[spectre] Re: SPECTRE Digest, Vol 43, Issue 32

[Garrett Lynch]

 > From: Heiko Recktenwald
> It is incredible, that the ONLY convincing internationally known
> political art against Abu Graib etc is by good old Botero, who is
> believed to paint for society ladies. Maybe he was never unpolitical
> with his fat officers etc.
>
> Net.art seems to be brain.dead,

Why, because it refuses to comment on / be dragged into a bad political 
situation?  I think most net.artists recognise that even attempting to 
comment on politics, war, east /west relations results in more often 
than not:

a) clumsy art (usually of the type of personal belief system of one 
type or another disguised as art).
b) ends up communicating the wrong message to the wrong people.

net.art is far from brain dead or dead for that matter regardless of 
what the majority of contemporary art seems to want to do, push it to 
the margins now that they have amused themselves for all of a few years 
with it and capitalised on it with publications which seem to replicate 
each other in content in the most part.  some of the best net.art has 
been produced in recent years however we hear less and less about it as 
it comes through smaller channels of diffusion - good / bad, yet to be 
decided really. but the fact that this exhibition shows all kinds of 
work alongside each other is a good thing, it shows that some curators 
have a wider vision of contemporary art and are not afraid to reflect 
all of its facets.  it means we can move beyond this juvenile state of 
forever sticking metaphorical fingers up at the rest of the art work - 
how many painters or sculptors feel the need to do this to new media 
art?


 > From: "Armin Medosch"
 > abstract --> retreat into 'pure' form instrumentalized by neo-
 > conservative government for the construction of nationalist cultural
 > identity as export commodity.

absolutely and this is sad to see, particularly since net.art is so 
young and really only at just the beginning of what it can achieve but 
keep things in perspective, if you look at contemporary art over the 
last century you see that this happens in cycles.  Duchamp broke aware 
from commodity art, it returned and then you had dramatic shifts again 
such as land art and conceptual art (I'm sure I'm skipping lots of 
others), later video art broke away again but ironically that actually 
ended up turning it into even more of a commodity.

net.art and new media being exhibited alongside what they term 
'classic' art is a good thing and it will change but change is good.

a+
gar
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