“Google and The global network is what makes todays homes so different
from 10 years ago.
Google and The global network is what makes todays New Media art so
different and appealing!”

“New Media Art is to the digital revolution as Impressionism is to the industrial revolution. A new era is coming, and this is just the beginning!”

“New media is about a new form of expression that includes technological elements at its core and/or the use of media. perhaps the mere facts that it’s ‘new’ and accessible (computers and internet for example) is what make it sexy and appealing.”

“Though the new media art community, in all its aspects, goes beyond the institutional walls of the contemporary art museum and world, investigating their relation seems necessary if we wish to prospect new media art’s future as a widely accepted contemporary art form. The system of values that art museum institutions present are still prevalent to a public at large, and its core functions on the level of public outreach, culture filtering, art form authorization and care-taking (in terms of documentation and preservation) are crucial for the establishment of any art form in the art world and in art history.

In looking at the history of engagement between the new media art world and the contemporary art world institutions, a number of barriers and hurdles surface. Obscure aesthetics and inapt vocabularies, the perception of low economic value and perceived impossibility of collecting, the lack of exhibition methodologies and infrastructure, and questions in terms of documentation, archiving, and preservation are just the tip of the iceberg. Yet, in addressing rather than avoiding these challenges, new media art supporters (curators, critics, and artists) pave the way for new media art’s inclusion in the contemporary art institutions and its acceptance as a contemporary art form for the public at large.

This vote for recognition of new media art as a contemporary art form, and its integration in the contemporary art world and its institutions is of course not an integration without conditions, nor must it entail the death of the involvement of alternative venues that have allowed new media art to grow. The trade-offs faced by past art forms upon inclusion in the museum and the rhetoric of the museum as a mausoleum, might not be as permanent as museum critics wish to believe. If we believe in the ability of the institution to respond to the challenges new art forms place upon its practices and customs, starting with the incorporation of some components of networked culture (decentralization of authority, strong and committed relations to a network of supportive institutions, etc), the inclusion of new media art might present the art world with true change.”

From White Box to Black Box to Wired Box and BACK

“Galleries follow Art. We began our involvement with new media in 1996 with what was, then, a radical little show “Can You Digit?”. We watched a majority of our mature audiences run away in horror. The young people, on the other hand, were lining up around the block. We have always sought art that is reflective of our time: idea driven, forward looking work that could not have been done before. While this, of course, is not dependent on the medium – it seemed that new media artists were the infusion of fresh blood, exploring new forms of creative expression tied to current technologies. But different and appealing as such? We’re gonna say no. Postmasters is proud to be a media neutral gallery – neither privileging nor discriminating against any expressive language. Painting, photography and video were once new and in good hands they are greatly relevant. New media art is a terrific expansion of available tools and the cultural playing field - an addition, not a replacement. Our goal is to actually strip the “New Media Artists” of the New Media part and deliver them to a larger pool where they are known simply as Artists. We think that would be just fine. And by the way, we hope in our old age to still be curious enough to fiercely go after the Next Big One…… and try to un-qualify that one too.”

Manifesto 4 Creating & Critiquing Media Arts in C21
Use: Appalling, impossible, inhabited, beauty, alternation, sensory, black, literally, chemical, enhancement suspended, insist delightfully, embracement clear, panic ecstasy, death, expansive, inspired intelligent, minimalism, childish wonder between, disorientation, complex, slowness creates intimacy, demanding.
Avoid: amorphous sensual space, suggestion illusion, gaps, downfall, overwork, optical, virtual, interwoven threads realism, surface, mixed metaphors hyper-stimulation trigger, sensation, parad, commodification, nothingness, stimulus and response, object, imagery, text, narrative, apertures collectively long, adult fancy. Non-humanoid avatar.
Insert: craving composed blackness, hollow, intensely frightening painful, whet, piercing, densely, grating, abruptly, hard and soft consciousness, remit, ceremoniously, antithesis, reflected, silence, bathed, spectacular arena, pleasure resides, epicurean, intense, simultaneous and risky, wonderlands.
Delete: ephemerality. Nothing tangible savored audio horizon, realigned, synchronized, globalized, movement, temporal zone, platform, sequence, overexposure, disappears, non-addictive, components vulnerable contemplative execution, relax, lie down, yield, seductive, visceral, sonic, light bath liquefies. Emotional geography.
Rules:
1. Simple, strong, subtle.
2. Seduction overcomes control.
3. Play is pleasure.
4. Contemplate and manipulate.
5. Abstraction amplifies minimalism.
6. Knowingly enjoy fleeting sensation
7. Slowness creates intimacy
8. Nothingness enhances emptiness.
9. Embrace chaotic banality.
10. Feel the love, then update your status.

“Are new media art and contemporary art two different things? At this point, after a long century of emergencies, and further more after seeing the possibility of reversing the symbol of progress, how one could answer such a question without a big laugh? But in terms of communication both are referred, in our opinion, to the territory of Zombie Corps. Both are following the rules of desperation.
We are open for business as long as we have good stuff to sell. If we don’t have good stuff for sale we shutdown the shop. Good stuff for sale is always welcome in a world full of trash. We also like to share, trade and steal from motherfuckers. It’s a complex multilayered attitude, it requires great calm but strong breathing at high altitudes. The higher you go the more blurred your mind is.”

“The distinctive features of new media art do challenge many of the conventional notions about art, but many respected – and collected – non-new media artists have used these same strategies in their work. I have no doubt that eventually new media art will be as much a part of institutions’ collections as photography, video, and installation art have become. In the meantime, however, there is a crisis at hand. We are in danger of losing 30 years of new media art history. It is important to learn now how to collect new media art, if there is to be any hope of preserving its recent past.
If magnetic tape has a “half life” of approximately 30 years – the point at which it starts to significantly deteriorate – the half life of digital media can be days. In 2002, the average lifespan of a web page was just 74 days. In addition, the software that drives many new media applications might change every 6 months – and it is not always backwards compatible.”
“Collecting new media art is first and foremost a curatorial issue. The medium poses challenges to traditional notions of collecting but little more than much contemporary art. Proven ability to preserve and conserve new media art remains at the theoretical level, but this will be a moot question for a vast swathe of contemporary artistic – at least for museums – unless they take the first step and begin to collect, critically and assiduously.”
Excerpts from: Steve Dietz, “Collecting New Media Art: Just Like Anything Else, Only Different”, in Bruce Altshuler (ed.), Collecting the New, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2005.

“The time of special interest shows is over and it is time for computer based art to get out of the ghetto. No doubt that a certain amount of secluded nurturing (promoting and production) served computer based art – from net art to software art – well in the beginning but now it is ready to step onto the scene of contemporary art. For us, as mediators, it is not only a question of discussing computer-based art through the non-computer based art but also of anticipating the reverse discussion. Computer based art allows a number of new interesting and relevant perspectives on conceptual art, activism, Fluxus, etc., historical as well as theoretical; perspectives that should be explored.”
“…both within the computer based art world and the non-computer based art forces are working against an integration of the two worlds that actually both would benefit from. We believe that a negotiation or mediation is needed and any kind of curatorial formalism or orthodoxy is to be avoided.”
“The question we should ask when dealing with computer based art is not if it is interesting but if it is interesting as art and to be able to answer this we need the histories and theories of the institution. We can challenge and criticize these histories and theories – through computer based art – but we should not reject them completely.”
“It is our hope that in the future we will see exhibitions, in which works of computer based art and non-computer based art are placed next to each other. That computer based art and non-computer based art co-exist on the same level – the level of contemporary art – should not be the primary point but the (pre)condition of such exhibitions.”
Excerpts from: Inke Arns & Jacob Lillemose, “’It’s contemporary art, stupid’. Curating computer based art out of the ghetto”, August 2005. First Published in: Anke Buxmann, Frie Depraetere (eds), Argos Festival, argoseditions, Brussels 2005, pp. 136 - 145.

“Electroboutique: Media Art 2.0

Today, when any critical artistic statement is drained of its power within the rigid frameworks of the unilateral capitalist world, a critical artist can no longer create while contemptuously looking down at commercial art and design that is governed exclusively by market laws.
At the same time as it becomes smarter and more refined, capitalism intrudes into most revolutionary, autonomous, and secluded areas of human activity. This is not to suggest that avant-garde art creation always stood in opposition to capitalism. The modernists, taking part in the evolution of design, worked in factories developing furniture and fabrics in order to bring art to the masses. Parallel to the evolution of Dada, the ready-made, and later, pop art, the theory and philosophy of art and culture contemplated the balance between the poles of capitalism and art, unique and mass-produced objects, high and low culture, professional and amateur, practical and dysfunctional. As the newest weapon of capitalism, information technologies dictate new social and cultural contexts and within these, uncover new challenges.
Our answer to the dilemma: Media Art 2.0

Media Art 2.0 goes beyond the limits of new media art
New media art today consists overwhelmingly of one-of-a-kind works presented by the authors themselves at festivals and specialized exhibitions. As a rule, such pieces are high-maintenance and complex in configuration – and thus are destined to remain in a media art ghetto. We propose all-in-one plug-and-play solutions. Media Art 2.0 presents art objects as technological products that are ready to be consumed here and now by anyone.

Media Art 2.0 is market-friendly art
We produce a limited number of copies (like Ferrari) and sell them at affordable prices (like Sony). This is possible because we develop our own reliable electronic devices and thus do not depend on overly complex multi-functional digital systems. Each piece has a unique edition number and the authentic signatures of its authors. We also offer limited lifetime warranties for our products.

Media Art 2.0 goes beyond the know-how of IT corporations
These corporations are not capable of transcending the pragmatism of their products. While attempting to enrich their products with artistic qualities, corporate designers follow the path of banal adornment – decoration with gold, Swarowski crystals, and diamonds – which raises the price and renders the products “exclusive”. Such an approach does not make a mobile phone or an MP3 player a work of art. Limited lifetime of electronics contradicts the apparently “eternal” value of the decorative materials.

Media Art 2.0 is the answer to the stagnation of the art market
It proposes a solution when the art market acquiesces to the demands of traditional art forms and is incapable of digesting truly contemporary artistic ideas. Our products harmoniously combine actual art, up-to-date techno-culture, design, and media art. We return to the roots of the avant-garde and occupy our own niche in the system of capitalist production and consumption. We address advanced consumers who are not satisfied by mass products – whether cool design gadgets or the endlessly reproduced traditional art forms.

Media Art 2.0 is the avant-garde of today
We return to art the things that design borrowed from art at the beginning of the 20th century: the search for new form and content; the artistic experiment as play; and the joy of everyday life. We live in a world of visual interfaces. Televisions, print advertisements, politics, shop-windows, show-business, internet services and bank systems are primarily interfaces whose task is to shape the process of information transfer and the translation of ideas. Working with visual interfaces, we make them visible and tangible. We uncover the structures of today’s world. This approach fills our products with a critical charge. In answering the challenges of today, we flush clean the media channels and establish new standards. By infiltrating public spaces and private homes, we bring art and alternative aesthetics into people’s everyday lives.”

Though it seems the efforts of the new media circuit are not a part of the art market, they are an essential vehicle for the dealer and artist. Without these programs many monumental works would not have been produced or exhibited. These communities enable important new media works to be presented in international exhibitions that expose the works to collectors and a broader public. This exposure is another type of currency that is invaluable to all parties concerned.
Packaging is very important especially for complex works where the technical aspects can be daunting even for the savvy collector. This package includes hardware, licenses, and a proof of authenticity. But more importantly, the package is the framework for conversation about the artwork–its relevance and relationship to traditional mediums, and highlights the virtuosity in relationship to the medium.
The key is not in making an object for the traditional market but illuminating the significance of the art work to the current market. This has been proven in the successful placement of seminal new media works in major collections: hacked video games; edited screen selections; generative movies; screen captures; 3d printing; blogs and browser-based cinema. These are not derivative objects. These are the objects of the contemporary New Media artist.

“For a long time it did not make sense to show net art in real space:
museums or galleries. For good reasons you had to experience works of
net artists on your own connected computer.

Yesterday for me as an artist it made sense only to talk to people in
front of their computers, today I can easily imagine to apply to
visitors in the gallery because in their majority they will just have
gotten up from their computers. They have the necessary experience and
understanding of the medium to get the ideas, jokes, enjoy the works and
buy them.”

Olia Lialina, Flat Against the Wall, 2007
http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/flat_against_the_wall/

“So, experienced audiences, artists and gallery-friendly computers make
the transition of Net Art from New Media to Contemporary Art very
explainable. The audience recognizes and values internet aesthetics.
Artists make works about the internet, gallerists see a nice way to
present and sell. Everything works smooth and comfortable.

Comfort for all parties is a feature of Contemporary Art. New Media does
not know this word. In New Media artists fight, curators suffer,
audience gets angry. And that’s how it should be.

Net Art this season is not a part of New Media, and that’s fine. But if
New Media becomes a theme in Contemporary Art and dissolves there, this
would be a real loss.”

Olia Lialina, Flat Against the Wall, 2007
http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/flat_against_the_wall/

“However, in the last two years the situation has gradually calmed down.
Artists stopped being jittery and collectors became more active.
Exhibitions have shaped up and became more eye-pleasing. New media has
switched to pictures, to moving and dynamic images. Besides the obvious
market interest in eye candy, there are three more reasons that
encouraged this switch.

Processing gave birth to a new line of graphic generators and inspired a
new wave of interest in generative forms. YouTube invaded the Web and
turned video into a standard way of expressing thoughts and feelings.
And last but not least, video projectors have become substantially
cheaper, while the quality of the image has grown significantly better.”

Olia Lialina, An Infinite Séance 2, 2008
http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/infinite_seance_2/

“I just think that it makes sense for the art to reflect what’s going on in the world, and it’s undeniable that technology is changing our lives rapidly. Technology sometimes seems like it puts us in a precarious position. Whether it will collapse or tend towards some crazy sci-fi concept, like a technological singularity, is still to be seen. A lot of my work speaks about obsolescence, the futility of maintaining any permanence in technology.”

“The quality of the artwork and the inherent possibilities! This may sound very general, but from my observation I can see, that in the recent years Digital Art has reached a level of quality, that makes it equally as strong as other media. The times of experimenting or testing and just building interfaces are over. This is not enough anymore. An artwork made with digital media has to be measured by the same standards as any other art form. But there is a major advantage in Digital Art compared to more traditional media. The digital language is the most common medium of our times. And it is expanding every day globally. The computer as a tool is “natural” for the up-growing generation, accordingly is any art form derived from that.
The digital data, as fluent and easily exchangeable as they are, bring about possibilities never thought of before. I can view a software piece created on the computer 5 minutes later on my screen in Berlin, the file is just transferred through the internet. But this could be on a mobile phone or a large LED Screen or in the Metro. The possibilities are endless and they make digital art the most democratic medium. The market will adjust to it. This is just the beginning.”

“By playing and working with actual influences within the given medium, there are no transformation or translation losses by using the semantic codes and syntax. The mix of technology, informational society, contemporary culture, drugs and digital urban lifestyle create new patterns of understanding and acceptance by vibrating within the same frequency and by increased speed of communication. New Media Art is super contemporary art within super contemporary media, digitally transformed and hidden within a classical media output (painting, sculpture, etc.). Media Art and New Media Art differ in 2 aspects: the application of new technology and the fact that superficial media power is reaching enormous levels and hitting very high frequency in our new media time zone and dimension. People want to know everything, everywhere, and within milliseconds. The means to reach this very goal are fresh - sometimes even modernistic – most of the time the material outcome is less challenging than the formal result. New Media Art pieces appeal to the user not just by content and surface - a piece will extend its content nodes into various directions so the users from different fields of interest and located in ever-changing time dimensions can dock onto the core of the piece and suck bits of data (partiality). As an example, UBERMORGEN.COM’s Psych|OS series appeals to video collectors, lovers of the mentally specialized artists, to drug-connoisseurs and to fans of the scripted art work. The primary appeal of New Media Art is the speculation about potentiality. Within evolution concrete objects are formed, artistic material as part of the digital evolution without being part of the general evolution, therefore it is sclerotic. Only the framework of evolution in the sense of deployment but contradicted with the new instant creation triggers critical mass. Here we can observe and exploit near religious experiences, monetary greed and fatal forms of attraction.

“It’s simple – New media has the capacity to be what you want it to be, when you want it, where you want it, on whatever platform you wish. That’s sexy. It’s different. It’s appealing! But on the other hand, it follows a direct lineage from Richard Hamilton’s seminal collage, Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? and his connections to the Dadas, especially Duchamp. What has changed is scale? Dada came from the atrocity of WWI, Hamilton from WWII Post-Holocaust/Atomic anxiety, and New Media from microatrocity/atrocity du jour (Darfur, Kosovo, Iraq I&II, 9/11, Rwanda). In regards to production, Dada came from the mass/readymade object, Hamilton & Pop from the mass consumer market, and New Media from mass microproduction (Chris Anderson’s Long Tail) and techno-nostalgia. Dada used media for notoriety, Hamilton and Warhol lived in mass celebrity through mass media, and we live in the time of microcelebrity, where everyone will have fifteen fans, fifteen seconds of mass appeal, and fifteen hundred hits on your blog.
But on the other hand, New Media’s lineage from Hamilton, and so from Dada and Pop, has to do with technology as well. Hamilton was part of the Independent Group, which played a large part in cybernetics discourse in art through the ICA London. Hamilton also was a friend of Duchamp, and also was a mentor of Roy Ascott, who would become a telematic New Media pioneer in the UK. Dada used the new media technologies to devalue the art object by using print and collage, Hamilton presaged the coming of cyber-art, and New Media is centered in McLuhan’s cybernetic Global Village.
It’s a very direct correlation, actually – New Media is a direct outgrowth of our horror of, and fascination with, technology and its expression in art. It’s shiny. It’s fast. Now, it’s even (potentially) cheap, or makes the monumental almost affordable. It creates snack culture of endless seas of content at 99 cents or less. It’s very Pop, with niche cultures, and with your very own action figure (of YOU!). Although the contemporary milieu is a continuous blast of discontinuous media, the new art glitters and withes like a silicon chimera. It’s different. It’s appealing. Take a handful. Don’t worry, we’ll make more. Lots more. Buy more. Like gold dust, a grain at a time.”

“Elvis has always fascinated me. It’s incredible how he always seems to be over and above everything and everybody, no matter what anybody thinks. I love those concerts in Las Vegas where he even forgot the words, and the songs, where he told the public to enjoy themselves, they’re in Las Vegas and the chorus girls are fantastic. Elvis is always above everything; Obviously Elvis is still alive, and has been kidnapped by aliens. If you were an alien and had to kidnap someone, wouldn’t you kidnap Elvis?
Libres Para Siempre (Free For Ever), http://www.libresparasiempre.com, gave me two important tips. One: to dedicate myself to this new media art business, and two: that I should be like Elvis. And I have followed the two tips to the letter. I ended up producing their projects, I learned a lot and since then I have dedicated myself to this; my life is a disaster.
In the comparisons between new media art and fine arts something neurotic arises, a need to be accepted by the father figure, leading us to Freudian positions and the question whether in truth the complex comes from a messianic problem, from the absence of a messiah to guide, reveal and validate the work done. Maybe we need a Duchamp or a Picasso who bequeaths us a revealing truth, a guide-father-messiah.
But I remember, that when starting all this, the common goal was to get away from all that, from established structures and revealing truths, from all that, we wanted a little more and, more than anything else, somewhere where we could be as free as Elvis.
The question “Just What Is It that Makes New Media Art So Different, So Appealing?” brings with it an obvious comparison, and this comparison is in itself, in its reiterative, neurotic.
Our interest in LaAgencia is to generate knowledge. The rest is tactics and strategy to achieve it, when not a mere backdrop. We believe that it is ridiculous to think of the world without thinking of our relationship with technology and the machine, now part of our Ego or our Superego. Besides, in this field of work we are having a really good time.
A technical question; we are not sure whether LaAgencia is an art company working exclusively with technology or a technological company working exclusively from the paradigm of art.
But I want to be like Elvis, and I don’t care about the rest.”

“Oh no! That’s too serious to be fruitful.
For me the sexiness was exactly in that lack of clean convention about what’s the field and what’s the object. And specially about who is who.
So at the early moments of invention when the field was level by default and everybody involved (in net.art) was clueless, a very powerful thing happened - people started trusting their own very honest gut feelings about art. This lasted for a brief time but agreements we instinctively achieved in that (heroic) period (of net.art) are still an irremovable bedrock of optimism in human beings to me.
And that’s pretty much what it boils down to: an excuse to still tolerate this barbaric species we belong to.”

“I always knew that “New Media Art” was keenly problematical, since it’s the stern fate of anything dubbed “new” to turn — not just “old” – but dated, dusty, obsolete and corny… Yet I always admired new media artists, and the ornery, uncategorizable high-tech art-world freaks I thought were quite interesting two decades ago are still, seriously, pretty interesting artists. If anything, they’re even more troublesome in the current dispensation than they were way back then.”

“I consider myself to be at the ‘rear-guard’ rather than up front with the avant-garde in ‘media art’. I guess I score points by saying this, but this is not my intention. Every medium that is labelled - ’something art’ is heading for a 1000 hurts. At the very worst it can lead to an art ghetto, where artists, whose only common link is that they are faced with the same criticism.
Their isolation is re-enforced when they are forced to create a universal defence. the fact that their defence is based on a misunderstood appreciation of an emergent medium inevitably leads ‘full-circle’ resulting in greater suspicion and rejection.” [2002]

“The remarkably memorable and appealing title of Richard Hamilton’s iconic 1956 collage holds a key not only to Hamilton’s work, but to most British and American Pop art. By adopting an ironic attitude towards popular culture, Pop artists opened up a field of artistic possibility between critical engagement and celebratory homage. It is precisely this field of possibility – a zone of exploration and experimentation – that Pop shares in common with New Media art. Unlike New Media art’s other art-historical precedents (Dada, Situationism, Conceptual art, Fluxus, Video), Pop was quickly embraced by collectors and dealers, perhaps due less to its decorator-friendly palette than to its intimate connection with consumer culture. New Media art, by contrast, has been largely sidelined by the art market. However, New Media art’s lack of commercial success may be coming to an end, as curators continue to recognize its significance and gallerists work with artists to devise ways to make it palatable to collectors.
I define New Media art as art that makes use of emerging media technologies and addresses their significance. Contemporary art is simply art that was made in the past few years. Recent New Media art would thus count as contemporary art, but most contemporary art would not count as New Media. That said, as more artists work with new media and as new media permeates contemporary culture, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate contemporary New Media art from the rest of contemporary art.
About New Media art collecting: I see no reason not to collect New Media art. In fact, there is a tremendous opportunity for a visionary collector to catalyse the market by building a strong collection.”

“In the beginning I thought Net Art was something distant from reality, almost immaterial, a way to be someone else, to live different lives at the same time, and that’s why I loved it. Then, paradoxically enough, it turned out to be more real than the real. In trying to avoid “traditional art”, and reality, the so-called “Net Artists” found out the hard way how immaterial and mediated reality actually is.”

“If one ignores the art-historical references of this question, the claim that new media art is “different” from other art forms could have the disadvantage of separating it from “the rest of art” and neglecting its histories. New media art is rooted in, or connected to, many other art forms throughout the 20th century; from the combinatory experiments of Dada to kinetic art and the participatory, instruction-based works of Fluxus and Conceptualism. (Given that the question references the famous 1956 collage “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?”, the connection to movements from Dada to Pop and cybernetics is already ‘built in.’) At the same time, the computational, variable, networked and interactive “character” of new media art certainly makes it different from painting or drawing. What attracts me to new media art is its inherent connectivity, its possibilities for simulation, and its shift from an object to a (networked) process or system. All of these qualities have become important aspects of the social and culture fabric of many societies around the globe and have shaped the world we live in. While contemporary art in general certainly reflects on these conditions, new media art is unique in that simulation, connectivity, networks are characteristics of its medium and its “natural habitat.” It is an art form that “lives” the technological conditions of our time and its multiple effects, asking where and what art is today..”

AMY CAPPELLAZZO (AC):Carlo Zani?
CARLO ZANNI (CZ): Zanni
AC: Oh, right. I’m sorry. Amy Cappellazzo
CZ: Hey, Amy. How you doing?
AC: I’m well.
CZ: The woman who put intelligence into Christie’s
AC: Yeah…
CZ: No smoking in here.
AC: Oh, I’m sorry about that. Yeah.
CZ: Valentine said you might call.
AC: Yeah.
CZ: Welcome to Zanni’s studio
AC: Thank you. Here it is, huh? I was looking for a venture opportunity like this.
CZ: What kind of venture money are we talking about, Amy?
AC: We start with about a quarter million dollars and see what happens.
CZ: Excuse me?
AC: Quarter million dollars.
CZ: You want to put a quarter million dollars into this?
AC: Yep.
CZ: What’s the catch?
AC: No catch, just business.
CZ: That’s the catch Amy,… Because this ain’t just business… This is practically spiritual… This is about overthrowing dead culture. Dead gods.

This is why we look at Holy Fire as the result of a “choral” effort, and this is why we decided to work on a “choral” catalogue. This is also why we decided to ask people (curators, artists, gallerists and collectors) a little, silly question (inspired by the title of a seminal pop collage, Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, by Richard Hamilton), but a question that gives rise to a series of others; some dumb, some serious (ie. Are new media art and contemporary art two different things? Is new media art the art of our time? Is it the art of the future or an art without a future? New media art collecting: what does it signify to you? Is it a conflict? A dream? A problem? A solution? Nonsense?). But, most importantly, we wanted some interesting answers. Most people replied and some gave us permission to use excerpts from texts that we find inspiring.

Here they are, just as we got them: some short, others long; some witty, others serious; some enthusiastic, others polemical. Enjoy them all!

Domenico Quaranta, Yves Bernard

Don’t miss our Collateral Event at Art Brussels!

Conference-debate

Saturday 19 april, 11:30 - 13:30

Art Brussels

“Holy Fire: Exhibiting and Collecting New Media Art”.

Moderated by Patrick Lichty (Yes Men and Columbia College, Chicago) with Alexei Shulgin (RU), Olia Lialina (RU/DE), Steve Sacks (bitforms, New York), Wolf Lieser (DAM, Berlin), Stéphane Maguet (Numeriscausa, Paris), Philippe Van Cauteren (SMAK, BE), Domenico Quaranta (Brescia, I) and Yves Bernard (Brussels).

One of the targets of the Holy Fire exhibition (iMAL, 18-30 april) is to take a snapshot of the present situation of New Media Art, an art practice arose from the meeting of art and computer technology in the Sixties. This practice developed into a self-built, parallel art system and had a second youth in the last half of the Nineties. New Media Art has always been described as process oriented, immaterial, and therefore un-collectable and un-preservable. Now getting to its adult age, it is entering the contemporary art world and market.

If you don’t have an invitation or entry ticket to Art Brussels and want to attend this conference, please registrate here !

“Questions such as: “Are new media art and contemporary art two different things? Is new media art the art of our time? Is it the art of the future or an art without a future?” never fail to exasperate me. It has something to do with the “new media” label which fits the genre like a straitjacket and sends it to a ghetto without even a flicker of compassion. Forget the new, drop the media, enjoy art.”