hi all,
I think what Charlie is doing here is challenging us to write
passionate 'eloquent, intelligent and heartfelt defenses' of new
media art... It is funny. It reminds me of something I have wanted to
write about, but did not know how to phrase well. I'll just have to
improvise then.
About a year ago a few respectable Dutch art institutions decided it
was necessary to raise the Dutch audience's interest for art theory.
They organized a series of lectures, each with a different theme,
under the title 'Right about now'. The first evening centered around
the theme 'interactivity'. Invited guests were Claire Bishop and
Nicolas Bourriaud. Of course I was not the only person in the room
who expected some kind of reference to media art, old or new, or a
mentioning of a media art work somewhere that evening, even if it
would not be the focus of someone like Bourriaud. None of that
happened. It was as if 'interactivity' had no connotation outside the
social realm of art. In the break me and a friend met with one of the
volunteers, who told us that the organizers had been adamant in the
preparation discussions that media art *should not be discussed*. We
thought that this explicit emphasis on media art's exclusion was a
little strange. After the break my friend (Tania Goryucheva) went up
to the audience microphone and *politely* said she kind of thought an
evening about interactivity in art might also bring up the topic of
media art. What happened then was very odd. It seemed as if the
atmosphere changed from pleasant to hostile quite suddenly. Bourriaud
took the microphone and said something like: "Well, the problem is
there is no good media art. Can you name one good media art work? No?
That is the reason."
The reason why this comes to mind now is that sometimes one can
simply be baffled by a question that seems to linger somewhere
between rhetorical and a genuine quest for an answer. What does the
questioner want? Is it at all possible to satisfy him? What to say in
the split second he leaves you to answer him when you feel
overpowered by his hostility? Charlie seems to challenge us to come
up with earlier passionate defenses or writing about new media art,
which it seems he thinks do not exist. And yet he just quoted one:
Steve Dietz's text 'Why have there been no great net artists'. Memory
span is even shorter than I thought in new media art discourses... ;-)
time for some good old fashioned tea,
J
*
charlie wrote:
But the really issue may not be comparing different art works or
types of art, but simply when, on this list or elsewhere, did a work
of new media art elicit either such a strong negative reaction as
mine to Twombly, or such an eloquent, intelligent and heartfelt
defence such as Josie's. And if the case is never, as I suspect, is
that a good or a bad thing. And, if so what does it say about new
media art.
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