Edited by Sarah Cook, Beryl Graham,
Verina Gfader and Axel Lapp

A BRIEF
HISTORY OF
WORKING WITH
NEW MEDIA ART

CONVERSATIONS WITH ARTISTS

CONVERSATIONS WITH ARTISTS

Introduction

A BRIEF HISTORY OF WORKING WITH NEW MEDIA ART: CONVERSATIONS WITH ARTISTS

This book of conversations is drawn from the research of curators, artists and academics based at the Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss (CRUMB) at the University of Sunderland. CRUMB started its life 10 years ago as a mailing list (which has grown to nearly 1,000 subscribers) and a humble website of links to the places online where curatorial practice intersects with new media art. In 2000, new media art was already a wildly wide-ranging field, where the artwork produced might well be drawn from histories of conceptual art, socially engaged practice, video and other time-based or lens-based media, Fluxus, self-publishing mail art, as well as histories of technological development. In the course of developing the website and mailing list, CRUMB researchers began having a range of conversations with practitioners in this field finding out firsthand which histories were the most relevant, and which areas of practice still needing charting. 10 years later CRUMB researchers are still having the conversations and the word they most often employ to describe both the histories of the field and the roles of those working within it is ‘hybrid’.

The hybrid cultural workers whose voices are represented in this volume—curators, lab managers, bloggers, architects, designers, performance artists—mostly self-define as artists or producers. They recognise that in this networked field, where tools define methods, their roles connect across the production and the distribution of art, particularly when dealing with online digital media. As such these discussions are of trial and error, tactics which worked and tools which did not, and platforms for exchange which are relevant to the contemporary art world also.

Interviews are one kind of formal conversation, but there are obviously others. Volume 1 of these two books of CRUMB material, A Brief History of Curating New Media Art, is formal interviews with curators. Volume 2 includes both interviews and other kinds of conversations with those whose roles are more hybrid. Included here is material from seminars or professional development masterclasses and from a series of workshops which CRUMB has been hosting at festivals and other new media art events around the world. These so-called ‘crisis to bliss‘ or ‘bliss out’ events—a play on CRUMB’s name—have sought to pull interesting artists and curators away from the formal discourse of new media art conferences, sit them down and give them a cup of tea, games, or other treats to encourage open conversation about practice. In all of these events, artists are included in the conversations as experts on being curated, on being collected and, of course, as curators of their own networks of distribution. The kind of group conversation over time afforded by online discussion lists is also represented in this book, via an edited theme concerning the role of curator as editor, a small digest from the vast array of expert debate by the generous members of the CRUMB discussion list. Overall, the experimental formats used in these dialogues and the personal intimate nature of some of those conversations where practitioners bare all, is also evident here.

The final two chapters of Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham’s recent publication Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media¹, are devoted to other modes of curating, artist-led practice and collaboration. They have found that in order to successfully rethink the practice of curating as engendered by new media art, one needs to look past the museum and gallery, past the exhibition (be it a blockbuster or a touring show), to where the artists are self-organising and sharing their skills. The conversations in this book are testament to that, and to the ongoing collective nature of the research aim at CRUMB to share practice-based kernels of wisdom.

At the beginning of each text is a list of keywords which identify recurring threads in 10 years of CRUMB research. This makes reference to the evolving flow of curatorial experience which grows on the database that is the CRUMB website. The brief history outlined in this book is of course an unfinished one, and in reference to this, we asked the contributors to respond to the question:

In your opinion, how has the practice of (curating) new media art changed in the last 10 years?

BRENDAN JACKSON

New media become old media very quickly. The rapid expansion of consumer technology available on the high street, in your home and in your hand means that artwork that uses new media more often than not fails to impress an audience. Audiences are fragmented. Projects and artworks that use technology may be perceived variously as exotic, esoteric, obscure, elitist, outdated, cultish or are constructed to be this way. On the one hand, technologically driven work can become incredibly expensive to deliver (in a way, it is constructed as a monumental enterprise in order to have any impact on an audience); on the other hand, this means that the ideas become more important, not the vehicle. If an idea or concept is not strong enough, the glitter around the technology soon fades.

NATO THOMPSON

It has changed absolutely. The novelty of web-based practices has waned in art museums and found more life online.

ELE CARPENTER

Now that everyone is a media artist the concerns of curating new media art are involved in a broader discussion about frameworks for cultural participation and ownership. The old gallery tensions about public and private viewing of web-based content are about to be transformed by online mobile phone use everywhere. As media become integrated through mobile digital platforms, media art becomes increasingly about networked performativity across online and physical space. Here the body, gesture, hacker intervention, code and data-capture continue to problematise the smoothness of media space, meaning and representation. Digitising analogue archives is creating a wave of archival research, revealing the impact of tools on access, copyright and how we perceive aesthetic value. At the same time creative forms of production and distribution which support digitally and environmentally sustainable economies are slowly being taken seriously. Media art has been anticipating these issues for so long; at last they are entering a mainstream public and art world discourse.

MICHAEL MANDIBERG

In their best moments new media have moved from separate art practices exhibited in shows about the medium-as-medium into the core practices of most artists. Computers, digital video, electronics, robotics and other forms of technology have merged into art practice as a whole, from painters intentionally working from found web images to conceptualists who use data sources as their primary medium. As with the artists making the work, ideally curatorial practice adapts accordingly.

HEATH BUNTING

It has become more disengaged and less profitable. Ten years ago I met curators regularly and they gave me money and praise. Now it is very rare that I meet any curators in the woods while climbing trees. Perhaps the French catch them in nets and eat them during periods of migration.

NINA CZEGLEDY

In my opinion nearly every aspect, every phase, every role (including the role of the curator) have shifted considerably in the last decade. This paradigm shift might be due to the blurring of boundaries between conceptual, technical and sponsoring interests. Interdisciplinary projects have escalated at an extraordinary rate lately and most aim to utilise new forms of non-hierarchical teamwork and borderless collaborations. Additionally, a wide range of alternative venues (including the Internet) are available for exhibitions. These features, among others, influence and change the traditional role and practice of the curator.

GEOFF COX AND JOASIA KRYSA

To answer the question, we would draw attention to the precision of the terms themselves. ‘New media’ is a phrase that is fairly redundant now; curating has become part of the everyday; new is far too ideological; media does not adequately describe the complexity of the processes when networked computers are involved; and art continues to ask more questions.

JON THOMSON AND ALISON CRAIGHEAD

On a positive note, more curators are looking at artists’ uses of new media in a less technologically determined light, and this more interconnected view fosters great critical potential for modern and contemporary art in general. In recent years we have felt privileged to show work alongside the likes of Duchamp, Paik and Kawara, rather than only being in more shows about computer game art, Internet art or computer art. We say, ‘Less ghetto and more art’, but let us keep the specialised media art discourses too.

SKAWENNATI TRICIA FRAGNITO

As I read the text of my 10-year-old presentation, I was struck by how little the situation has changed for new media artists and curators, or, at least, for me. I still have to spend a significant portion of my time learning new technologies in order to make my work. I still struggle with keeping a well-maintained website. I am still dependent on a specific technology to create my work. (Now, instead of The Palace, it’s Second Life.) And, though there has been a great improvement among presentation venues, as they have more equipment, better Internet access and a more open attitude about showing new media, nonetheless, just last week, I showed up for a panel discussion about new media, and though the room was gorgeous, it was flooded with light from two walls of windows that did not have blinds. The projector was so weak that it was described by my co-panellists as a toy. The result was that the audience could not see any of our work and we presenters all resorted to a very old medium: oral tradition.

VUK ĆOSIĆ

Since net.art, progressive media artists explore and create the topography and behaviour of the new ecosystem partly by dodging all mediators. Nowadays it is getting very complex for a curatoras-chronicler since we not only have more parallel media with artistic potential but also a stable tradition of direct touch with end users. On the other side, the outcomes of a curator-as-enabler are becoming more similar to that of an artist (life expectancy too). We are becoming one.

MIKI FUKUDA

I do not think anything has changed in 10 years for media art curation. But the position of media arts was changed in the contemporary art exhibition. It became popular. And interactivity also became popular in the commercial field. We do not need to explain what interactive is. So the change has happened outside media arts.

MICHELLE KASPRZAK

Nearly 10 years ago I co-curated an online exhibition entitled ‘Pixel Plunder©’ with Michael Alstad. We had two challenges: coding the online exhibition space by hand in HTML, and deciding how works made for the web would be displayed in physical space to guests at the launch. More recently, I curated an online exhibition for Gallery TPW and the Virtual Museums of Canada, in which works not made for the web needed to work well online. Much as the underlying technology has evolved since the ‘Pixel Plunder©’ show, fundamental issues of how to work between virtual and physical contexts remain.

CHRISTIANE ERHARTER

It has changed as the whole world has changed in the last 10 years. Globalisation and the increase of mobility through cheap travel opportunities have brought some of us closer together. Another aspect is that the Internet has been used by a big community and on a daily basis only since the mid-1990s and that has made it possible to exchange information very fast. September 11th and the so-called war on terrorism that is ongoing since then has had a big input into international security standards; its impact can even be experienced on an individual level. All this has influenced new media art and of course has also had an impact on how new media art is curated and exhibited.

CONT3XT.NET: SABINE HOCHRIESER, MICHAEL KARGL (AKA CARLOS KATASTROFSKY) AND FRANZ THALMAIR

In the past 10 years nothing has changed: curating new media art is still an artistic practice heavily in flux and in permanent development. In the past 10 years a lot has changed: the focus of curating new media art has broadened. It has gradually moved into the White Cube, as an integral part of an extended fine arts practice. The question is not about curating the new and the media in art any more; new media art is more and more considered on the same level as other artistic disciplines. Curators as well as artists have opened their minds towards an overall picture where curating new media art becomes one possible form of artistic expression equal to others like curating painting, sculpture, performance. But that is where it belongs, isn’t it?

1 Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham, Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2010.

DEBATE
EDITING
CURATOR AS EDITOR
READING/WRITING
BROADCAST
THE EPHEMERAL
LIVE
PRINT MEDIA
VALUE
MATERIAL/IMMATERIAL
INTERVENTION
DISTRIBUTION
CONTEXT
AUDIENCE

CRUMB

CURATOR AS EDITOR, TRANSLATOR OR GOD?

This thread from the CRUMB online discussion list was edited by Beryl Graham and Verina Gfader for publication online at the invitation of CONT3XT.NET in September 2008.¹

Even something as basic and established as an online discussion list can present a slew of decisions concerning control and reception that could be described as editorial or curatorial. To moderate or not to moderate, and how? Digest or individual posts? How to deal with domineering members? How open or directive to be in debate? The CRUMB discussion list² has been a forum for the discussion of issues in curating new media art since 2001. ‘Themes of the Month’ are introduced by the list owners Beryl Graham, Sarah Cook and Verina Gfader. All list members can respond to the themes, but each theme also has ‘invited respondents’. These formats were arrived at by trial and error, and the general lessons emerging from the experience are generally that themes related to physical events such as conferences tend to work best, that invited respondents who we have already met tend to respond more, and that the more reminding and encouraging that we do behind the scenes, the better the responses are. We try to translate between curators of new media art and contemporary art in general, by inviting respondents from very different backgrounds and trying to encourage dialogue. However, it is not only the vocabulary but the forms of dialogue which sometimes need translating: The discussion on ‘Open Source’ in June 2008, for example, showed how at ease with open dialogical forms the young artists and programmers were, whereas more established academics and curators can be more cautious about revealing personal experience. As list owners, we spend a lot of time encouraging participants to contribute examples of personal and practical experience, whereas the default for a discussion list can tend towards the academic and theoretical, due to a preponderance of academics with the time and the ability to touch-type.

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