[-empyre-] modernity antiquity

[iarvers@free.fr]

Hi,

Is Modernity our Antiquity? History is a cultural concept, it is not natural,
but it is a very strong concept of the Modernity.

It reminds me the movie « Disneyland, my native village » by Arnaud des
Pallières that makes a parallel between Paris and a new Disneyworld? The Eiffel
Tour or Parisian monuments are becoming the Mickey?s of the new millenary.
France is spending so much money to preserve its patrimony that there is very
few money left for the creation. Patrimony is the first department of the
French cultural budget.

We are far away from putting the same amount of budget in the field of research.
It seems to me that in France, our ?post-modernity? consists in preserving our
antiquity.

And it is not surprising too that France is one of the first voice to say that
new media art is ghettoized from the whole contemporary art world because it
focuses too much on the techne. It seems even like ?old fashioned? to say
nowadays that you work in the new media art field.

Perhaps it is because digital art sounds so bad in French?

What we can say for sure, is that this discourse has political and economical
consequences, by denying a specificity to new media, in France we have:

-	less and less budgets for this ?art that doesn?t exist? or this ?art that we
won?t give a name to?
-	in the last main contemporary exhibitions in Paris, only 2% of this kind of
art practices were shown
-	No production center for new media
-	No press
-	Few art critics
-	Very few initiatives to rely research and art

If there is such a need for new media to reconnect with the art history to give
a value to emerging creations, I guess that it is because the modern concept of
art is still going on.

Isabelle Arvers
www.isabelle-arvers.com