My use of the phrase 'art history online' is both a catch-all term and a
provocation - and I hope I can explain that here as well as in the book
(more on that in another email, shortly).
As Josephine Bosma points out, it's got several meanings. It's the idea of
what a history of art(s) that unfolds almost entirely online - in terms of
art making - might look like, as well as the idea of an art history - in
terms of a body of contextual materials that help explain the phenomenon
of online art practice - that unfolds almost entirely online might look
like. Also, as the weeks pass, I'll be trying to get to the bottom of
whether there is such a thing as a digital art history (art history is
place-holder text here) as opposed to a digitised one. So, for example,
what does it look like when we make and critique art online and does that
lead to practices of art contextualisation that are distinct to
previous/traditional methods. Now, I say the term 'art history' is a
place-holder (and provocation) because net.art, for example, toyed with
the concept of art history as a body of knowledge and as a practice. I
come from an art historical back ground but my earliest understanding of
art history as a discipline was always as something that problematised the
very concept of an art history (I studied at Leeds with Fred Orton,
Griselda Pollock and Adrian Rifkin). So I choose the phrase here as a way
to continue to critique the idea of art history and because I don't know
what else to call these activities. Already discussion here has
encountered spaces where art and art discussion were made together and I'm
looking for how to frame that productively. Can it ever be described as
the practice of art historicisation or does that entirely miss the point
of what really goes on? Or worse, does it entirely misrepresent the extant
contributions to online art making/discussion or historical potential of
such activities to move way from (possibly outmoded) disciplines like art
history.
Charlotte
On 04/10/2013 21:27, "Johannes Birringer"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>while agreeing with Jon Thomson's initial observation, i'd just like to
>pick up a small point he is making - about a time line.
>
>The last two "times lines" I saw painted or pressed against a wall, one
>at the Tate Modern (Tanks) and one at the Wellcome Foundation in London a
>couple of weeks ago (for the exhibit "Thinking with the Body")
>were, in my mind, relatively awful, selective, radically incomplete,
>biased, contextualizingly perverse, anglo-american-euro-centric,
>monolingual.
>
>I will write later about my memories of online discussion groups,
>participation in such groups or lists, and the kind of ideas or
>discourses generated - in their particularities (as some of the lists I
>have been involved in are
>dance or performance specific, or may have been connected to
>particularized artistic research projects, such a telematic performance
>from 2000 onward, connecting sites for dance and media experimentation,
>thus of perhaps no consequence for a "writing of history".....except
>however partaking n practice and in generating new techniques, and along
>wth them, new concepts or revised concepts of what constitutes a
>"distributed multi-site performance"], but I'd like to ask actually,
>beforehand, whether you ever felt you were making art history? [or
>interested in a new form of online "book" of art & performance discourse]?
>
>Or perhaps such memories are always anecdotal, and thus appear important
>to the individual?
>
>Josephine Bosma correctly raises questions about the "historiography" or
>method used, if I understand her. Josephine could you please elaborate on
>your recent comment:
>>>For me it is important to move beyond simple preconceptions about art
>>>and the Internet. I am not entirely sure whether the subject 'art
>>>history online' covers this topic.>.
>
>I am also suspicious of the notion of an "art history online", but I
>think the discussion about the archive and the repertoire has already
>begun here, and from just today's host of postings (still opening some of
>them), this promises to be a redhot October.
>
>
>regards
>Johannes Birringer
>director, DAP Lab
>School of Arts
>Brunel University
>London UB8 3PH UK
>http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap
>
>
>[Thomson, Jon scheibt]
>>
>It's great to see a variety of experience and memory indicated here
>already that can still make it back to the early eighties. Perhaps after
>the month's discussion is up a time line could be established and
>published online charting the information that will have been
>forthcoming? Would that be a crumb friendly activity?
>
>I know there are some other attempts to do this kind of thing out there
>already, but it's always interesting to compare them as they do tend to
>vary somewhat for whatever reasons ;)
>>>
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