[mtp-teoria] echo from lovink's lecture

Wed Apr 11 13:04:30 CEST 2007

ahoj

de profundis from Praha on dooming new media art

reffering to geert loving lecture and scepticism and palos bright reflections

geert has some right to proclaim the death of new media art since he was one of the prophets who built his carriere on the new media frenzy begining of 90ies, calling nma  a new jerusalem of networks, realm of social and spiritual freedom and source of ubiquitous creativity... uhm.. it is alredy 20 years and new media are getting mature and hairy and got some venerable round bellies..

if you today check most of the so called new media events and festivals you must admit it was a false expectation and hope then in 90ies. unfortunatelly, but very logicaly

.. most of nma is slightly boring and behave  as a branch of some sort of lifestyle design practise..

new media art is just a label, containg  blend of crap and inovative ideas just like any other branch of consumer culture. alas the crap is always wining the game

today in WE and USA  if an artist is using some sort of co called :new media tools SF or HW or new media concepts it does not add to hisher price or value or genuine quality more, than if you are using hammer and chisel..

in the near future it could be different.. hand work will gain the value since mainstream artists will enjoy to build merely virtuals, as they are practising already now in the field of gaming and moving picture industry

it depends what and where you do it,  media does not matter anymore, media is not the message, since media are penetrating to the farest cranny of the reality

probably it was different 15 or 20 or 40 years ago when comps and electronics have been in this context a  novelty. curious and creative people have been attracted to explore and experiment with the apparatus. media artists have been working rather as explorers and inventers..more as designers..

media tools became widely availible and the whole sport lost its exclusivity..as golf did or skying, 
but it does not mean it became bad or worse..

today you dont have to be technical  genius or genial manager to construct  interactive environments 
you dont have to be lonely creative and profound artist to enjoy the labyrinths of experimental film, you simply customize some appartus and mix and ride a VJ HW/SW.. and the whole context change by using the time, technology and economy..

today to read texts of Dostojevsky, Proust, Joyce, Musil, Camus means to be impressed by their literary styles, the intelectual and mental, deepness and richness they could draw from and being sad that the universe and society became more banal..

it became different and new media became different 

to call it new media is worthless

my comp wants to be restared so i need ot cut it here

MILOS

>>> "Palo Fabuš" <palo.fabus at gmail.com> 04/11/07 3:24 dop. >>>
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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