[mtp-teoria] echo from lovink's lecture

[Palo Fabuš]

hi,

thanks for your report, Dušan, I've read the essay you had linked and
find it intriguing in many points
above all, it has affirmed and clarified some of my views of the
subject, however sometimes I cannot stand Lovink's scepticism, which
he developed into method sui generis (which reminds me of Virilio) and
which imho makes some of his statements unnecessarily biased

I, myself, think it is Lovink's 2nd scenario, which is being realized
nowadays most visibly
I identify such course of events as a somewhat hybridising of
artworld-traffic (how does this refer to the ubiquitous media
convergence?) regarding both art production and it's (media)
reflection

I see a bunch of young artists standing on a threshold of artworld
they're entering and they are not deciding which side they'll choose,
they are just making art regardless of some pre-chosen medium instead,
they do canvas, animations, interactive installations, sculptures,
they choose medium that fits their purpose best and muse about this
contemporary artworld schizophreny only in a means of potential
support and reached audience (not that I am underestimating these
factors)

I see art magazines and blogs reflecting upon contemporary art and
resigning to categorise or to choose one side or another, they are
rather mediating the art in general and thus possibly winding off a
spiral of such approach, which might be eventually understood as
anticipating one day

this leads me to conclusion that it is this giant leap to new media
culture paradigm (I am writing my MA thesis about :), which makes new
media art look like adrift branch of art, a mongrel, and I am more and
more convinced that the only and truthful barrier are the
institutions, which are - as the art history teaches us - doomed to
adaptation (not mentioning that even this is already going on, take
for example net art commisions of such galleries as Whitney Museum or
Tate)

afterall, I guess it was Maxwell who said that theories of young
scientits will replace the old ones not because they are right, but
because the old scientists will die

-- 
Palo Fabuš
palofabus.net

On 4/10/07, dusan <dusan at idealnypartner.sk> wrote:
>
>
> halo,
>
> few days ago i visited geert lovink's lecture in brussels' argos centre.
> lecture was built on a dead end of new media art and on the article
> he wrote for fibreculture some time ago. short reporting coming next.
>
> basically lovink chose few paragraphs from the article, read and commented
> these. 2005's version of the article is here:
> http://laudanum.net/geert/files/1129753681/
> speech was rather abstract, since he avoided giving examples because then
> the arguments could be easily turned around by contra-examples, making
> critique impossible. i assume half of the 50 people present knew lovink
> for decades and for others who are familiar with the media art sectarian
> context it was still understandable.
>
> besides other things what i found interesting was his definition of new
> media art as "form searching for the forms" and the four strategies of
> "how to get out of media art misery" he closed the speech with:
>
>
> 1. new media art will consciously transform itself into an autonomous
> discipline by avoiding the collaboration with other disciplines (sociology,
> art history, linguistics, science, etc), since by the multidisciplinary
> approach it undermines itself and this way it only supports other
> disciplines and will never create own field with everything the academic
> discipline includes.
>
> 2. new media art will "transcend" itself and will merge into contemporary
> art. this is the case of video art festivals that first needed to
> "disappear" in order to allow "reappearance" of video art these years.
>
> 3. leave art context altogether and go with science - "art and science
> discourse" or other non-art fields, ie. young artists switching to
> webdesign, IT, stock market, living from social support or as refugees
> at science. approach "i'm a poor artist, maybe i have ideas, please
> adopt me".
>
> 4. rename new media art with creativity -> "creative industries",
> another short-term government policy cycle. CI is widely taken as not
> existing and being only a hype in heads of bureaucrats, but still there
> is a lot of economic models at CI that answers the question "how to
> make money". so this strategy would lead either into private sector
> or teaching at art school.
>
>
> to mention few comments from audience:
>
> A: problem of location - looks like it is only about US, NL, AUS and
> western EU.
> GL: this is example of falsification of argument by 1 example (all
> arguments are refutable).
>
> A: isn't it a crisis of critics, and not of practice?
> GL: art needs critique, there are very very few (young) critics,
> other fields are usually more appealing for them.
>
> A: 2-way communication between artists and funders is not possible?
> GL: not good negotiating position for artists, they're not even on map
> for big institutions.
>
>
> ..in a hurry now, more later.
>
> dusan
>
>
>
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