Dom,
Thank you for the articulation above, your words are uplifting!

Growing so tired of the term 'digital' in this conversation, afterall it is just art (as many smart people have cast a light on, time to pickup this torch IMHO) to be sure, the distinction is useful to an end, but relying on it for decades now to indicate something the artworld (institution as well as market) is not well equipped to parse to begin with has indeed created these suburbs, ghettos, grottos, tech demos and the like we all operate within to some extent (unfortunately) as the distinction collapses entirely in culture at large, it increasingly functions more as a barrier to the accessibility of this artwork.

Looking forward to partying with Pau in two weeks, inside one of our strongest netart shows yet, welcoming him to lively conversation in the hopes he might find the words to begin to see and speak past the 'media' in this work we all care about deeply.

Bests,
Kelani



> On Jun 28, 2014, at 7:28 AM, Oliver Grau <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Dear Domenico,
> 
> 
> thank you for your friendly words. You might have missed the
> part of the discussion, where colleagues posted for the 2nd or 3rd time
> an
> underqualified article also on digital media art, and started a
> lamento.. I do
> not know, where you take your interpretation "us vs. them" from,
> since my point was the opposit, it was on the strength of digital media
> art and my point was on (museum) infrastructure. 
> 
> 
> Although (digital) media art on more than 200 festivals and
> biennials is more successful than ever, it is not entering the museum
> system,
> due to a system failior. If you can show me the museums, which collected
> and
> preserved the main artworks by Eduardo Kac, 
> Myron Krueger, jeffrey Shaw, Maurice Banayoun, Char Davies and many,
> many others you can make a point and will all help us... Char Davies
> Osmose
> alone received more than 100 scientific articles but is shown in no
> museum on
> our planet. And a digital culture we live in most parts of the world,
> which
> excludes large parts of its contemporary culture is getting into a
> problematic
> situation for its democratic dicourse (via) art. 
> 
> 
> In order to fulfil its duty, to collect and preserve the
> most significant contemporary art the Museum System has to reorganise to
> become
> apropriate for the cultures of the digital age, in alliances with
> science
> centers, archives and the digital industries. If govenments start
> conferences
> with their museums asking, what are you doing precisely to follow the
> law and
> protect digital art? The answer would be very poor and could initiate an
> understanding that individual museums are not sufficiantly equiped to do
> that
> job. We might need alliances, where, say the museums in Bavaria are
> responsible
> and built up the needs for "interactive installations", in Lower
> Saxony for "Net Art", in Berlin for "Bio Art" etc.
> 
> 
> TATE Britain, as leading european Museum, now has again the
> chance to bring this initiative on a european level (TATE Modern had
> ironically
> a conf on the same topic 10 yeras ago..)
> Also the digital industry, who wants to sell us every year a
> new laptop, has to help, to protect the cultures created (not born) on
> their
> machines, perhaps with a tax: Apple, Microsoft, Google etc. also have to
> contribute and should not avoid tax by moving to low-tax countries.
> 
> 
> 
> As all media artworks of the past (Sculpture, Painting) etc.
> are bound to the condition of their media (Stone, Canvas, Foto, Film)
> also
> digital art has its needs, we cannot simply ignore that fact by
> propagating a
> "post medial condition" ... which leads in the case of digital art to
> its extinction.
> 
> 
> 
> I would like to draw your attention also on the LIVERPOOL
> DECLARATION, signetd meanwhile by more than 400 colleagues, which asks
> consequently for an "international" and "sustainable"
> support of media art research.
> http://www.mediaarthistory.org/declaration Please feel free to sign. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Many regards, Oliver
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>>> Domenico Quaranta <[log in to unmask]> 28.06.14 11.28 Uhr >>>
> Dear Oliver,
> 
> I wasn’t able to follow the entire conversation, but I find your “us vs
> them”, attack-to-defende-your-territory approach, counterproductive at
> least. We shouldn’t have those little dogs who bark from beyond the
> garden’s gate (and yelp when you get too close) as our primary model.
> I'm far from sharing Pac Pobric's idea that internet art is "provincial
> conversation", but I'm afraid to see some traces of this provincialism
> in this discussion.
> A bad review is just a bad review in an ongoing cultural dialogue. The
> history of media art is full of them, as well as it is full of equally
> silly claims that media art is the only thing that counts in art today.
> This is how the press - some press - goes. 
> But this is only the sea foam over the surface. Deep down - and yeah,
> even in the evil, rotten art market and the mainstream art world - there
> are people working hard to generate a broader debate and understanding
> of art made with digital media, and that do notthe whole country of art is does indeed belong to them. Not recognizing
> this, you fall in the same mistake that Pobric did - only from a
> different perspective. 
> Also, I think that art made to feed the institution, and responding to
> its formats and rules, is no less boring and irrelevant than art made to
> feed the market. 
> Forgive me for being so straight, but in every word of your post is
> somehow implicit the idea that new media art - and its community of
> supporters - is a minority with a great pedigree that should be
> protected by law, supported by institutions and discussed only by the
> happy few. This is not true - and if it was, it would be very boring 
> 
> My best regards,
> Domenico
> 
> ---
> 
> Domenico Quaranta
> 
> email: [log in to unmask]
> skype: dom_40
> 
> http://domenicoquaranta.com
> http://www.linkartcenter.eu
> 
> 
> 
>> Il giorno 26/giu/2014, alle ore 05:35, Oliver Grau ha scritto:
>> 
>> 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,
>> Cambr>> 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.