[-empyre-] net art, curating and power

[Christina McPhee <christinamcphee@yahoo.com>]

 Tim writes,

 "While net.art celebrates its openness to group
collaboration,
continual revision, and momentary existence,
conditions which are alien to
the archival practice of museum art, to the standards
of individual,
artistic genius, and to independence and authority of
curatorial oversight,
net.art is equally frustrated by its dependence on a
new global system of
patronage and surveillance. Perhaps not since the
Renaissance has the
representation of art been so indebted to the power of
the patron. The
patron, in this instance, is not so much the
individual donor who once
provided artists with lodging, sustenance, and
materials for the creation of
commissioned art. Now the patrons are the
organizational commissions that
provide revenue for webspace and the networks and
sites that choose or
choose not provide space and memory to house
innovative projects in net.art.
While many net.art pieces thrive from ongoing revision
and alteration by
their makers, often in response to feedback and
collaborations of their
users, others disappear from the zone of the internet
having lost their
leases on sponsoring sites (the recent Thing.net
controversy providing a
case in point).
It is in this context that those of us with curatorial
access and capital
share the responsibility of "remote control" and
should feel compelled to
articulate strategic, if not long-term, responses to
these systems of
maintenance and control."

One of the reasons I found the net so seductive as a
medium is a very common experience among
'netwurkers'.. that i could work in fluid transitions
in and out of physical installation,online sites, and
in collaboration--  Yet net art is part of the
political and social phenomenenon of the art
world--whenever a net based piece is staged or used in
live performance in a physical venue, the 'real'
architecture of museums, art centers, etc. Rhizome
artbase becomes an artworld venue, in effect--artists
are a 'user' base -- we want our work to be saved and
archived: thus it becomes object rather than fluid
transaction. 
How can collaborative curatorial practice be both in
the art world and not of it, that is, involved with
artistic collaboration towards projects and
communication models that are strategic resonses to
"systems of maintenance and control"?  

Christina


=====
<http://www.naxsmash.net>

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online
http://webhosting.yahoo.com