RE: [-empyre-] Re: Method Manifesto

[Sean Cubitt <seanc@waikato.ac.nz>]

> For if you agree that nobody really knows what art is, then it is also true
> that institutional and historical judgements about what art is have 
> no more ontological
> authority than your or my feelings and ideas about what art is.



> <snip>
> In any case, if no one really knows what art is, then what is taken 
> for art is not a matter of
> ontological acuity but of a whole range of other considerations, 
> none of which are necessarily
> more valid than your or my feelings and ideas about art.

The word is 'ontological': concerning the reality-status of
a) art
b) a particular work or job of work

The question concenring what art is  - is art

Art is that practice which meticulously questions its own ontological 
status. The art 'object' is an object that struggles to exist. That 
struggle, that puzzle over whether it exists and in what mode 
(conceptual, phenomenological, virtual . . .) is what constitutes art

at least in the Western tradition

The question as to whether digital and especially network practices 
are art is a question about the delimitation and boundary of art - ie 
another variant on the ontological querstion - but in a global 
network, the contestaion also arises over the aplicability of a 
western art practice to other creative activitiesto which the word 
art is perhaps applied in a colonial way

at which point the question 'is this art?' is less a question about 
'this' than about 'art', and the this-ness of this particular 
practicemight be answered in other ontological traditions (this is 
maya, this is a god)

?

s



--
Sean Cubitt * Screen and Media Studies * University of Waikato * 
Private Bag 3105 * Hamilton * New Zealand * seanc@waikato.ac.nz * T: 
+64 (0)7 838 4543 * F: +64 (0)7 838 4767

http://www.waikato.ac.nz/film