RE: [-empyre-] galleries & establishments

[Christiane_Paul@WHITNEY.ORG]

I've mostly been a lurker on Empyre (and enjoyed many of the discussions) --
unfortunately I seldom have time to post...

I just wanted to add an entirely mundane footnote to Patrick's comments re
the net art in the Whitney Biennial (which I curated). 

>In the case of the Whitney, it's clear that the issues related to the
>representation of net art within the gallery are not yet resolved.  In
>both instances, the work was either relegated to a dark room >or
'net.ghetto' or awkwardly positioned next to the stairwell, outside >of the
gallery proper. There are exceptions, like Yael Kanarek's >TreasureCrumbs,
but that exhibit was offlien at the moment I saw it, >therefore it didn't
translate well at all.

I completely agree with the comments (and voiced them myself a zillion
times) but the issue is a larger institutional one than figuring out how to
best represent net art in a gallery. As banal as it is, the problem here
very often is money, space, politics, and institutional support. There was
no money to show the works in a more "immersive" manner (and many of them
invited different forms of presentation than a kiosk set-up). I wasn't able
to choose the space either. Showing the net art next to the stairwell (not
to mention the gorgeous fire alarm sitting on those walls) to me seems to
make a statement in and off itself. The budget for the 10 Biennial net art
pieces was roughly 5% of the budget I had for the 5 pieces in "Data
Dynamics," which ran at the Whitney last spring (none of the works was shown
in a kiosk format). I'm far more interested in discussing and thinking about
concepts for displaying net art but budget, space and support are still a
big issue. Particualrly if one follows the traditional "press," it becomes
obvious that new media art hasn't yet found acceptance in the art world at
large (if that's desirable or not in the first place is an entirely
different issue). 


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