If I could biefly chip in here as well -
-Beryl and Josie's points below seem to be addressing a marked absence
of reflexivity on the part of 'critical' art analyses operating within a
more-or-less definable institutional terrain with reference to that
terrain's own permeation, practical and conceptual, by networked
technologies and thereby also the marginality of histories of media arts
production that are not directly 'countable' within the current panorama
or the currently constituted histories of relational practice. If we
take the thesis of e.g. Claire Bishop that relational aesthetics is
inoculated against politics by reflexivity - it can accommodate an
enervated and ludic figure of the 'social' so long as the conflict
constituting this outside is excised to leave space for 'openness' - I
wonder whether the inclusion of a reflection on networked technologies
in the extant art criticism of 'relational aesthetics' could ever be a
critical one, given that the critique as it stands is noting the social
processes 'in general' (conflict) that are being conspicuously absorbed
and re-presented within the relational narrative working its way through
every conceivable major art institution in Europe right now? I could
add also that it looks like the massification of a nice outsourcing
technique: what was once artist-initiated institutional critique,
however naive, is now the outsourcing of the institution's auto-critique
to artists.
In other words: networked technologies and the forms of social life
they infuse and engender can only manifest in this current of criticism
once they manifest in the object of criticism, and they can only be
manifested in the institutional arena *relationally* e.g. without any
critical or disjunctive understanding of their function at large, much
less their function in the pragmatics of the art world. So are we here
repeating the same critique of criticism of relational aesthetics or
'participation' that Bishop, etc' s critique is doing to the relational
field in the 1st place, i.e. in terms of its exclusions? Bishop is
reflecting on "participation" within a delimited terrain of contemporary
art (relational, post-conceptual, socially engaged, etc), and there is
still a vast impasse between what people refer to when they speak about
'contemporary art' and what they mean when they speak about 'media art',
and a reflection on technology, however immanent to the way art
instutions mediate their programmes, structure their administration, how
their employees spend their free time, lies outside this sphere of
purview. It's a structural divide. If it's not part of the self-avowed
institutional or artistic strategies under discussion, it doesn't
exist. It's a matter for 'media art'. And we all know 'media art'
doesn't exist in the art world at this moment, especially not in the UK.
Or, to be more precise, it exists only insofar as it has been inscribed
into the canon of what does exist - for instance, conceptual art and
cybernetics.
In another stab at the 'reflexivity' problematic, I would agree that
Harris' review did not succeed in working out a synthesis of the aporias
of networked art production/curation on the one side and the ongoing
death of the heart of the EU art institution on the other. What also
caught my attention about the review is precisely that 'reflexivity'
formed the axis of the review's critical charge - a high-status art
academic, reproducing and mediating art history disciplinary and
discursive mechanisms for his very existence, impugning the
'socially-excluding' use of art-theoretical jargon in the texts and
remaining unsatisfied with the critical or speculative propositions put
forward in those texts - as a matter of principle, not as a result of
engaging with them. Now while in one sense this could already be seen
as the classical self-flagellation of the art commentary milieu - "look,
there's a whole world outside, and what are we doing here...?" that
amounts to the 'safety valve' Harris alludes to and a whole industry of
'critical practice', the interesting part is the self-implication
(necessary for the later stage of self-justification) is missing in
Harris' text - he will acknowledge being oppressed by computers in his
job, but that's about it. Aside from that, the critique is hard to
disagree with on one level (as Harris points out with re to Art & its
Institutions, who would be against democracy) - who would be against
technological determinism/reification of social process as technology,
who would be against art-professional insularity? But perhaps if Harris
was more willing to examine how his own professional activites,
including the publishing of the text in question, contribute to the
capitalist division of labour that seems to be his main target in the
critique, it would not overall carry such a whiff of absurdity and might
perform a symptomatic critique - which again I would in large part be
willing to agree with if there was any specificity to it - rather than
another move of gestural politics (reflexivity as antidote as cited
earlier). That would be the first part. The second part might be
engaging with several of the texts in Curating Immateriality, for
example, that are broadly in line with Harris' position in terms of
underlining the control function of the spread of networked technologies
and the art system -how one does not 'utopify' the other - and spelling
out the political implications, and seeing where these authors, and
Harris, can take them further.
best,
m
Josephine Berry Slater wrote:
> Just a quick point - and one addressed to Joasia too on the double
> review Mute ran of Curating Immateriality and Art & Its Institutions
> by Jonathan Harris. The question you end on Beryl is exactly what I
> was aiming at when commissioning Jonathan Harris to write this review.
> In other words, I wanted him to read the approach of 'progressive
> institutions' or new institutions and the general reconfiguration of
> art institutions in the age of globalisation in relation to the
> discourses of media theory, digital collaboration and networked
> aesthetics. I find it quite interesting how institutions such as MACBA
> and Rooseum apparently embrace the fruits of these media (e.g.
> producing their own newspapers using DTP, extending audience
> participation through interactive media, websites etc.) and yet never
> seem to acknowledge the overlaps and borrowings from the art-external
> world of media. I'm afraid to say that much as I enjoyed some of
> Harris' points, he didn't seem to do the bridging work I'd hoped for.
> Once again demonstrating many people's readiness to use the media
> technologies, make nokia art on the weekend etc., but consider
> themselves unable to engage in formal discussions about it. The
> continued operativeness of discursive borders I guess.
>
> Yrs,
>
> Josie
>
> Beryl Graham wrote:
>> Dear List,
>>
>> I've just managed to get hold of a new book edited by Claire Bishop
>> (author of several articles disagreeing with Bourriaud's 'relational
>> aesthetics' on broadly political grounds, that they do not allow
>> space for conflict). The book is a good resource - ranging from The
>> Death of the Author via performance to the ubiquitous Hans Ulrich
>> Obrist, and including an interesting “Report on a day’s proceedings
>> at the Bureau for Direct Democracy // 1972.” from Joseph Beuys.
>> However, new media participatory systems are referred to very briefly
>> only twice: Once in the introduction to dismiss "... so-called
>> ‘interactive’ art"; Once in the last chapter by Hal Foster, to
>> comment that "... many artists and curators fall for the Internet
>> rhetoric of ‘interactivity’, though the means applied to this end are
>> usually far more funky and face-to-face than any chat room on the
>> Web.” p. 193
>>
>> The pattern emerging from several books from a background in visual
>> arts is that definitions of the differences between interaction,
>> participation and collaboration are largely missing, that histories
>> of open systems and open source are not referred to, and that above
>> all, examples of new media art are simply not present: when authors
>> compare non-media art participation to new media, they don't compare
>> it to any participatory new media art, they compare it to unspecified
>> non-art forms, such as 'chat-rooms' or Bourriaud's dismissal of
>> "Nokia-art".
>>
>> Some other books have been slightly better at including a full range
>> of contemporary art, for example the inclusion of Cuauhtemoc Medina's
>> short chapter on “Mejor Vida Corp." in Doherty's 2004 book, or Grant
>> Kester's 2004 Conversation pieces.
>>
>> So, my question to the List is that surely, somewhere, there must be
>> an example where the brouhaha about 'relational art' addresses useful
>> critical art overviews to the full range of contemporary art?
>>
>> Yours
>>
>> Beryl
>>
>>
>> REFs:
>>
>> Bishop, Claire (ed.) (2006) Participation (Documents of Contemporary
>> Art). Cambridge/London: MIT Press/Whitechapel.
>>
>> Doherty, Claire (ed.) (2004) From Studio to Situation. London: Black
>> Dog.
>>
>> Kester, Grant (2004) Conversation Pieces. Berkeley: University of
>> California Press.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Beryl Graham, Professor of New Media Art
>> School of Arts, Design, Media and Culture, University of Sunderland
>> Ashburne House,
>> Ryhope Road
>> Sunderland
>> SR2 7EE
>> Tel: +44 191 515 2896 [log in to unmask]
>>
>> CRUMB web resource for new media art curators
>> http://www.crumbweb.org
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Beryl Graham, Professor of New Media Art
>> School of Arts, Design, Media and Culture, University of Sunderland
>> Ashburne House,
>> Ryhope Road
>> Sunderland
>> SR2 7EE
>> Tel: +44 191 515 2896 [log in to unmask]
>>
>> CRUMB web resource for new media art curators
>> http://www.crumbweb.org
>> !DSPAM:45d1c4c4843151610688996!
>>
>>
>>
>
|
