says 'temporarily out of order'.
All in all there are many, many reasons for these blockages, but on the
other hand I am convinced that there must be ways found to resolve all
these obstacle because there is no doubt in my mind that, however
difficult the accession, conservation and display of new media exhibitions
may be, the curiosity, the enthusiasm and delight of the visitors more
than makes up for all the efforts.
Susan Hazan
Curator of New Media
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
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