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Dear Ryan and friends:

Leonardo Journal and its Network does a real effort in promoting cultural
diversity, they had always include articles from theorists and artists from
other areas beyond the usual realm.    As you mention in the case of Clark
intervention, we can also mention the case of Marta Minujín who did a
collaboration with Kaprov and Vostell in 1966, possibly one of the first
three-country happenings (using  satellite, for more info see:
http://webs.advance.com.ar/martaminujin/obras/simulteneidad.htm).  This is
part of media art history, in deed.  Nevertheless any effort is small to the
vast world that exists outside.  Brazil or Argentina, in the case of Latin
America are big countries and not including them is surely a big mistake,
however not including the smaller countries is also not taking into
consideration what is going all over the world.

Media art and the digital real has a intrinsic relation with the post-modern
and global conditions, and that presuppose an amplitude of
world-wide-knowledge.  We should question therefore the need for more new
media art history if media art historians will go over and over the same
figures.  In the recent years we cannot deny an effort to historicize new
media art, and this is important, specially if we deal with its natural
ephemerality as a medium, however, the interesting thing, at least from my
perspective, it to discover the 'new' in new media and not to say the same
things that we already know.

You can read the recent books on new media history and you will find so much
similarities that is worth a critical perspective around this.

Once more, I have to say that we live in such a networked world that it is
absurd to include always the same people.  This brings, however, other
characteristics and attitudes that we could infer empirically as a
conformist vision or lack that does not go beyond the Western-art realm.

As I mentioned earlier, with the so-called underdeveloped world taking over
more than 50% of the world's GDP this is even a huge mistake taken from an
economic perspective.  However we can say that new media art from a western
perspective may commoditize as a quality-brand desire, over the 'others' (as
in the case of other western brand that have been successfully globalized
such as Gucci, Prada, etc.)

All the best,

Jose-Carlos




on 4/14/06 12:38 AM, Ryan Griffis at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Along the lines of the Spectre conversation, the Journal of Aesthtics &
> Protest ran an article in the last issue that discusses Oiticica in
> relation to new media art histories (by Marianna Botey and Cara
> Baldwin):
> http://www.joaap.org/4/botey.html
> after seeing some of Lygia Clark's work in person (in the traveling
> Tropicalia exhibit
> http://www.newmediacaucus.org/media-n/2006/v02/n01/
> Sp06_Bendito_Britsch.htm ), i'm even more amazed that it doesn't come
> up more often in discussions of new media history. i'm not one for
> defining canons, but if there is one, her work should be def be there.
> it's interesting... on the iDC list Paul Miller and Charlie Gere
> brought up the issue of Eurocentricity (or Caucasiocentricity if you
> will) as well. The missing presence of Oiticica and Clark from New
> Media Anthologies is telling.
> At least there's this Leonardo article
> http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/spec.projects/
> osthoff/osthoff.html
> it even mentions a 1975 book by Frank Popper called Art - Action and
> Participation, pointing to Clark along with three others, including
> Maholy-Nagy.
> the work in Tropicalia is also worth considering in the context of our
> art & activism discussion...
> best,
> ryan
> 
> On Apr 13, 2006, Sarah Cook wrote:
> 
>> this thread is happening on the spectre list, but perhaps people have
>> some thoughts here too?
>> 
>> Begin forwarded message:
>> 
>>> From: Jose-Carlos Mariategui <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Date: 7 March 2006 6:06:11 AM GMT
>>> To: Chris Byrne <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Cc: Spectre <[log in to unmask]>, iberoamerica ACT
>>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Subject: [spectre] How International is Media Art ? The Role of the
>>> Curatorial Practice
>>> 
>>> Dear Chris and friends:
>>> 
>>> I just came up with this interesting announcement of the International
>>> Symposium on Curating New Media Art.  Yes, but it is Western-side
>>> International Symposium, not a real International one.  It is a pity
>>> that
>>> though there are so many projects going on at a wide (real)
>>> International
>>> Scale, there is still the need to "Westernize" as much as possible
>>> the arts.
>>> This is similar to the reasons why in the majority of books on the
>>> so-called
>>> history of New Media there is not a single discussion on what happened
>>> outside Europe, Japan or the USA.  This reflects a conformism and
>>> lack of a
>>> real consideration of the ways in which new media art has been
>>> evolving,
>>> quite successfully in many cases, through out the world, and I say
>>> the world
>>> (including the so-called emergent 'others' that in economic terms
>>> represented in 2005 more than half world's GDP).