Dear colleagues,
I couldn't agree more with Jon and others: We should not be frustrated
by ignorant articles of people writing for the Art Market, which has
other interests.
Over the last fifty
years, media art has evolved
into a vivid cultural expression. Although there are well attended
festivals
worldwide,
collaborative projects, discussion forums and databases (Da Costa and
Kavita 2010; Dixon 2007; Gardiner 2010; Grau 2003 and
2011; Popper 2007; Shanken 2009;
Sommerer and Mignonneau 2007; Vesna 2007; Wilson 2010), media art is
still too rarely collected by museums,
barely supported within the mainframe of art history and with relatively
low accessibility for the public
and scholars. As we know, compared to traditional art forms – painting
or
sculpture – digital media art, has a multifarious potential of
expression and
visualization; and therefore, although underrepresented at the art
market that
follows other interests and commercial logics, it became a ‘legitimate
art of
our time’. Media addresses a variety of complex topics and challenges
for our
life and societies, like genetic engineering (Anker and Nelkin 2003;
Hauser
2008; Kac 2009; Reichle 2005) and the rise of post human bodies
(Hershman-Leeson 2007), globalisation and ecological crises (Himmelsbach
2007, Cubitt 2005, Demos 2009, Borries 2011),
the explosion of human knowledge, the image and media revolution (Grau
2011;
Mitchell 2011), the change towards virtual financial economies, and new
extremes of surveillance of all human communication (Ozog 2008).
We therefore should not stop communicate, that digital art is able to
deal with the big issues of our time, all thematized on festivals and
meanwhile 200 biennials all over the world. We should not count on the
art market, but we should remind our tax financed museum system (in
Europe) that it is their job, by law, to document, collect and preserve
the relevant art of the time - as we know, the museum system, founded in
the 18th century, ideal to preserve the media of its time (sculpture,
painting etc.) is not in the situation to fulfill their job. But many
museums are fully aware that this is the case - like TATE - where I
could give a lecture on the topic a few weeks ago. The museum system has
to reorganize to catch up with the digital age. There are thousands of
digital art works, shown around the world, which received an endless
number of articles and lectures, who never made it into the collections
payed by us. Some you find in the archive of digital art:
www.digitalartarchive.at
Many regards,
Oliver
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr.h.c. habil. Oliver Grau
Chair Professor for Image Science
DONAU UNIVERSITÄT
Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Strasse 30
3500 Krems, AUSTRIA
Tel. +43 (0) 2732 893 2550
www.donau-uni.ac.at/bild
****************************
Archive of Digital Art www.digitalartarchive.at
Graphische Sammlung Goettweig-Online www.gssg.at
New Publication: Oliver Grau (Ed.): Imagery in the 21st Century,
Cambridge, MIT-Press 2013.
On Fri, 20 Jun 2014 Marialaura Ghidini wrote:
> I am concerned too with "invisibility" of excellent work....Some
projects are not even browsable anymore even if done less than 10 years
ago. And I feel that this is bringing out so many interesting positions
that would not necessarily come to light if these people were not
practitioners.
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