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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 not accept to stay within the borders of the indian reservation, get drunk and keep thinking that the 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,
> 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.