Dear All,
I think it is not possible to curate the net anymore. It would have to
be treated as one giant ready-made, but where to start and where to end?
I think some of the first wave of net artists such as Vuk Cosic, Alexei
Shulgin and Olga Lialina did treat the net as a ready-made. This was
possible in 1995 or 1996, but not now. There will come a time when the
net will become obsolete. Then it will suddenly become terribly
interesting again. Just like in the late 1960s, when the arrival of
video triggered a new wave of interest in film as an experimental medium.
We live in an unprecedented era of historical change. The web was/is
part of an assemblage of ideologies and empirical realities that can be
summarised under terms such as neo-liberal information societies. Since
2008 it is clear that this very system is in crisis. In the past,
financial crises have hit the so called peripheries hard, Asia in 1997,
Brasil, Russia, in 1998, Argentine in 2001. Now the former West is in
the eye of the hurricaine. This is not just about a short dip in the
GNP, it is a major transitional crisis, a crisis of the world system and
of a specific developmental model in which those digital technologies
which we all so love ;-) have played a particular role.
It has become increasingly clear that digitech is part of the problem,
rather than the solution (or maybe both). Is it justifiable that data
warehouses be built which have the enetrgy consumption of a medium sized
town just so that bored teenies can remix manga (sorry for the exmaple
it could be anything) so that salaried academics theorise this as the
latest fad of remix-society's empowerment?
This is where the Fields project comes in which I have initiated
together with Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits of RIXC, Riga. I am posting an
early call for participation below.
I have also written a longer text which gives a bit more background:
http://www.thenextlayer.org/node/1459
The gist of the argument is that there is no single term anymore that
can serve as an umbrella term for those practices, neither digital art
nor media art. We also cannot settle to live comfortably in a post-media
condition if this implies the stagnation so characteristic for anything
post- (remember, after postmodernism cxame a phase of hyperactivity, of
hyper-modernism, just look at the Shard). We need to move beyond this
situation and not just invent a new aesthetics but new forms of living,
of co-operation, of exchange. Technologies will play a role in this, but
not such a privileged anymore. The vantage point of media as THE key
viewpoint from where to conceptualise change has outlived its
usefulness. Something new has to come into existence, and this will grow
from a multiplicity of interconnected fields.
This is why we are posting such an early call. We are not just making an
exhibition, but starting a conversation. So if you do want to
participate in this experiment, please respond to the call below (and
not to my email address). This is not just for artists but you can also
respond as a curator, theorist, activist: put yourself on the map
FIELDS
Call for Participation
Fields starts from the assumption that the changing role of art in
society is one where it becomes a critical interloper in patterns of
social, scientific, and technological transformations. The range of
practices which were once subsumed under terms such as media art,
digital art, art and technology, art and science, have experienced such
growth and diversification that no single term can work as a signpost
any more. Fields is about mapping those expanded fields of artistic
practices which are contextual seedbeds for ideas and practices aiming
at overcoming the crisis of the present, inventing new avenues for
future developments by bringing together traditionally separated
domains. Fields is about new ecological and transversal trends in art,
outlining potential future trajectories for multifarious types of
activities that merge politics, technology, ecology, gender, semiology.
Which Fields act as catalysts and underpin those artistic practices
which offer the greatest potential for social change towards more
imaginative and sustainable ways of living? Which pre-cursors in the
last 30-40 years did exist and what can we learn from those often untold
stories? Areas that we will be looking at include but are not restricted to
* real fields, fields as in agricultural fields, works relating to
fields, food growing, water, seeds, plant ecologies and communications;
eco-activism, agro-socio-political projects
* field as metaphor, semiotic field theories and meta-field theories;
work as decoding and recoding of cultural patterns of social use of images;
* electromagnetic fields: and their experimental epistomologies (quantum
field theory); notion of relational field (Burnham 1968); the
epistemological implications of quantum theory in art
* gendered fields, field as a psychological relation, psychological and
psycho-analytical field theories
* field theories of perception
* social field theories, theories of masses and of emotional
'contagion'; relational field theories, notion of culture as a
relational field
If you have an art or artistic-research project that fits one of those
categories or where you feel that it extends this concept, please send a
short description to: [log in to unmask]
This is a first round call, the deadline is 31st of May, 2013.
In 2013 we aim at organising a number of workshops and event, beginning
with Transmediale 2013, where the initial matrix of Fields gets jointly
developed. This work is a step to the launch of the final exhibition
Fields from May 15 to August 03 as part of Riga Culture Capital 2014, at
Arsenals Exhibition Hall of National Art Museum in Riga. Fields is
co-curated by Armin Medosch, Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, and will get
produced by RIXC in collaboration with a growing number of networks and
partners.
regards
Armin
..............
Art, Technology and Social Change
http://www.thenextlayer.org/
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