Happy New Year CRUMB list.
I am interested in these anecdotal exhibition histories -- I have the mediascape catalogue, as I'm sure many others do, and I wonder if its availability (print run, distribution, stacks of second hand or remaindered copies at the Strand in NY) has contributed to it being remembered and included in such lists? (by contrast, BitStreams, at the Whitney, didn't have a print catalogue as far as I remember, but a very flashy website.) Mediascape was on in June 1996, and I had just graduated from the Curatorial course at Bard (where I had been arguing, to little reward, about computers and art being the future), so I saw the show, but it is not a strong memory strangely enough - lots of video, and the great work of the Vasulkas.
I am also curious to know more about the collection aspect of this particular story -- was there ever any conversation about which works the Guggenheim might collect? Or how showing the works at the Guggenheim increased the value (market or other kinds of value) for then nascent ZKM collection? Would such a tactic be criticised now, or is this a rare example, of an older institution lending its credence to the initiatives of a younger institution? Were works shown in Mediascape which were not yet in the ZKM collection but which were added to the collection after the success of the exhibition? And what documentation is there of the Virtual Reality: An Emerging Medium exhibition -- and were any of its works collected?
thoughts on a grey rainy morning,
Sarah
On 8 Jan 2013, at 07:00, Goebel, Johannes wrote:
> Re: Mediascape
>
> For the new media art historians it might be interesting, that
>
> (a) Tom Krens and Heinrich Klotz, the founding director of ZKM, had been
> colleagues at Williams College for a while (during which time also
> MassMoca was budding and Klotz - according to his own communication - was
> considered to become director of MassMoca) - so there was an existing
> connection
>
> (b) that for us at ZKM it was "incomprehensible" at the time that the
> infant ZKM (at the time there was no building and Klotz had started the
> collection for "his" museum which would open a few years down the road -
> and he stocked Mediascape with his purchases) was a major part for an
> exhibition in NYC (little did we know how things were in this realm where
> we thought we were catching up ...)
>
> and (c) a major initiative in the late nineties/early 2nd millenium by
> Guggenheim - also among others with engagement by ZKM as the "new media
> arts partner" - was to create THE "online portal to art events worldwide"
> as part of Guggenheim's expansion also into the web (this project
> basically did not take off, I think).
>
> Johannes
>
>
>
> On 1/7/13 7:20 PM, "Jon Ippolito" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Annick wrote:
>>
>>> Mentionning Documenta VII, Les immateriaux, the 1986 Venice Biennal,
>>> Mediascape at Guggenheim Soho as "exceptions" is interesting as they
>>> were a) the biggest art fairs worldwide (Miami was not existing) and b)
>>> two of the most important contemporary/modern art museums worldwide.
>>> This shows that the divide between contemporay art and media art was not
>>> existing.
>>
>> I was intrigued that Mediascape came up in this discussion of the divide
>> between Europe and America, and between "new media" and "mainstream" art
>> worlds. The show may have taken place in New York, but it drew much of
>> its inventory from ZKM--which would seem to corroborate the European
>> pedigree of the New York art world's interest in high-tech art.
>>
>> However, Tom Krens, Guggenheim director at the time, agreed to host
>> Mediascape--and indeed to turn the Guggenheim SoHo into a center for art
>> and technology--after seeing lines snaking around the block three years
>> earlier for a show entitled Virtual Reality: An Emerging Medium. Apart
>> from a cameo by Jenny Holzer, the VR show drew its roster not from art
>> museums and galleries but from technology hotbeds like CMU and Silicon
>> Valley and their crossover artists like Eric Gullichson and Thomas Dolby.
>> That, plus the fact that 1993 was the peak of hype about VR, drew in a
>> lot of people who might not have otherwise visited a mainstream art
>> museum.
>>
>> Now, of course, digital curation is all the rage among historians,
>> librarians, and folks from many non-art disciplines. The University of
>> Maine is capitalizing on this reality in its online Digital Curation
>> courses launched last fall. We've got two more online courses starting
>> later this month--I'm co-teaching the preservation course. Please email
>> me or visit http://DigitalCuration.UMaine.edu if you're interested.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> jon
>> @jonippolito
------------------------------------------------
Dr. Sarah Cook
Reader
MA Curating Module Leader
Faculty of Arts, Design and Media
University of Sunderland
Curator for the Festival of New Media and Video, Transitio_MX05 "Biomediations", September 20-29, 2013 in Mexico City
Co-editor and co-founder, The Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss, www.crumbweb.org
Read our books:
Euphoria & Dystopia: The Banff New Media Institute Dialogues.
http://www.banffcentre.ca/press/39/euphoria-and-dystopia.mvc
Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media. http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12071
A Brief History of Curating New Media Art, and A Brief History of Working with New Media Art.
http://www.thegreenbox.net
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