Hi crumb readers,
A first brief (and certainly incomplete) report from the Refresh
conference. It's rainy and cloudy here in Banff, but when the clouds do
lift there is fresh snow on the mountain peaks.
Yesterday's agenda was very dense and tightly woven. I'm hoping for a
little more unravelling today (and judging by the fact that Jon
Ippolito has just played us a video of a Monty Python skit, I think
we're in luck).
Thursday afternoon's panel on Methodologies, chaired by Mark Hansen and
Erkki Huhtamo seems to have been provocative and 'difficult' (in a good
way) for the attendees. Mark talked about how new media is a break with
art history in three important ways, in that it suggests,
1) the dissolution of the autonomy of the art object
2) the shift from object-centered aesthethics to body-based reception
aesthetics
3) a break with the philosophical vocation of art - 'to give sensible
presentation of the idea' (Hegel)
In regards the first point Mark critiqued the work of Rosalind Krauss
and her writing of art history, namely her emphasis on a post-medium
aesthetic. He argued that her answer to the challenges that new media
art present to art history is to differentiate physicality from
conventionality. He pointed out that Krauss focuses on artists who
reinvent mediums in their practice (keeping in mind that mediums can be
reinvented only when they have already become obsolete). I'm
paraphrasing (and you can read his talk abstract here:
http://www.mediaarthistory.org/navbar-links/Biographies/
hansen_abstract.htm) but Mark argued that if you follow Krauss then so
long as the work is new, the space separating its physicality from its
status as a set of conventions remains invisible or inscrutable
(naturalised). The implication of her approach being that what we call
new media will become obsolete and then artists will come in and make
work with it, which will then be called art. (Here, here for the Art
Formerly Known As New Media!)
Mark rightly pointed out (and unfortunately due to the impending end of
lunch there wasn't time for further discussion - which given the other
panelists presentations is one of the reasons the afternoon was so
dense/difficult), that the problems with this is that it prevents an
art history of the present.
Instead of following Krauss' lead Mark presented alternative examples
of works of art where the embodied response of the viewer is disrupted
or disjuncted (not a word I know, but you know what I mean), such as
Douglas Gordon's 24-hour Psycho, arguing that that the differentiation
between physicality and conventionality in many works of new media is
less significant than the fact that the viewer's response is creative
source of work's content (and not a condition of the work's medium).
I found myself wondering (yet again) if it was indeed curators who
were, through their practical work and not necessarily their
theoretical work, the art historians of the present.
More soon,
Sarah
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