issue #8
02.19.00 		issue#8
 WebWalker   DAILY    02_11_00-04_30_00
from steve dietz
gallery 9, walker art center, the internet, and digital culture
ART ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK


1. CRASH
2. CRASH links
3. sins of change discount
 		 

Why should we care about net art?

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On February 17-19, UC Berkeley hosted a symposium "on critical and historical issues in net art," CRASH. Sponsored by the Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley in collaboration with the Department for Art Practice, College of Engineering, Berkeley Art Museum, and Townsend Center for the Humanities and organized by Shawn Brixey and Ken Goldberg, CRASH brought together a number of practitioners and theorists and curators with a number of art historians and critics to discuss net art. Following a day of private discussions among the participants, there was a public "conversation" on Saturday in the Berkeley Art Museum auditorium, moderated by David Ross. Each participant gave a two-minute summary of his or her reactions to the previous day's discussions. What follows are my remarks. During the ensuing discussion there was a debate about "praise" as an inappropriate 18th-century term--as one audience member put it. Praise was originally introduced into the discussions by Charles Altieri, Director of the Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley, as a way, I took it, to raise the issue of why we should care about net art--a way for the theorists and curators and artists present to tell the art historians why they might care--without "prejudicing" the issue with pre-existing terminologies. It seems a useful approach to me, despite the difficulty of "praise" rolling off the contemporary tongue.
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1. CRASH

 		  CRASH has been a very disturbing event in many ways. It isn't the emphasis on definitions and the skepticism about net art as something different, as something significant, as art. That was to be expected and I am grateful to Shawn Brixey and Ken Goldberg for the sometimes thankless task of organizing these "frank and useful discussions," as Madeleine Albright might say.

I think what was most disturbing was highlighted early on in the discussions when Charles Altieri asked a very appropriate question. What is the language of praise for this work. It was a way of asking how do you care or why should we care about net art without saying why is this great art or why is it as good as Sol Lewitt or how is it different from or the same as video art, etc.

Yesterday, Anne Wagner summarized much of what had been said the previous day, and two things stand out. One was her understated but passionate sense of the importance of art to a civilization and the other was the requirement-I don't think this is too strong a word, although I don't mean to imply any imperiousness at all-that art have some criteria, in the broadest sense, as to why it matters and at least a tentative sense of how to evaluate it.

Despite my oft-stated concerns about descriptions becoming prescriptions, I think the symposium has been valuable for its challenge to the assumptions, which Anne pointed out those of us within the field sometimes accept, perhaps even unconsciously, as second nature. Perhaps the art historians in the group will some day care-or not-about net art in different ways than I do, but I think it is important to attempt a language of praise. Critical praise to be sure.

Lev Manovich and Peter Lunenfeld, among others, have offered up a very sophisticated language of critical praise in their essays and postings to various lists. To my mind, they are tackling the issue raised by Martin Jay, who suggested at one point, if we think about net art as "not art," the answers are either that net art is not good art or that it is art that challenges our traditional assumptions about art and may require us-and enable us-to modify them.

For my part, as I wandered through the fabulous Sol Lewitt exhibition last night, not only was it literally thrilling to grasp the context for some of the works I walk by everyday at the Walker, but it made me reflect about why I get a similar thrill when I engage net art.

Also last night, Randall Packer shared some of his current speculations about the year 2000-the year zero-in relation to Malevich's ideas about total art. Zero is a moment of absolute renewal. It made me think about a line from Tom Stoppard's play, "In Arcadia," which is set in the present as well as the beginning of the Enlightenment period, which has given rise to so much of the present. He has one of the Enlightenment-era characters say words to the effect, "This is the best of all possible times to be alive, when everything we thought we knew is wrong." This new millennium is a zero moment, a moment of profound renewal, when everything we thought we knew is wrong, whether it is that a .com company that loses millions of dollars every year can have a market capitalization greater than some of the largest industrial companies in the world, who actually make something, including money, or whether it is an art of connectivity and an art of computability that challenges what we think we know about the rules of art. Nevertheless, we need to find a language of praise, about why we care about net art. --February 19, 2000

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2. CRASH links

   Symposium on Critical and Historical Issues in Net Art
http://digitalmedia.berkeley.edu/netart2000.html

Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective
http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/exhib_detail/00_exhib_sol_lewitt.html

Peter Lunenfeld, "The Digital Dialectic"
http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/leobooks.html

Lev Manovich
http://jupiter.ucsd.edu/~manovich/home.html

Zakros interArts (Randall Packer)
http://www.zakros.com/


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sins of change discount

   "Choose" to "engage" in the sins of your choice. Discounted tickets are available before March 10.

Walker Art Center and The Kitchen announce an International Conference

SINS OF CHANGE: MEDIA ARTS IN TRANSITION, AGAIN

April 6-8, 2000 Walker Art Center
Minneapolis, Minnesota

As older forms of media such as film and video converge with new digital technologies and networked communications, we are challenged to expand and redefine our critical understanding of the media and its intersection with the social, cultural, and educational institutions in the 21st century. The conference Sins of Change: Media Arts in Transition, Again brings together curators, academics, and artists from around the world to share their perspectives on the issues underlying the state of media arts in transition, again. In addition to two full days of panel discussions, the conference includes individual artist presentations, a dialogue with dancer-choreographer Bill T. Jones and interactive artist Paul Kaiser, and a keynote lecture by the noted philosopher Pierre Lévy. A concluding performance by the group Negativland is not included in the conference fee.

Before March 10 Full Conference $120 ($80 Walker members and students)

After March 10 Full Conference $150 ($100 Walker members and students)

To order tickets by phone call 612.375.7622 or register online at
www.walkerart.org/salons/sinsofchange/ Call 612-375-7610 to receive a brochure. Full conference schedule and list of participants can be found online at
www.walkerart.org/salons/sinsofchange/
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