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Lovely! Simon Biggs [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] Skype: simonbiggsuk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ edinburgh college of art http://www.eca.ac.uk/ Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice http://www.elmcip.net/ From: Domenico Quaranta <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: Domenico Quaranta <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 18:37:14 +0100 To: <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] new media at the BBC Hi crumbers, I just posted this on Will Gompertz blog... I had some funny time reading this article and all the reactions it produced, on this blog and around the Web (check out, among other things, Lauren Cornell's contribution on Rhizome - http://rhizome.org/editorial/3282 and the CRUMB thread onhttp://www.crumbweb.org/). Personally, as an art critic strongly interested in Net Art, I don't think that Mr. Will Gompertz just needs some links to "hot" web projects, neither informations of any kind. He doesn't write "I can't find any net-based art", but "I can't find any net-based art of note". As the following statement suggests, Mr. Gompertz knows very well what Net Art is: "Duchamp and the Dadaists would have had hours of artistic amusement creating spoof websites, unintelligible Wiki entries and general questioning of the status quo." Well, at least 50% of the best Net Art is "spoof websites, unintelligible Wiki entries and general questioning of the status quo." So, if I see a problem here, it isn't a problem of ignorance, but of critical judgement. What we have here is a mid-career art critic - one who wrote for the Times and the Guardian and who ran Tate Online before joining the BBC as arts editor - who claims that, among the many net art projects he came in touch with along his brilliant career, he didn't find anything that can be described as "a significant artwork". This may mean either that Net Art, along the last 15 years, didn't produced anything noteworthy or that Net Art, after roughly 15 years of existence, still challenges the evaluation criteria and critical tools available for a mid-career, traditionally trained contemporary art critic. Both the options above can be right of course. My little experience in the field makes me believe in the last one. It may help us to understand why, among other things, important art critics not strictly connected with the art market (and thus potentially interested in critical practices), such as Hal Foster or Rosalind Krauss, were never able to get it. And I think that, if we'll be able to focus the discussion on these topics - how Net Art challenges traditional criticism? do we really need "other criteria" in order to understand it and its positioning in the contemporary art field? - Mr. Gompertz's remarks will turn out to be really useful. My bests, Domenico --- Domenico Quaranta web. http://domenicoquaranta.com/ email. [log in to unmask] mob. +39 340 2392478 skype. dom_40 Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201