Dear Crumbers,
I'm writing you as the co-curator of an exhibition that will be held at
iMAL (www.imal.org), Bruxelles, in April (18 - 30), as part of the Art
Brussels "Off Program". The exhibition, titled "HOLY FIRE. The Art of
the Digital Age", "wants to provide a bridge and fill the gap between
these two very different yet very similar worlds: the new media art
world and the contemporary art world. HOLY FIRE focuses on artists who
appropriate and “correct” institutional or corporate identities, create
fictional identities, hack softwares and game engines for their own
purposes, infiltrate online or offline communities in order to portray
them or their own myths, subvert existing tools or create their own
tools. In the same time, HOLY FIRE refers to the difficulties to set up
a market for new media art, to the challenge that new media art issues
to the contemporary art world. In the same time, HOLY FIRE comes out
from the belief that talking about a “new media art” as something
different and separated from the contemporary art world doesn't really
make sense today. All contemporary art is, someway, new media art, as
far as it makes use of the digital media for various purposes and talks
about a reality in which networks, software, user generated content and
media play a maior role. So, the artworks collected in HOLY FIRE are not
just new media art, but they are the art of our time."
Since one of the targets of Holy Fire is to make visible the network of
passionate people who are taking care of New Media Art, we decided to
work on a “choral” catalogue, asking people (curators, artists, gallery
owners, etc.) to explain their involvement in new media art and their
opinion on its present / future position in the art world. The “title”
question, in its reference to a well known pop artwork, is playful and
doesn't need to be taken too seriously (but you can, if you want!). We
would like contributors to express, making reference to their own work
and experience, their opinion on a set of issues: are new media art and
contemporary art something different? Is new media art the art of our
time? is it the art of the future or an art without future? New media
art collecting: what does it means for you? Is it a conflict? A dream? A
problem? A solution? A nonsense?
We selected a list of invited contributors, but it would be interesting
for us to hear other voices. We will publish the most interesting
answers in the Holy Fire catalogue, and all the others on the exhibition
website and in an edited post to the CRUMB list. Contributors can reply
with a single line or a more articulated answer (maximum 1.800 chars);
it can be a joke or a small essay; and, obviously, it can be critical to
our assumptions. The answer should be followed by a short
self-definition of the author (ie. John White, indipendent curator, New
York). The answers should be sent to Domenico Quaranta
([log in to unmask]) before Sunday, February 17, 2008.
My bests,
--
Domenico Quaranta
mob. +39 340 2392478
email. [log in to unmask]
home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS)
web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/
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