From: Daniel Palmer <e@danielpalmer.com>
Reply-To: empyre@imap.cofa.unsw.edu.au
To: empyre@imap.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: [-empyre-] Galleries, publics, net.art
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 13:34:14 +1000
First, re Jill Walker's gentle rebuff to my note about diverse audiences -
ie. it's worth
remembering that audiences to art spaces are more diverse and plural
than is sometimes supposed.
Are they? My impression, from visiting my local museums in tiny
Bergen, Norway, anyway, is that the audience is mostly the
bourgeousie, dainty grey-haired ladies with expensive bags who want
to be known as caring about art.
i'm certainly not suggesting that all musuems are totally democratic
spaces; my point (and note i used the term 'art spaces' - which in
australia refers specifically to contemporary exhibition spaces) was that
institutions are quite varied, and so are their audiences. I just think
it's become too easy to dismiss musuems/galleries as elite, etc. Maybe some
more than others??? Where I work, about 70% of our visitors are under 35;
they're typically well educated but usually carrying backpacks rather than
expensive bags. (in Bourdieu's terms, high on cultural capital, but maybe
not the kind that's readily convertible to economic capital!).
And then to Adrian -
At 3:25 AM +1000 9/7/02, Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@uib.no> wrote:
i agree with some of what you write :-) but i want to clarify what i
mean, i guess. or what i think i mean.
thanks adrian, i agree with pretty much everything you say in your latest
email - especially the part about us academic nit-picking about
definitions! it seems you prefer a more restricted definition of net art as
that which engages with:
the screen as domestic appliance/space
bandwidth
time constraints
for me such reflection on material conditions would be just an important
genre/strategy, rather than an essential quality, of the larger practice
i'd call net art - art created specifically for the Internet., ie. all
networked art projects for which the utilisation of the Internet is
essential for their effect... (including telematic art).
so with net.art that
doesn't want to be on the net (that secretely wishes to be DVD and
projected) then i want to call it something else. but of course this
could just be rather naive.
i'd just call it rather purist
i have work that i
explicitly wrote as academic, theoretical content that has since been
treated as net.art, i find that just odd.
you're probably not alone in finding it odd! and points taken about the
governmental/career pressure to define what you do...
cheers
daniel
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