Inke ARNS & Jacob LILLEMOSE

Inke Arns is Artistic Director of Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund.
Jacob Lillemose, critic and curator, is member of the Danish Artnode foundation

“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.