[-empyre-] 'real' networked art

[Will Pappenheimer]

Some lurker thoughts-

It is interesting to see a reference to 'art ghetto', since may of us  
practitioners are so keenly aware of a "technology art ghetto" (or  
should I say being ghettoized by the mainstream art world?). Art  
history, art as a category, is a contested space which, as Duchamp  
demonstrated, is designated, not only by artists but by institutions  
in power. I can remember when one of my favorite critics, Rosalind  
Krauss, attacked digital multimedia as not having a recursive history,  
a strangely conservative attack, which is now nolonger true for an  
aging net art. Another attack came from Nicolas Bourriaud, who  
outlined I think a very important theoretical model for net art in  
relational aesthetics. Painting makes no excuses for self-reference  
since it is, along with other media, firmly in the elite.

Will Pappenheimer
Assistant Professor, Digital Art
Pace University, New York
wpappenheimer at pace.edu
http://www.willpap-projects.com
cell: 347-526-5302




On Oct 16, 2009, at 8:24 PM, Anna Munster wrote:

>
> Ok - got it!
> Kazys wrote:
>
> <Both High-low/internal vs. Cool/Uncool/transdisciplinarity are  
> reflections of the same transition to network culture.>
>
> however, I would still ant to maintain that relative to the period  
> in which they ere working, '90s net artists were not necessarily  
> elite. I don't think small or niche = elite. The question of access  
> and mass has taken on a renewed medial push in the age of 'hits' and  
> their registering. This links up to Anne's points about the ways in  
> which search engines produce forms of identity. Likewise algorithms.
>
> One thing we might be forgetting about that early net art was its  
> internationalism - alot of it came out of eastern europe and the  
> balkans especialy and was very much connected with early net radio  
> and its relations to Dutch net culture. A number of people,  
> Stallabrass included, have remarked on the net art movement as one  
> of the truly international art movements of the late 20th century.  
> For me, this alone takes that work out of some 'art ghetto' and  
> makes it concerned with a lot more than avant-gardism...
>
> best
> Anna