[spectre] the media art center of 21C

[mike stubbs]

yes it is useful andreas thanks and to all the others contributing - 
precipated through the icc reality

ive been lurking for a while but have found this conversation, the 
most essential within spectre yet - yes its risen

im contributing now to talk of my current situation which 
encapsulates and has been informed by many aspects of that discussed

2 years ago i moved from scotland to melbourne to take up the post of 
head of exhibitions at acmi - the austrailan centre for moving image 
http://www.acmi.net.au/  (yes skip the intro but please do check out 
white noise) - it had always been my intention to scale up many of 
the principles, methods and programs (from the days of hull time 
based arts - one of the earlier groupings of hybrid or post 
discipline practice and publication)  into a bigger 
org./inst./complex/center

some of this has been possible - whilst much of my time has been 
fighting the media art corner and challenging my own assumptions on 
the sustainability of the 80's/90s models  - likewise i have had to 
learn the protocols and differeneces between leading a medium sized 
indy working as part of a team in a government (state of victoria) 
funded institution which provide our major income - is very public 
focussed and makes plain its public offer as something non-complex 
and legible in how it mediates itself locally  - this is as much due 
to changes in economy, the savvieness of those constituting the 
publics and the local history of film culture

  - in its inception (mid 90's) the architects of acmi looked to 
european media art models - whilst selling it locally on it being a 
moving image centre  and its amalgamtionof previous orgs such as the 
state film centre - all this in an ongoing  tumultous (and often 
negative) political/media debate and a conservative (kennet) - labour 
party (bracks) election switch between capital build and ownership of 
operation and related ongoing costs

acmi has been through lots of change and is now re-positioning itself 
with re-defined brand, program mix and operation - new media and art 
remain in that mix along with the bigger fish in the (easy to 
identify) food chain - film, tv and games - the descriptors used have 
to be simple to understand and most discussion has been around new 
media  - as both intrinsic / historic / innovative - but from some 
quarters veiwed as obscure or dead ....(they obviously dont see 
lifesciences as new media)

based on melbournes premier inner city central site, federation 
square -  we have huge attendances and its worth noting that more 
than a half are non specialist - by that i mean a combine of city 
tourists/cafe goeers/culture vultures - the intention for  a new 
program mix will be to grow this audience, maintain stake holder 
interest broadly and continue with rigor/(relative)radicality (and 
maintain loyalty from the types of people subscribing to spectre !) - 
all this, whilst demonstrating accessibility to audiences not versed 
in specialised languages - rolling out and educating in genres of 
moving image display and non consumptive viewing habits i.e ; new 
processes and forms of hybrid art experience

my own position (also as an artist) is that 'new media' lost its 
distinction around the time my 70 yr old dad got a pda and gps in his 
car - with a foot in modernism (like my dad, a scientist) - new media 
is still a useful catch term  for clusters of emergent 
technologies/arts practice - this does not detract from individuals 
wishing to continue to use the term to describe process or outcomes, 
or the importance of those histories,  clearly we still need 
specialists for producing, curating, teching, displaying (with 
related bugets) - but perhaps like photography - artists who use 
media no longer need to associate with the specific technology - i.e. 
artists who use photography  - but do not call themselves 
photographers - but alike video art its distinction seems no longer 
viable as a sole premise for huge physical centres of public 
experience (it is once again fair to note the paradox of centres 
initially set up to promote technologies and cultures that would 
diffuse the need for physical centres) - so what can centres of the 
future offer ?   recognisable places for meeting and commune, 
art/intellectual stimulation entertainment and spectacle, interaction 
and interface with education, advocacy off the top of my head

  - many of these issues will be discussed at 'vital signs' an rmit 
organised conference hosted at acmi next week, initially set up to 
debate the meaning of the australia councils decision to disband its 
new media art board earlier this year (to be replaced with an 
'inter-arts' unit), this is where yukiko (keynote speaker) and myself 
will be, its shame not to be at ars and i will take this opportunity 
to wish all my friends and colleagues a pleasant and frutiful time 
there

and now the plug
we opened 'white noise'  exhibition 2 weeks ago (which i hope proves 
i have not 'sold out') and in november the dfm (deutches film museum) 
originated show about the life and work of stanley kubrick - this is 
the begining of an increasingly varied and market tuned program - 
which will continue to need relate with an avant guarde of which i 
recognise with age i am decreasingly part of...


best from the southern hemisphere
mike

http://www.vitalsigns.rmit.edu.au/2005.htm



>friends,
>
>there has been an intensive exchange over the weekend and i think it 
>might be interesting to mull over some of the points in detail. time 
>is limited though, so i will try to respond only to things which i 
>have stronger opinions about.
>
>saschaB
>(...)i fear that if we continue to elaborate on '(new) media 
>culture' we are just hauling around a dead body. (...)
>most of those qualities sound good to me, but leave out the 'digital'
>in culture, it's just a common part by now, imho there is no need to
>set it apart and deal with the computer-based/-run part of culture
>much differently than with the rest, it's just too ubiquitous for
>that. the borders run along other territories now.(...)
>
>abroeck: i do and i don't agree; we have had long discussions here 
>at transmediale about the former sub-title 'media art festival', for 
>pretty much the same reasons that sascha points out; what we have 
>decided to use now is 'festival for art and digital culture', on the 
>one hand because we believe that the festival is neither 'about 
>media' or 'about technology', but it is about 'art' and the cultural 
>context within which a certain trend of art is evolving - we can 
>that 'digital culture', for want of a better word: it means that 
>there is an extensive stratum of cultural practices (culture 
>understood not in a high culture sense, but in a broad sense as 
>forms of human production of meaning, alongside whatever somebody 
>does ...) which are connected to digital technologies and the gamut 
>of styles, ideas, possibilities they bring. i agree that this 
>'digital culture' is now so prevalent that it makes little sense to 
>imagine it as a distinctive territory. yet, i believe that it is 
>_useful_ to communicate what we are doing to a wider public with 
>this term, which in a way only connotes that cultural practices 
>today are influenced by a development spurred by digital 
>apparatuses. for many people, this is not so clear, and transmediale 
>is, hopefully, a place where people are inspired to think critically 
>and imagine the possibilities that contemporary culture engenders. 
>given the amount of ignorance about the cultural impact of digital 
>technologies, i think there is a need to use this, strategically, 
>heuristically. - maybe 'digital' here is a way of pointing out that 
>things are changing ... - i know this is a crutch, and i fully agree 
>that 'media', or even worse: 'new media', have become completely 
>vacuous terms that - however, are still being used quite broadly and 
>thus have currency, whether we agree intellectually, or not.
>
>saschaB:
>if the driving logic behind those institutions was in its core
>technological, wouldn't it be an error to base future development on
>technology (call it '(new) media' if you wish), again? wouldn't that
>lead to confusing means and ends *again*? still, nearly everybody
>seems to be so used to the paradigmatical fixation on 'media' that it
>obstructs their clear vision.
>
>abroeck: sascha, as i say, for me the point is that the technologies 
>have a set of effects which are worth exploring, and which in fact 
>are being explored by some artists; it does not mean that i try to 
>push everything that is going on through this filter, but i think it 
>is an important field of cultural production that deserves 
>attention. as you suggest when talking about differentiation of 
>different social roles: there is a pragmatic reason for approaching 
>this area as 'specific'. - i agree that it might very well be that 
>ICC and ZKM were originally based on a paradigm of 'technological 
>distinction' ('the fact that an artist works with digital 
>technologies makes him relevant for our centre'), rather than on a 
>more flexible cultural paradigm that will shift with the nodes of 
>cultural production. (excuse the vagueness)
>
>
>ericK:
>So here the question would be do we finally dissolve the category of
>"art" and replace it with a broader cultural logic that looks at the
>aesthetic, semiotic, social and political qualities of the kind of media
>activity that is going on, or is there still a value in keeping such
>disciplinary distinctions and professional identities in place?
>Or, is the notion of art possibly counterproductive in dealing with the
>wider issue of contemporary media cultures?
>
>abroeck: for me, this is not a question; art practice does not 
>become obsolete just because the means of cultural production 
>change; art is an always vague concept that describes a 
>transgressive, obstructive, rupturing cultural practice which breaks 
>away from the expected, the normalised, and forces experiences that 
>could not be had otherwise - because of this, 'art' is a highly 
>subjective category which we will be able to argue about forever. 
>for me it is kind of an _epistemological_ concept, and it remains 
>useful to describe practices, events, _works_, that fall outside the 
>realm of the useful, the normal, the pragmatic, which culture needs 
>to affirm in order to create a common ground for social 
>communication. - therefore, the notion of 'art' remains highly 
>relevant as a _strange_ way of being in, and experiencing, the world.
>
>
>abroeck: the point about the 'media art centre of the 21st century' 
>and its 'place' is for me a quite pragmatic one - it is not at all a 
>question of 'where it should be', because i firmly believe that this 
>is mostly a local affair that needs to be developed and thought 
>through on a local level - in each of the cities that have been 
>mentioned, we can probably imagine a whole range of different places 
>that would find their users, audiences, purposes.
>what is a question for me is how 'art practice in digital culture' 
>is developing (please, excuse the auto-reference), and how it is 
>possible to change (or replace) existing institutions, so that they 
>help to house, support, foster the artistic work that wants to be 
>housed, supported, fostered. in my experience, these are often very 
>practical questions: a studio space or a workshop for a limited 
>period of time, a context where different artists with different 
>fields of expertise can come together, collaborate, exchange ideas, 
>present work in progress, and possibly also reach a wider, even 
>international audience. (i like the notion of the 'incubator', or 
>'flow heater/Durchlauferhitzer) - a lot of this cannot be done 
>through the Net, a lot of it happens in real spaces, however 
>disparate, distant and diverse they may be. - there is public 
>funding for the arts, and what kinds of institutions should we 
>develop with that funding so that they best serve artistic 
>production today?
>
>shulea:
>I want to make a departure from TH's suggestion of festival
>model (the top down and include all, the main and the fringe).
>I am pondering a mode a la meshnetwork relay system.
>In the set up of meshnetwork, let's consider water(air) being
>the basic (human-machine) rights. <Sure, challenge me about who's
>pumping the air.> Then, how this relay system can be set up -
>which recycles the resources, thus made self-sustainable.
>
>abroeck: what i think is interesting is that such a relay system is 
>not tied to stable instituions - something that i thought, again for 
>pragmatic reasons, when we did some of our european networking in 
>the late 90s; such meshworks and relay systems are hybrid, they can 
>combine machines, individuals, groups and institutions of all 
>different shapes and sizes - and each of these connections can cause 
>great difficulties when you enter into more complex communications 
>between the nodes, given the huge differences in the resources and 
>ideas that people have. which is why many of the more complex relay 
>projects are managed by medium-size institutions that can work both 
>ways, with more fluid segmented structures as well as with the 
>docking stations at molar institutions. - however, i don't see 
>projects that have a noteworthy life-span and that offer financial 
>and organisational support to artists, which are not rooted locally 
>and have the possibility to maintain some sort of stable structure 
>and income. (which brings us back to the ICC where corporate 
>interest leads to a withdrawal of exactly that income...)
>
>
>mmmh, is this helpful? don't know...
>
>-a
>
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