Finally a decent argument about the 'New Aesthetic'. Hats off to Robert
Jackson for writing this.
I wonder if it was James Bridle's wish to rise to media stardom through an
article by Bruce Sterling. It ensures Lighthouse in Brighton some good
coverage and audiences over the next months, that's for sure.
As far as I'm concerned the 'new aesthetic' as championed has been apparent
for about 20 years. It is different from art but there are points of overlap
and they should be allowed to flourish together if needed. In my own career
I supported AntiRom, Arup and Tomato and vice versa in this context in the
relatively early days. I knew the difference between their work and art (but
these overlapped on many occasions). Art however still needs some freedom
beyond the design context and vice versa. Many art programmes do not fulfil
my expectations any more, not least the current cultural olympiad one in UK.
Art is instrumentalised, and I felt this pressure from the 'new aesthetic'
not because of a context like olympics or social mobility but because it
needed an instant impact. Art is often a slow burner that needs thought and
depth as Robert Jackson pointed out in his article.
I suppose it depends on what your belief is about art - for me, it's an
opportunity to put a different spin on the status quo. It could be
politically, visually, experientially etc.
The New Aesthetic Tumblr project is interesting in that context, but there
are other blogs, artworks and streams that make this debate much more
diverse than the one that's been presented as the New Aesthetic.
Best wishes
Helen Sloan
SCAN
On 17/4/12 21:00, "Guilherme Kujawski Ramos"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> a reasoned contribution to the debate
> http://www.furtherfield.org/features/banality-new-aesthetic
>
> -----Mensagem original-----
> De: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Em nome de Sarah Cook
> Enviada em: terça-feira, 17 de abril de 2012 06:44
> Para: [log in to unmask]
> Assunto: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] belatedly new
>
> Hi all
> thanks for your thoughts, and links, on the new aesthetic. i think the points
> raised are really interesting and something which has been circulating around
> my research for some time:
> aggregating and 'liking' as new forms of curatorial practice
> how audiences consume content differently in online spaces
> object-beingness (old fashioned Heideggerian dasein, or the networked-object's
> present-at-handedness and how that is accommodated curatorially)
>
> I particularly am interested in Dan's comment that
> "A lot of my New Media Art friends seem to want to avoid this conversation, or
> have adopted a "tell me why this matters" stance. I guess that's
> understandable, it's easy to look at the Tumblr blog and not see much
> substance. Plus it's a broader cultural thing, it doesn't exclude fashion and
> advertising, it is probably generationally divisive."
>
> I'd like to unpick this further... Is it an art and design division or a
> generational one? cultural one? in what way did Eyebeam's Re:group show (which
> Beryl and I were nominally involved in as Eyebeam's research partners at the
> time) address this and is it the only show to have done so? We've talked about
> exhibitions on this list where media art on view was at the service of other
> than aesthetic experience -- changing the world, addressing issues such as
> financial regulation or climate change -- but not in terms of how information
> about these works circulates, how the history of art and design is being
> written through them. What are the criteria for evaluating these works beyond
> those we've used so far (how the work behaves, how the audience participates,
> how the work questions or exhibits its own production and distribution)? As
> Curt said,
> To fail to ask these questions leads to a kind of reversion toward evaluating
> these new image as discrete, hermetic, "aesthetic" objects rather than as the
> residue/result of a series of cultural processes, networks, and relationships
> (which is what images have always been, and what these new images particularly
> are).
>
> Apologies for rambling,
> Sarah
>
> P.S. I would love to hear of other writing about surf clubs -- is there (or
> should there be) a reader on it?
>
>
>
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