[spectre] media art and dictatorial regimes

[Alex Adriaansens]

Dear Armin, your email about artists working in China is questioning  
the intentions of artists participating in the Synthetic Times  
exhibition in Beijing, and artists working in countries with  
problematic regimes in general. I assume you have informed yourself  
and talked to many of the artists about this and that from this  
communication you decided to post your email? Nevertheless I get the  
feeling that your email is based on some quick conclusions and  
generalisations of how artists in general should behave when setting  
up contacts and projects in countries with regimes that are  
questionable, please correct me when my conclusions are also to hasty.

As you know in 1996 V2_ was one of the initiators of the Syndicate  
East European network. This network focussed on engaging artists and  
organisations by facilitating an online infrastructure and by setting  
up events / meetings in Russia and other east European countries that  
were in difficult transitions (these meetings were preferably done at  
the geographic political hot spots).

I also remember that you yourself went to St. Petersburg during the  
ISEA meeting in the early nineties with your Stubnitz project, this  
while also Russia can still be understood as an authoritarian country  
with repressive methods. Nevertheless I’m sure you had clear motives  
for engaging artists and cultural producers in and from Russia.

You are right if you would say that any comparison with Russia in the  
nineties is not correct when understanding China in 2008. Indeed the  
world is more complex then at first sight and indeed the developmental  
history of certain countries and regions shows us different angles to  
look at what is actually happening or changing in certain regions and  
how these transitions come about and how one can engage with that. It  
is specifically this developmental context in which to understand  
contemporary transitions that can motivate people to engage and setup  
networks in countries and regions that are under the rule of strict  
regimes.

Artist should surely ask themselves why they want to engage and with  
whom they will work with, and what their presence might mean for them  
and their partner. V2_ has been active in China since the last 5 years  
and we have in the meantime set up a quite broad network varying from  
independent artists, media activists like the Chinese bloggers, to  
independent art spaces, and a national institution like the National  
Art Museum Of China (which is an important organisation for  
transforming the role of musea in contemporary China).

V2_ is not just looking for spaces to do one time large exhibitions –  
even though these are important as well. We’re also setting up  
workshops with students and artists, and we are hosting young Chinese  
artists, curators and professors to the Netherlands / Europe – to let  
them participate in for example our bi-annual DEAF festival where they  
can connect to an international network and take part in and fuel the  
debates around contemporary social, cultural and artistic topics.

It is easy to judge the intentions of artists and institutions but you  
can often be sure that they are clearly motivated of what they are  
doing and how they do it.

China is in a fast transition and many independent artists and art  
groups, organisations in China are actively reflecting this process  
and its social, cultural and political effects. They operate and work  
in international networks and V2_ supports some of them and  
collaborates with them. To give you a few interesting angles: try to  
get hold of the magazine called Urban China - http://magazines.documenta.de/frontend/index.php?IdMagazine=140 
  or http://www.urbanchina.com.cn/ ; or take a look at the research of  
the Dynamic City Foundation (http://www.dynamiccity.org/ ) in Beijing;  
or the Long March Project based in Factory 798 in Beijing (http://www.longmarchspace.com/ 
  ) etc. it gives you a glimps of contemporary artistic practices in  
China reflecting social and cultural issues and connecting to an  
international debate.

I would advise you to just go there and engage people, see what is  
happening and grasp the complexity and paradoxes and ask yourself  
again if the exhibition Synthetic Times is a value free exhibition (or  
as you wrote “an exhibition which on the whole is a sanitised version  
of media art from which all notions of dissent and social critique  
have been purged”). And after your visit to China read again the  
catalogue (btw. have you read the texts from for example Arthur  
Kroker, Jordan Crandall or some of the project descriptions like that  
of Kr+cF, and can you imagine the implications of what some of the  
works express within the context of China).

I’m sure your next email will be significantly longer and express more  
of the complexities of the matter then your first email, at least I  
hope so. You raised a topic that is on the tongue of many people but  
few write about it since there are no simple answers, so I would  
suggest that instead of judging those who have been there it would be  
good to hear about the experience people had while being there.

Regards Alex Adriaansens (V2_)




On 25.06.2008, at 16:11, Armin Medosch wrote:

>
> 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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V2_
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Netherlands
tel: +31.10.2067272
fax: +31.10.2067271

Alex Adriaansens
dir. V2_
www.V2.nl