[spectre] media art and dictatorial regimes
Armin Medosch
armin at easynet.co.uk
Wed Jun 25 16:11:01 CEST 2008
The currently running exhibition in beijing, synthetic times, and the
holding of isea 2008 in singapure both raise the question of the
compatibility of media art with dictatorial regimes. I am not commenting
on the quality of individual art works, and surely a show as big as the
beijing one contains at least a few good artworks, yet the field as a
whole must ask itself the question if it has any potential of resistance
vis-a-vis the cooptation of 'digital creativity' by regimes practicing
totalitarian capitalism - especially as western countries themselves are
on the tipping point of becoming electoral dictatorships whereby
politics is replaced by technocratic crowd management and other
techniques of 'authoritarian democracy'. it is clear that in times of a
funding crunch many people are happy to show any work anywhere, but the
institutions and individuals participating must ask themselves where
they stand when they show work in an exhibition which on the whole is a
sanitised version of media art from which all notions of dissens and
social critique have been purged. if this is business as usual then it
is not my business, sorry, I could not leave this unnoticed ...
armin
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