[rohrpost] circualting contexts--CURATING MEDIA/NET/ART | CONT3XT.NET.NEWS #18.07

[CONT3XT.NET]

circulating contexts--CURATING MEDIA/NET/ART
Catalogue Presentation and Discussion
http://curating.cont3xt.net

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TIME & LOCATION

15 October 2007, 7 p.m.
Depot , Breite Gasse 3, 1070 Vienna
http://www.depot.or.at

LECTURES

On Contemporary Art Galleries and Internet Art
Luis Silva, curator, theorist and freelance author
http://publishedandcurated.blogspot.com

The Politics of Curating
Joasia Krysa, curator, lecturer in "Art&Technology" at the University of
Plymouth
http://people.i-dat.org/detail/?jk

Kurator Software, Version Beta 1.0
Duncan Shingleton, digital artist, programmer
http://www.shingleton.org

Curating Media/Net/Art
CONT3XT.NET, Vienna-based platform for (New) Media Art
http://curating.cont3xt.net

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EXTENDED CURATORIAL PRACTICES ON THE INTERNET

On October 15th 2007, CONT3XT.NET presents the catalogue "CURATING
MEDIA/NET/ART" and discusses contemporary concepts of curating and
displaying (New) Media Art.

Curating Internet-based Art in a media of its own developed into a
multifaceted communication process on content among users of all backgrounds
and provenances. Net curators are deemed "cultural context providers", "meta
artists", "power users", "filter feeders" or simply "proactive consumers".
"Curating (on) the web", as termed it in 1998 already, not only creates a
public space for Net Art protagonists, but also enables them to participate
in creating their own public space, which often takes on the form of
discursive models. Handling technological developments and knowledge about
existing channels of communication are integral parts of net curating, as
are providing resources, initiating collaborations and remaining in contact
with international networks.

Expanding the curators' field of action--allowing them to incorporate more
than the supervision, contextualisation and exhibition of artwork in
museums, galleries or off spaces--is closely linked to the media-specific
characteristics of art produced on the Internet. Internet Art does not
necessarily have to be presented in a customary exhibition space, because as
long as there is a computer with Internet access, it can be accessed
anywhere any time. In many cases, Net Art emerges through the participation
of an audience with diverse approaches to the Internet, which comments on,
transforms and disseminates the artworks in many different ways. In
addition, the somewhat rather communicative mechanisms on which this art is
based are simultaneously its subject, thus allowing it to function as a
reciprocal "feedback loop" between the original author and the user.

In the 20th century, the numerous postulations on the end of authorship and
the end of concept of the "work of art" as a definable entity with a
definable set of limits (Werkbegriff) gave way to a discourse--which, in
turn, is constituted through its own development and reception processes--as
they also accompany the advancement and visualisation of these very
processes. In this vein, curators are those "who set up contexts for artists
who provide contexts".

In contrast to the late 1990s when Net-based Art was celebrated as
avant-garde spectacles, today Technology-based Art views for the attention
of a broader public interested in art. Higher demands are made on curators
to include these art forms in conventional exhibitions, which simultaneously
poses several problems: "curating immateriality", a term postulated a few
years ago, is faced with immense technological challenges and at present
theoretical groundwork is being laid for providing ways of addressing
Technology-based Art that extend beyond viewing them as "Techno Art" and the
tacit implication that "The Medium is the Message".

BOOK ORDERING
http://www.bod.ch/index.php?id=1130&auto_id=116414

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This is a newsletter by CONT3XT.NET (ZVR: 999765999, Vienna/Austria). If you
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newsletter". CONT3XT.NET was founded in 2006 as a collaborative platform for
the discussion and presentation of issues related to (New) Media Art by
Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl (a.k.a. Carlos Katastrofsky) and Franz
Thalmair.