I never thought I would jump to the defence of ZKM...so I will not start
now! However, you cannot lump all the artworks produced over the past twenty
years in the area of new media, which might have been shown at ZKM (or look
they could have), together. There are all sorts of tendencies amongst
artists working with new media. In this respect Herr Heidenreich is correct
there is no such thing as a style or school of art that can be called
media art. However, there are many artists, of all kinds, using media in
their work.
Like most artists I have always sought to keep my work out of any grouping
or association of other artists that might have lent it to being cannonised
into a school or style. One of the reasons many artists choose to work with
new media is towards this end an attempt to escape the gravity of
definition. To paraphrase the Austrlan philosopher Red Bull, technology
Ogives you wingsı.
Armin is right to point to practices that we would not associate with ZKM.
However, to state that interactive and telematic art in general belongs in
this box doesnıt help us in discriminating good work from poor. I share
Arminıs distaste for techno-affirmative art but I can name artists,
including some closely associated with ZKM, who would also share this
distaste and whose work is highly critical of technological determinism and
the social formations around it. I do not see that it is helpful to throw
all those babies out with the bath water (sorry for all the mixed
metaphors).
I agree with Armin though that if we seek to identify what we do with its
instrumentality then we will be easy targets. Our concerns are diverse.
Artists working with new media do not represent any specific ethical, social
or political position. There is no school or style of media art. Letıs not
start creating one now (it will only lead to more arguments).
Regards
Simon
On 20/10/08 09:42, "Armin Medosch" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>
> it is great to see such a flood of reactions to the closure of Live and
> Media arts at the ICA. While I broadly agree with the tendency of most
> postings, I would like to add a couple of things.
>
> This winter on the German mailinglist Rohrpost a similar discussion
> happened, yet somehow a bit less collegial and sharper in tone. It was
> triggered by an article in the German centre-right broadsheet FAZ by
> ex-media artist Stefan Heidenreich where he claimed that media art does
> not exist. This was rebutted by Inke Arns, first in a posting, later in
> a proper essay under the title 'And it exists after all' which is
> included in the 10 year anniversary publication of HMKV. What Inke did
> very well to analyse in her rebuttal is that 'critics' such as
> Heidenreich -- his was also quite an intellectual lazy diatribe --
> equate media art with a certain type of media art only, which what has
> come to be known as ZKM art, interactive and telematic art works which
> are techno-utopian and techno-affirmative. What those critics ignore is
> that since the mid-1990s many other kinds of practices have flourished,
> not just net art but a very broad range of experimental work with
> technology which is not affirmative and aims either at critically
> interrogating mainstream narrations about technolgy and science, and /
> or seeks to involve audiences in what could be broadly termed
> participatory and emancipatory processes, or playful and ironic works
> which seek to interrupt the smooth flow of financial and cultural
> capital in global networks.
>
> The point that I want to make here is that those other practices, for
> which maybe the term media art does not work any more, but which
> certainly exist and are viable and necessary, find little response in
> the mainstream of media art itself. In the current urge to stabilise and
> canonise a certain discourse on media art and construct 'histories',
> those critical and emancipatory practices are near totally absent. Thus,
> nobody should be surprised if in society at large and in the mainstream
> art press media art is equated with technologically determined and
> deterministic works and the according discourse that is built around
> them.
>
> This leads to another point, namely the inability or unwillingness, or
> both, to define media art. This could be made to sound good in a certain
> post-modern sense, when some people cling to a notion of an 'unstable'
> field that constantly re-invents itself and 'resists
> institutionalisation', yet this creates also a mystification around the
> economic inequalities between 'rich' large institutions which work on
> the canonised histories of interactive art or art and science, and the
> newer types of smaller institutions who create other discourses which,
> in my understanding, are more contemporaneus, more 'urgent', more timely
> responding to this co-evolution of technology and society, yet
> constantly face economic extinction. Maybe it is too late to rescue
> 'media art', yet with my PhD I try to uncover the depth of the field of
> those more critical and emancipatory practices and develop a theoretic
> framework for those other currents.
>
> As long as it is easy to mistake a techno-affirmative position for the
> whole of media art, critics will find it easy to speak about the 'end of
> media art' while funding departments are given easy argumentational
> ammunition to close down programs or institutions. To make that
> convenient 'lazyness' more difficult, some form of definition and shared
> vocabulary will also be necessary.
>
> last not least I find it a bit surprising that this discussion is being
> had on this international curating list, and not, for instance, on the
> node.london list. wouldn't that be a good catalyst for finding a more
> collective voice among media art practitioners in London?
>
> best
> armin
>
Simon Biggs
Research Professor
edinburgh college of art
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