Archive for the ‘art economy’ tag
Not just a means of Economy. My ISEA 2009 talk
“Not just a means of Economy. Curating New Media Art in the art market field.” Lecture given at the panel “New Media Art, New Economic Realities; Emergent Economic Structures in New Media Art”, convened by Vicente Matallana. Belfast, ISEA 2009, August 26, 2009.
Some weeks ago, I was invited to take part in a workshop organized by the main sponsor of a big new media art festival. The topic under debate was: what should be the future of the festival? Of course, there were many different positions on the table. Some people said that new media art is dead, others that it’s more alive than ever; some said that the festival should avoid any compromise and be radical, others that it should gain the respect of the contemporary art world in order to survive and be successful. I was among them, of course.
At one point, a girl jumped up and said, in a polemic tone, something like this: “Hey guys, do we REALLY want to be taken seriously by the contemporary art world? Do we REALLY want to collaborate with it, to have to obey to the interests of a bunch of galleries and let them decide which artists we can show and which not?” These words were a turning point for the debate. Almost everybody seemed to agree with that girl, and nobody defended the option I humbly proposed: to turn the festival into a specialized event able to attract the same audience that moves restlessly from Documenta to the various Biennales, and not just the community that moves from, let’s say, ISEA to Ars Electronica. At the same time, these words were a revelation for me, because I understood that critics and curators are probably the most conservative part of this community.
