Archive for the ‘art world’ 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.
Non è solo un gioco…
© Paul Sullivan
Domenico Quaranta, “Non è solo un gioco: creare mondi è quasi un’opera d’arte”, in L’Unità, June 2, 2009, pp. 40 – 41.
Esiste un settore della cultura contemporanea che meriterebbe più attenzione di quanta siamo generalmente disposti a concedergliene. Il suo indotto ha superato da anni quello del cinema, ma continuiamo a considerarlo un mercato di nicchia. Ha conquistato persone di tutte le età, ma continuiamo a pensarlo come intrattenimento per ragazzini. Richiede investimenti copiosi, il contributo creativo di intere squadre di professionisti e anni di lavoro, eppure non lo prendiamo troppo sul serio. I suoi prodotti li chiamiamo “videogiochi” e pensiamo che questo ci autorizzi a dimenticarci che hanno, spesso, l’articolazione narrativa di un romanzo, la ricchezza visiva di un quadro rinascimentale, la capacità di coinvolgimento di un film, scenari e colonna sonora degni di un blockbuster hollywoodiano.
Art and Videogames. Enclosures and border crossings
© Jim Murray 2005
Domenico Quaranta, “Art and Videogames. Enclosures and border crossings”, in Debora Ferrari, Luca Traini, The Art of Games. Nuove frontiere tra gioco e bellezza, exhibition catalogue, Aosta, Centro Saint Bénin, May 28 – November 8, 2009, pp. 99 – 117.
Prologue
1949: Andrew Warhola, the son of a factory worker of Rusyn origin in Pittsburgh, arrives in New York. He had studied art, and his blotted line drawings, which made an uncertain, wavering line on the paper, attracted the attention of the art director of Glamour, who commissioned a series of drawings of shoes for the magazine. In the space of a few years Andrew became “the most sought-after illustrator of women’s accessories in New York”, as Calvin Tomkins wrote1. He changed his name to Andy Warhol, met Truman Capote, had his nose redone, founded a company and started making a lot of money, yet he was not satisfied. The art world kept him on the margin, despite his various attempts to make inroads. Paradoxically, his refined blotted line drawings of food, shoes and other consumer items looked too personal, too subtle and too nonchalant to carve a niche in the avant-garde art scene of the day –divided as it was between the macho heroism of Abstract Expressionism, and the impersonality of Pop Art.2 It was attending Leo Castelli’s gallery, where he saw the work of Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein, that Andy found the path that would lead him to success: instead of depicting consumer goods, he began serial reproductions, first using a cold, impersonal style of painting, then a mechanical process (silkscreen printing). From elegant shoes decorated with gold-leaf he passed to giant, brutal cans of Campbell’s soup. In 1963 he confessed: “[When I was doing advertising] I’d have to invent and now I don’t; those commercial drawings would have feelings, they would have a style… the attitude had feeling to it.”
What he did from that moment on changed the course of contemporary art. As for the drawings, they remained at the bottom of a drawer for years before being discovered. We now see them as engaging works of art: our idea of art has changed, making room for something that was not admitted in the past.
What do you think of media art in 2009?
Interview for the Korean platform Aliceon (www.aliceon.net)
“What do you think of media art in 2009?
In 2009, Where media art is placed and headed for?
Media Art has shown the different direction of art of this age as the emerging art with new forms and approaches. However, now, the authenticity and identity of media art is newly asked. This question is raised apparently different circumstances and phenomena from the early age of media art. Not only in Korea but also overseas media art scene, media art could be seen in the kind of chaos in transit age. About this situation, aliceon is trying to analyze the problem of media art facing today and try to find the directions of media art should move forwards, through the different perspective and directions embed in different media art projects to be made media art curators actively working on now in Korean and overseas.
DON’T SAY NEW MEDIA!
Domenico Quaranta, “DON’T SAY NEW MEDIA!”, in FMR Bianca, n° 5, Franco Maria Ricci, Bologna, December 2008, pp. 92 – 107.
“Don’t say new media – Say art!” Gazira Babeli
“Forget the new, drop the media, enjoy art.”1 Régine Debatty
Queste due citazioni, entrambe molto recenti, sono emblematiche per vari motivi. La prima è l’ammonizione con cui Gazira Babeli, un’artista che vive nel mondo sintetico di Second Life, accompagna la spettacolare punizione che infligge a chiunque osi pronunciare la parola “new media” davanti ai suoi lavori: un tornado che solleva per aria il nostro alter ego digitale, o avatar, finché quest’ultimo corregge il tiro, dicendo semplicemente “arte”. Régine Debatty è una critica d’arte di origine belga che ha raggiunto la celebrità grazie a un blog intitolato We Make Money Not Art, per poi stupire – e, in certi casi, contrariare – il suo pubblico spostando l’enfasi della sua indagine dalla tecnologia all’arte senza prefissi. I due commenti rivelano, innanzitutto, che esiste un’area, ambiguamente definita “New Media” o “New Media Art”, a cui sia Régine che Gazira sono ricondotte loro malgrado; un termine e un’area in cui forse, un tempo, si sono riconosciute, ma che ora non le soddisfa più.
