dear all
[Simon schreibt]
> ....I’ve either not learned from my mistakes or I am simply stuck in my ways,
as I continue to work with systems that regularly become redundant. It is
the nature of media art and if you are going to work in this field you have
to live with that - indeed, you need to make it a feature.
Whilst this is troubling for the artist I imagine for the curator it is an
existential threat.
>>
having just started to read, I may have missed a lot of this
conversation, but the last half dozen postings seem (as, I am sure,
the whole debate) to point in many directions, fascinating all, and
captivating. thank you!
I pondered a lot about Tim's longer summary of the work done at
Cornell's collection, and much appreciate what is said there,
especially also about the discourse and experiential or otherwise
documentation of media art works and performances (the latter have
come up with the preserving Khmer dance example?), and the on-going
vitality of some list-serv's like 'empyre' or 'netbehavior' (I think
Alan Sondheim has published online poetry there daily for so many
years I stopped counting; who accounts this and will access it?).
But Melinda's comment on our sentimentality touched me most, and it
actually answers Simon's worry, and that of many performance/media
artists I know who have also given up.
Interestingly, working in Houston at the moment, I ran into a painter
who gave me a DVD of some stuff he filmed/photographed in the 70s and
80s, about the alternate venues that began to form themselves in
abandoned warehouses, squats, and apartments, where performances,
video art, other experimental cross over sonic and poetry events
happened – all, I should think, now lost. I did my first large scale
multimedia installation at the old Lawndale Art Center, a warehouse,
in '88 or '89, the building now long gone, and all evidence also.
I like the "sideways" notion Melinda mentions. One moves to the side.
The other things I wanted to mention is the need, perhaps, to address
translation. Trails. Not only from one 'language' (digital discourse)
to another, but also from cultural/political contexts to other such
context regimes (e.g. what about Iranian media artists working in
exile, say in Toulouse or Gothenburg, or Syrian performers migrating?).
regards
Johannes Birringer
|