Dear Andreas,
I would take a Witgensteinian approach to the question of the term
"media art", starting with the idea that language is defined through
use. In this sense the question of "media art" as a term that is hard to
define and hard to confine is broadly similar to the question of
defining the term "art", i.e. what counts as "art" and what not.
From my studies in art history, theatre, music, literature, aesthetics
and sociology of the arts I remember two things quite distinctively on
this question. First that we were told at the outset that the term "art"
could not be defined, which to me seemed a questionable position for a
field of study and practice. Secondly, I remember reading a PHD thesis
on art policy in The Netherlands from the fifties to the eighties in
which a sociologist outlined a sociological approach to the question of
"defining" the term "art".
(Oosterbaan Martinus)
Sociologists use a concept called figuration, where a more or less
coherent group of people are thought to be continuously involved in
defining and redefining the meaning of terms that designate a meaningful
activity they share or take part in. In the case of the term "art" this
would be the circle of people involved in the "art world", i.e. critics,
curators, artists, art dealers, museum staff, educators, researchers,
art historians (and -sociologists!), and their transactions with a wider
public.
Although the meaning of the terms used to bind these people together in
a particular social figuration is not explicitly defined, the meaning of
these terms is implicitly pretty much circumscribed in their
transactions, and is continuously (re-)defined and confirmed by exchange
(i.e, here by organising art shows, by public visiting them, by critics
writing about it, by funders giving money, by works being sold and
collected, by research being done about it, etc...).
Following this idea the problem would not so much be to define exactly
what "media art" is, but rather to question whether the term still has a
basic legitimacy and viability in terms of there being a sustainable
social figuration that still relates to (uses) the term "media art".
On this last question you raised a lot of important points, especially
on the issue of whether media art is not simply dissolving into
contemporary art suis generis, or conversely how it can maintain a
(deliberate) outside position, inbetween artistic and technological
imaginaries and their social / political context. Those questions seem
to me more important than the attempt to fix an explicit definition of
the term "media art".
best wishes,
Eric
Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
> (the following is the slightly edited script of a talk i gave
> recently; it is meant as a discussion piece for what seems to be a
> much wider debate at the moment; since the crumb-list has been active
> around these questions for a while, i am curious to see how the
> fragments below will be received; the style should make it clear that
> they are not meant as 'final words', but rather as an attempt at
> raising questions. -ab)
>
>
>
> (Symposium: Media Art Today, ICC Tokyo, 12 March 2005, in the context
> of the exhibition Art meets Media)
> http://www.ntticc.or.jp/Archive/2005/art_meets_media/index.html
>
>
>
> Andreas Broeckmann, Berlin
>
> Discussing 'Media Art'
|