[spectre] The Goldsmiths Radical Media Forum "Disrupting The Gaze: Part 1 - Art intervention & the Tate Gallery". By Marc Garrett.

[marc garrett]

Sorry for any cross posting...

The Goldsmiths Radical Media Forum "Disrupting The Gaze: Part 1 - Art 
intervention & the Tate Gallery". By Marc Garrett.

Thursday, February 21, 2013, 5:30 (New Academic Building 102)
https://sites.google.com/site/mcradicalmedia/

Marc Garrett will present the first section of his two part paper 
'Disrupting The Gaze'. Part one 'Art Intervention and the Tate Gallery'.

“The word “art” can conjure up a vision of objects in an art gallery, 
showroom or museum, that can be perceived as reinforcing the values and 
machinations of the victors of history as leisure objects for elite 
entertainment, distraction and/or decoration - or the narcissistic 
expression of an isolated self-regarding individual.” (Garrett & Catlow 
2012)

We live in a world riddled with contradictions and confusing signals. 
Our histories are assessed, judged and introduced as fact yet there are 
so many bits missing. We accept what is given through sound bite forms 
of mediation and end up using misinformation as our cultural 
foundations, and then we build on these ‘acquired’ assumptions as our 
‘imagined’ guidelines. This critique studies how contemporary artists 
are challenging these defaults through their connected enactments and 
critical inquiries of the existing conditions. It highlights a continual 
dialogue involving a historical struggle between what is condoned as 
legitimate art and knowledge, and what is not. It looks at a complexity, 
embedded in our culture and its class divisions in Britain. And draws 
upon struggles going as far back as the enlightenment, the industrial 
revolution, colonialism and slavery, to present day concerns with 
neoliberalism and its dominance. The Tate gallery is used as a reference 
point and a site of focus for these various historical and contemporary, 
political and societal conflicts.

The artists’ and art groups featured, include Graham Harwood, Platform, 
Liberate The Tate, IOCOSE, Tamiko Thiel, and Mark Wallinger; each has 
delivered a particular (unofficial and official) mode of art 
intervention at the Tate Gallery. Whether these artistic activities 
concern economic, ecological, historical, political or hierarchical 
conditions, they all connect in different ways. They meet, not through 
style or as part of a field of practice, but as contemporary artistic 
practitioners exploring their own states of agency in a world where our 
‘public’ interfaces are as much a necessary place of creative 
engagement, as is the already accepted physical ‘inner’ sanctum of the 
gallery space. However, their work has become equally significant 
(perhaps even more) than, the mainstream art establishment’s franchised 
celebrities.

In keeping with Gregory Sholette’s recently, published vindication for 
those artists hidden away where the art establishment’s light rarely 
shines, “when, the excluded are made visible, when they demand 
visibility, it is always ultimately a matter of politics and rethinking 
history.” (Sholette 2011) This paper draws upon a wider, contemporary 
art culture and audience existing out there. However, the artistic 
discoveries and discourse coming out of this independent art culture is 
not reflected back to us. Instead, we receive more of the same, marketed 
franchises. The central, mainstream version of contemporary art has 
found its allies within a global and corporate culture, where business 
dictate’s art value. Yet, there is a spirit of artistic emancipation 
that exists and is thriving out there. It is self styled, self governed 
and liberated from the restrictive norms that dominate our mediated 
gaze, and this is what this paper is mainly about.

Marc Garrett is co-director and co-founder, with artist Ruth Catlow of 
the Internet arts collectives and communities – Furtherfield.org, 
Furthernoise.org, Netbehaviour.org, also co-founder and 
co-curator/director of the gallery space formerly known as 'HTTP 
Gallery' now called the Furtherfield Gallery in London (Finsbury Park), 
UK. Co-curating various contemporary Media Arts and hybrid exhibitions, 
projects nationally and internationally. Co-editor of 'Artists 
Re:Thinking Games' with Ruth Catlow and Corrado Morgana 2010. Hosted 
Furtherfield's critically acclaimed weekly broadcast on UK's Resonance 
FM Radio, a series of hour long live interviews with people working at 
the edge of contemporary practices in art, technology & social change. 
Currently studying Art history Phd at the University of London, Birkbeck 
College.


The Goldsmiths Radical Media Forum is a lecture series sponsored by the 
Department of Media & Communications at Goldsmiths, University of 
London, and is currently being organized by PhD student Corey Schultz 
(email: c.schultz AT gold.ac.uk). Like the diversity of the department 
itself, our aim is to create a wide range of speakers from a variety of 
fields related to media and communications, including (but not limited 
to), film, journalism, art, and cultural studies.

The topic for the 2012/13 year is "Radical Media Forum: Media 
Experiments." The aim is to showcase various kinds of innovative work 
that are currently being developed in the discipline, and these 
experiments can therefore be conceptual, textual, visual, methodological 
and technical. We are interested in presenting transdisciplinary work on 
media as well as work that crosses the theory-practice divide. At the 
same time, we want to feature theoretical or empirically-driven 
presentations that experiment with ideas and concepts around "the 
media," or with ways of "studying media."