[-empyre-] a few words to start

[Sylvie Parent <sylvie_parent@sympatico.ca>]

Hello list members

and thank you Melinda for inviting me.

I haven?t been able to participate in discussions so far but read most
of the messages.
Of particular interest to me was the problem of presentation of net art
in museums, and I would like to add a few words on that topic. One
important fact here is that many net art exhibitions are conceived
in/for museums/organizations whose main focus have been, and still are,
the ?visual arts?. The two exhibitions I curated - one was the
Location/Dislocation exhibition that I did with Valerie
(http://www.deplacement.qc.ca ) and that was shown at the New Museum and
the other, the net art component of La Biennale de Montréal 2000
(http://www.ciac.ca/biennale2000/fr/electro.html) - were presented in
such a context.

I believe there is a genuine interest from museums/art organizations to
show net art but there is still some misunderstanding. I entirely agree
with Christiane Paul about ? the problem here very often is money,
space, politics, and institutional support.? Net art in this context
often ?compete? for the same space, money, attention usually dedicated
to the visual arts and that situation creates some tension, at times?

Even if the museum/art organization might not be the best place to show
net art now ? or ever - it is ?one? of the places and it offers some
potential.  Valerie and Jara Zeleznikar talked about the possibilities
to reach another audience and the importance of education and, I agree
with them. Another area that Valerie mentioned too was the critical
support to the projects. Essays, comments on the works are valuable and
bring perspectives, points of view on net art.  An exhibition is also an
opportunity to share some thoughts.

Now the projects I am involved with at present. In the past months, I
have been looking at projects and writing, mostly. I am now working on
essays about the history of net art in Quebec. I am also interested in
mobile technologies but will be involved in this research as of
September, really, so I won?t talk about that here. Also because Patrick
Lichty shared his knowledge and thoughts about that field in this very
list just a few weeks ago and did a great job. I would be pleased,
however, to get in touch with any artists/critics involved in this field
of creation, so feel free to let me know about your own projects.

Back to the history of net art in Quebec? I am interested in looking at
net art creation throughout time and geographical space.  In other
words, looking at context again. Together with Valerie, I had the
opportunity to share some thoughts about geographical space in
relationship with cyberspace when we organized the Location/Dislocation
exhibition. You might want to take a look at our texts. Does it means
something to be located in Montreal, Ljubljana, Dakar or Sydney when
creating, or looking at, content for the Web?  I agree with what Jara
wrote in a recent message that cultural differences should be taken into
consideration. One of the most important is language, among others. As
many will expect, many net art projects created in Quebec use French. On
the issue of language, I remember an interview with Olia Lialina
published by Telepolis, where she talked about the ?border of language?
and ?new maps across the Internet? based on language (see the article
here
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/html/result.xhtml?url=/tp/english/inhalt/on/5819/1.html&words=Lialina).
There are projects not readily available for English speakers that are
worth looking at and promoting.

About history. I am interested in early net art projects as much as
recent ones. The evolution of web technologies is going so fast that it
has become difficult for newcomers (new audiences, younger artists and
critics, etc) to appreciate early works. There is still a lot to be said
about projects created in the mid-90s while recent ? and future! ? net
art deserves our attention?  How do artists feel about this evolution
and the attention given to their works, earlier and recent?

Sylvie