Hi all,
I wrote up a slightly more coherent version of my thoughts on
Claire's article here:
http://is.gd/artforum
Marc Garrett has also instigated a discussion on the Art Forum blog:
http://artforum.com/talkback/id=70724
Honor
>More of the same really. She points out that in the domain of media
>art these issues are explicitly addressed whilst in the mainstream
>art world they generally are not.
>
>Why is this surprising? It isn't. The primary characteristic of the
>media artist is that they foreground the mediality of what they do -
>whether that involves new media or old. It's not the media they use
>that is necessarily significant but how they consider it reflexively
>in their practice. The same applies to how such work is theorised
>and historicised. Media art is media art because the media is a
>major consideration in its ontology.
>
>The main stream art world operates on a different paradigm, where
>media are so well established that they become more or less
>invisible (eg: painting, sculpture, print, etc). Even some recently
>(but now less than) new media have taken on this mantle of
>invisibility (eg: video, photography, etc). Sometimes mainstream and
>media art cross-over and, for a couple of decades, that
>crossing-over was almost default, at least at the cutting edge of
>contemporary art (here I'm thinking of the 60's, 70's and, to a
>lesser degree, the 80's) when mediality was a pervasive issue in the
>arts (this was arguably driven by socio-political concerns). That
>was a time when artists were rethinking the fundamentals of what
>they were doing (and how) and this meant many of them were media
>artists (even if they didn't consider themselves to be). However,
>over the last 20 years or so issues of mediality have faded for
>mainstream artists, just as concerns about art's ontology have faded
>from view. Contemporary art is no longer reflexive. This has
>happened at the same time as the process of digital convergence has
>accelerated and, more or less, completed.
>
>This last point, about how media becomes unimportant as it matures,
>might appear to be surprising. But perhaps it isn't, as such media
>become instrumental to the most banal aspects of life. Perhaps the
>question therefore is, what is the digital equivalent of "merda
>d'artista"?
>
>best
>
>Simon
>
>
>On 2 Sep 2012, at 12:49, Honor Harger wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I am guessing you've all probably read Claire Bishop's fascinating
>> essay in Art Forum, the "Digital Divide"?
>> http://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201207&id=31944
>>
>> "So why do I have a sense that the appearance and content of
>> contemporary art have been curiously unresponsive to the total
>> upheaval in our labor and leisure inaugurated by the digital
>> revolution? While many artists use digital technology, how many
>> really confront the question of what it means to think, see, and
>> filter affect through the digital? How many thematize this, or
>> reflect deeply on how we experience, and are altered by, the
>> digitization of our existence? I find it strange that I can count on
>> one hand the works of art that do seem to undertake this task
>> [....]
>> There is, of course, an entire sphere of "new media" art, but this is
>> a specialized field of its own: It rarely overlaps with the
>> mainstream art world (commercial galleries, the Turner Prize,
>> national pavilions at Venice). While this split is itself undoubtedly
>> symptomatic, the mainstream art world and its response to the digital
>> are the focus of this essay."
>>
>> I'd be interested in your eruditions on this.
>>
>> best,
>>
>> Honor
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>>
>> Honor Harger
>> Director, Lighthouse
>> Brighton, UK
>> http://www.lighthouse.org.uk
>>
>> Biography
>> http://about.me/honor
>>
>
>
>Simon Biggs
>[log in to unmask] http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK
>skype: simonbiggsuk
>
>[log in to unmask] Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
>http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/
>http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/
>MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices
>http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees?id=656&cw_xml=details.php
--
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
honor harger
present location: brighton, .uk
email: [log in to unmask]
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-> w e b
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- > b l a g
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-> w o r k
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