Art - Place - Technology Blog

Q&A - Steven, D&A & Drew Hemment

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Q&A:

DH: Irreconcilability of immaterial with the gallery or museum.
Curator in postmodern context, an interface with the social, embedded in context

SK: How to deal with appropriation,

Audience: Would it be interesting to see postcards from Iraq? Ecology (living systems) important to practice going forward?

SK: Global electronic networks are an important factor in this, in looking at global structures. Questions of mobility, transport, communications. Going to Canadian far North, tying two magnetic poles.

DS: There are projects which are dealing with these issues, it is important to realise we are looking from a Western, ‘religious’ viewpoints. Important to look at these things in context of the local and human interaction.

Audience: Seems there is institutional critique in extract from ‘Les Carabiners’. Institution without walls becomes guided by the same values. Curator traditionally is keeper of collection and a critic who decides what should be exhibited. When the walls collapse, the distinctions twixt curator/organiser and critic become more clear.

SK: This seems more the role of archivist. At V2, role of curator is to activate areas for discussion from the archive, helping to make sense of the archive. There is no institution in one sense that can encompass what we call new media.

AMC: Moholy-Nagy piece analogous to Makrolab, or 9 as software. It’s the interface or framework which helps art to happen.

SK: This posits Makrolab as the point of instigation,
Notion of curating contexts is a key role. Marko does it as an artist, he is the project in a sense. In a way there is no audience for this project, they are the participants.

AMC/SK:

Audience: Parallel to oral (griot) culture. Sees parallels to this intangible culture.

Audience: is there a problem of looking at the tool instead of the work?

SC: This is currently installed at Tate Modern and there is a problem with the curating there in that the view of the film is obscured.

Q&A: Who is collecting new media art?

Paul Domela opened the floor for discussions by provoking Inke with the question: Should there be a separate discipline of new media curating? Yes and no, maintained Inke true to her talk’s dialectics. Curating media art as a field doesn’t make sense because curating in any field of contemporary art is essentially the same, yet the richness of activities and formats in media art make it possible to reflect on the way technology impacts on society. Pierre-Yves also chipped in by asserting that neither is media art dead (as prompted by Trebor) nor is the museum concerned solely with dead art. It is the role of the museum to ask (and try to answer) questions about how to present and preserve media art.

Amanda McDonald Crowley raised the issue of which institutions are actually collecting new media art? Just a handful: ZKM, Karlsruhe; Ars Electornica Centre, Linz and ICC, Tokyo which is closing down its collecting programme. Charlie Gere seconded Amanda’s statement by reminiscing about his father who was a ‘Keeper’ of art in a museum, alluding to the traditional custodial role for curators in museums. Charlie also talked about his own involvement in Cache, a project for preservation of early computer art. Museums involved were Science Museum, Victoria & Albert but NOT the likes of Tate – a reminder that there are issues around the status of this practice as art.

Inke also stated that museums only present a tip of the iceberg, for example video art is one section of media art which has made it into the institution as it works primarily visually. But what about the 85% of the media art iceberg which doesn’t make it into the museum? Different institutions are perhaps necessary, smaller, working more flexibly, and focusing on temporary projects. Alongside, broadening of the appeal and impact of the small field of new media was another strategy discussed. For me this is a clear case of a deja-vu as the issue of small-scale vs. large institutions and their role in fostering visibility and status for media art practices was widely debated in the Curating New Media Seminar at the BALTIC, Gateshead five years ago.

A question from the audience suggested that this is perhaps a problem of the white cube rather than media art as such. However, we still seem to be struggling with viable models of how to mediate or curate that which is not visible. In response, Inke referred to Makrolab as a successful interface for the immaterial information sphere; in materialising the data which normally remains invisible; as a mobile research area for the activities which are going on including performative texts and communication streams from satellites.

Sarah Cook and Pierre-Yves rounded off the discussion with the observation that more and more new galleries and museums seem to have no remit to collect: including the soon to open MOMA Brussels. It may come down to individuals donating or loaning their private collections to museums, as happened for example to certain past movements in art, such as Fluxus and mail art.

The museum and the digital archive

As if to echo Inke’s two-part presentation Pierre-Yves Desaive’s talk came in two seemingly unrelated halves. The link was his own curatorial practice, thus transgressing the guidance for symposium speakers – to shy away from elaborating on your own practice. However, Pierre-Yves tackled larger issues: it was a presentation we couldn’t do without.

Firstly, he focused on the relationship of museums and collections to new media and specifically the process of digitising (or the French numérisation) of existing artworks; how metadata interacts with digital images; and the standards for describing works of art.

Then Pierre-Yves talked about curating political art projects of cultural ‘reverse engineering’ (where political is in the sense of polis) including Pink Noise and Smokers’ Lung by Collectif HeHe, a Paris-based art association founded by Royal College of Art recent graduates Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen. HeHe’s works could be viewed as contextual art belonging to the third millennium.

To start with Pierre-Yves offered us a map of the successes and failures of the museum world’s use of digitization. What stood out for me was a series of questions: Why is that online catalogues are often inferior to their printed equivalents? Is it a time factor? Why is that the specific properties of hypertext and interactivity are severely unused in online editions?

The crucial question which is related to the larger issue of preserving our digital heritage is: Digitising? What for? Does it add anything useful apart from images without any additional information? If preservation of fragile artworks is used as an argument, do we know how fragile digital media are? The longevity of digital storage devices and media are as yet unknown.

Perhaps we need to accept that physical or analogue artefacts’ default behaviour is either to persist (for example a stone carving) or degrade over time (for instance a drawing on paper). However, the default behaviour of digital files is to become inaccessible unless someone takes immediate action to rescue them. It’s ironic that we can access pottery shards from 3000 years ago, but we cannot access files stored on 8″ floppies just 20 years ago.

Another set of problems which media art presents for museums is derived from the specific technologies needed to exhibit the artworks. Even video art often requires certain models of projectors or playback equipment to be shown properly. Pierre-Yves suggested the artistic and curatorial tactic of providing a formula or a script for emergency presentation using whatever playback technology is available. Internet art has a huge problem that afflicts the Internet itself: links are disappearing. Some works by net art pioneers Heath Bunting and Alexei Shulgin have now lost much of the context they originally addressed.

Pierre-Yves proposed a few solutions: To keep developing new institutions for new media art such as the FACT Centre, Eyebeam, ZKM; For the ‘old museums’ to keep addressing the issues arising from media art works including the digitising of existing works; For curators to start gathering contemporary anthropological and sociological facts about new media art; For all museums to stick to their mission of helping in the comprehension of media art -– after all it was museums that hosted many of the early exhibitions of new media art.

Curator is a title you earn, not take

There is no such thing as ‘curating media art’. Or is there? These were two opposing positions which Inke Arns investigated thoroughly in her presentation, and almost managed to win me over for both while deliberately contradicting herself.

She began by asking why should we claim a separate territory for media art? Why should we consider curating media art as implicitly different from curating non-computer-based art? Perhaps there is just curating art and the discursive role of the curator remains the same: to find larger cultural context for a piece of work; to place artworks in their historical and theoretical context; other forms of contextualisation are not curating.

Curating is often positioned as a modernist hierarchical institution, as opposed to the postmodernist creativity of computer-based art. However these structures are changing and becoming more democratic. She asserted that there was a widespread misconception that new media art and the Internet are somehow out of control or inherently anarchic. On the contrary, control exists nevertheless and is expressed in different scale in all distributed, centralised or decentralised curating (alluding to the three network models indicated by Paul Baran in 1964).

Playing devil’s advocate, Inke pointed towards the need to protect curating from inflation. This was also a gentle warning against the increasing practice of producing ’speed curators’ who are coming out of today’s art schools. The time of special interest shows is over. It is high time to get out of the ghetto. Media art is now ready to step into the wider field of contemporary art. Resisting the mainstream is no longer productive. Or is it?

Inke outline three main ‘tendencies’ or trends in media art curating at the present time:

The centralised curatorial model as practiced by art museums was one example, however it is a fact that new media curating is dying out or marginalized in mainstream art institutions. Museums’ online presence are still mainly used for displaying visitor information not for experiencing art. She cited the Walker Art Centre who fired Steve Dietz; the Whitney Museum who assigned Christiane Paul a part-time role as Adjunct Curator of New Media Art; SFMOMA who haven’t curated or shown digital work since zeroone; Guggenheim and NYMOMA who closed their online galleries.

Decentralised curating has been institutionalised but not by museums. Examples include theme-specific exhibitions at Transmediale, Ars Electronica and ZKM organized by curators from the institutions working with independent juries. These media art institutions display ambivalence as to whether their ambitions are to be included as equals in the mainstream contemporary art world, yet insist on being self-sufficient. But, Inke stated, despite this thriving scene enjoying strong support from the computer-based art world, the interest from the contemporary art world has been and remains minimal.

Distributed curatorial strategies are primarily an online phenomenon, commonly allied with ‘anti-institutional’ aims to present media art outside of the white cube, and often involving multiple authors/curators. The curatorial activity is open and available for user participation. To paraphrase Beuys, ‘everyone can be a curator’. A good example is the RunMe software art repository. The distributed curators dissociate themselves from both the centralised and decentralised models described above, thus working against integration into media art per se, and the increased isolation of the two art worlds.

Moving between two opposing positions, Inke outlined a few good reasons for the separation of the two art worlds – the one of media art and the one of non-computer based art. What stood out for me was her argument that media art is an artistic and curatorial practice which deals with contemporaneity, especially with the impact technology has on society as a whole. Another strong argument was that curators as mediators should anticipate the reverse discussion – media art should start to integrate non-computer based art within its discourses. The advantages of media art, particularly networked forms: more flexible; move faster and wider; less hierarchical. Here Inke hastily contradicted herself again by drawing the idealistic image of the freedom of computer based art. More young people with new views are moving into mainstream institutions (though youth does not necessarily equate with progress). The institutions however are not static. They also change and grow more democratic. We need histories and theories of institutions rather than denial and anti-institutional discourse.

Despite a long period of media art practice, the field of curating media art is still relatively under-developed and under-studied. Since media art is concerned with contemporaneity, so curating media art should explore this philosophy. As more curatorial courses emerge (Inke is working on one at the University in Ljubljana and the Art-Place-Technology symposium is the precursor to an MA in New Media Curating at Liverpool School of Art and Design), it becomes paramount to develop a history of curating of the early exhibitions such as Cybernetic Serendipity at London’s ICA in 1968; Software at the New York’s Jewish Museum or Information, Yugoslav projects from the 1970s; to present day exemplars such as the ZKM show Ctrl Space, Kingdom Of Piracy, and so on. Any course of study should give students skills to deal with curatorial issues relevant to the field.

I organise stuff therefore I am

The symposium opened with Amanda McDonald Crowley’s reference to the curator of a cricket ground as a pertinent reminder that the term curator doesn’t just belong to the arts but is used in other areas of life where ‘people look after stuff’. She also claimed not to be a curator: ‘I make situations’.

In search of historical precedents for the practice of curating new media, Amanda revisited projects in Australia which had inspired her, by Derek Kreckler and Francesca da Rimini. She highlighted their pre-blog text-based approach including the online gallery space/journal parallel (1995) and the collection of texts, presentations and thoughts Virogenesis 1 and 2 (1995-6). The key points for Amanda in these projects were the blurring of roles for organisers/curators and artists (referred to as ‘cultural producers’ or ‘agents’); the guiding of collaborations between artists; and the interlinkings between the lab, independent experimentation and gallery spaces. Prompted by Ceri during the Q&A, Amanda re-evaluated another pre-blog project by ‘a wanna-be-artist’ (curator Barbara London) and the visual chronicles of daily encounters with media artists from China, stir-fry (1997).

Next Amanda re-assessed a cluster of projects which arguably are a cross between artworks in their own right and frameworks for collaboration, enabling communities to embed their own content: Linker and Nine(9) by Graham Harwood; Frequency Clock by r a d i o q u a l i a; makrolab by Marko Pelhjan. Marko was a frequently cited figure during the symposium, yet would not describe himself as a curator. Leading on from makrolab’s art and science fusion, Amanda described a project which made a big community impact soon after its public release from one of Eyebeam’s research labs – LED Throwies, an electronic graffiti project. What an exhibition might look like resulting from these technologies is an open question.

Amanda reminisced about the experience of Granular Synthesis appearing live at Liverpool’s club space Cream in 1998, comparing this to their installation as part of a gallery show curated by Kathleen Forde, What Sound Does Color Make?. She concluded that new media art practice only works if it is performative or participatory. She also opined that new media art is all about collaboration. Amanda rounded off with an appraisal of three recent festivals – Adelaide Festival of Arts 2000; ISEA 2004, Tallinn, Helsinki and the Baltic Sea; and the Takeaway Festival of DIY Media, London, 2006. Curating in all three involved collaboration and its necessary elements: negotiation and compromise. She paraphrased Armin Medosch: collaboration is difficult; and RTFM: work it out yourself before collaborating.

Amanda expressed the hope that the symposium might produce a curators’ manual since one is needed. She made an appeal to curators to ‘get our hands dirty’ and collaborate with participants, audiences and artists. We need to curate people not just artists.

Ceri Hand reminded us in the Q&A session that the etymology of ‘collaboration’ points to those who betray others by working with an enemy at times of war. Amanda suggested that collaboration across disciplines was the key to successful project outcomes. Deferring to experts by necessity. Failure should also be allowed: for Amanda, total failure only occurs if the project does not happen. In response to an audience question about the extent of participation and whether this was confined to elite groups, Amanda referred to ‘contagious media‘ - how ideas spread through the networks. For example, hobbyists who wanted to make their own kits were the main audience for LED Throwies. Eyebeam is in Chelsea, a big commercial gallery district of NYC: people don’t really know what to make of their activities, as they are expecting a gallery and they’re not always about that.

A question from the audience referred to new media art often being marginalised in education departments in contemporary art galleries. Amanda asserted that for Eyebeam, education and research are at the core of the organisation rather than at the margins. Just a handful of mainstream art venues possessed the will and resources to cater for new media art: examples were the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; and Kiasma, Helsinki.

Amanda also argued for a fairer representation of the respective roles of artists and curators. She expressed anxiety at the approach of the Venice Biennale and other big contemporary art shows in plastering the names of the curators in large type everywhere while the artists’ names were invisible. Curators are participating in the creation of ideas, so perhaps it’s necessary to rethink the hierarchies involved to be seen as part of a group process.

Some (previously unasked) questions arising from Amanda’ presentation may provide food for thought. If a concert experience heightens audience participation and a gallery exhibition deadens it, then should we curate such works within the gallery or museum contexts? Can we change museum aesthetics? How does lab research translate into an exhibition format? What exhibition strategies might be necessary for Eyebeam, located in close proximity to so many commercial galleries?

Symposium launch at FACT

A group of Symposium presenters and delegates gathered at FACT to chat over drinks and hear introductions from some principle partners in the organising and support for Art-Place-Technology.

Sarah Fisher from Arts Council England North West spoke about the need for critical discourse around new media art practice, and referenced the history of video art as a precedent where the theoretical and critical contexts had changed with the development in the 1990s of a canon of artists as part of video’s entry into art institutions. Roger Webster gave an account of the role of Liverpool John Moores University in relation to the Symposium, in particular its relationship to the existing MRes programme in Curatorial Practice and the forthcoming MA in Curating New Media Art. Colin Fallows mentioned the individuals and organisations who had come together to make Art-Place-Technology happen, flagged up the publication that will result from the Symposium, and recounted the history of involvement by Liverpool School of Art & Design in helping to shape the development of Liverpool as a centre for new media arts. Gill Henderson spoke about the contribution of FACT, and emphasised that the Symposium was a collaboration where the contributions of the partners were key to the nature and scope of the event.

Following the introductions we joined a throng of visitors to the FACT gallery spaces for the opening of Mark Lewis’ exhibition ‘Howlin’ Wolf’ and the Media Lounge for ‘Human Computer Interaction’. Karen Allen, Curator of Moving Image at FACT, led a tour around the Mark Lewis works, and Marta Ruperez, Curator of New Media, introduced us to the artists presenting at the Media Lounge. These talks provided a useful route into the artworks: a handy opportunity to get the curators’ eye view on two very engaging shows.

Pre-symposium sojourn

There being a brief lull before the Symposium began, we decided to take in some of the interesting exhibitions nearby. First call was Tate Liverpool, where currently on show is the fascinating ‘Making History - Art and documentary in Britain from 1929 to now’.

A diverse range of works, from photography and film to painting, sculpture and installation, traced a path through what is a rich tradition in the representation of reality. Along with well-known recent contemporary artworks such as the re-enacted ‘Battle of Orgreave’ by Jeremy Deller/Mike Figgis, and Nathan Coley’s remembrance of the Lockerbie trial, there were earlier landmarks in recent art history including pieces by Gilbert & George and Lucian Freud.

Of particular note to this viewer were pioneering documentary works which helped to define the genre, including legendary names such as John Grierson and Humphrey Jennings. A room was dedicated to the Mass Observation movement from the 1930s; and there were highly memorable contributions from artists’ groups active in the 1970s. Amber collective, based on Tyneside, presented a hauntingly beautiful film, ‘Launch’, which recorded the community around the shipbuilding industry (this was doubly resonant for me as coincidentally I saw a clip from the same film as part of a BBC4 documentary just the night before). Also the powerful ‘Women and Work 1973-5′ by Margaret Harrison, Mary Kelly and Kay Hunt confronted the audience with a meticulous and rigourous examination of the ways in which gender differentiates roles and structures in the workplace.

Overall I was impressed by the careful approach the curator Tanya Barson took to gathering works together in thematic groupings, with a sensitivity to context and history, as well as sympathetic juxtapositions of artists who approached ideas and subject in ways which were related.

Barely having done justice to this expansive show (you really need a day to get the most from it) we decided to risk a lightning trip to Manchester to see at least some of the British Art Show, having missed it earlier in Gateshead. Given the limited time we had, we could only visit two venues so it’s not possible to sum up the whole exhibition.

Highlights from what we did see included Ergin Cavusoglu’s hauntingly beautiful 3-screen installation, which created a mesmerising portrait of the point where ocean meets land; Phil Collins’ tragi-comic renditions of classics from The Smiths as sung, karaoke-style by citizens of Bogota, Colombia; and Carey Young’s incisive, and (at least according to the evidence presented) useful organising of training in negotiation skills for the staff of the British Art Show. This last gave a candid insight into the mechanisms behind the huge travelling exhibition, but remained ambivalent as to whether it implied a critique of the art institutions and individuals involved.

Welcome to the symposium blog

We’ll be bringing you news and reports from the Art - Place - Technology Symposium as it happens. We’ll also be audio blogging the speakers’ presentations (or podcasting if you prefer). Bookmark this page for future reference.