[iDC] Fwd: death of the artist

[nat muller]

hi all,

trebor asked me to fwd my response to his *death of the artist* post.  
i just subscribed 3' ago so now have to wade my way through your 
various postings.  ;-)

cheers_

nat

Begin forwarded message:

> From: nat muller <nat at xs4all.nl>
> Date: February 9, 2006 14:46:55 CET
> To: Trebor Scholz <trebor at buffalo.edu>
> Subject: Re: Invitation
>
> hi trebor,
>
> thanks for passing this on.  just came back from the berlin 
> transmediale.  you raise interesting issues in your post.
>
>>
>>  But it is still hard for traditional narratives
>> to wrap their head around ideas of an expanded practice (not aimed at
>> the museum)! Should we, along the mid-90s theme of the death of
>> everything, claim the death of the artist?
> i think it would be more productive to claim the death of the curator 
> - at least as we know it or have known it.  i really think (wishfully 
> perhaps) that the era of the grand *god* curators is over.  that's why 
> so many shows feel so archaic.  with distributed (or as you put it 
> *expanded*) practice comes a distrubuted/networked aesthetics.  the 
> grand dames and messieurs of the (traditional) art world have not 
> really gotten around that one. within a new media or networked context 
> (that term sounds archaic as well), curators are somehow required to 
> work differently: scratching the surface or being content with 
> *representation* just doesn't do the trick any more.  you need to get 
> more involved: from the tech, to the production to the presentation, 
> to the contextual noise impregnating the technologies or issues 
> artists work with.  hmm...i think i would rather call for the death of 
> *clean*curatorship or death to the *armchair curator*.  ;-)
>
> so defintely time for the *editors of this world to leave your 
> downtown cubicle or university capsule, go out, have some air! See 
> what really happens in the world. We should edit that Wikipedia 
> entry!*
> actually, i think one cannot stress enough the importance of situated 
> practice, and reference to what is happening in the *real* world, and 
> what material facts on the ground are, so to speak.  especially when 
> the art world likes to take on complex and sensitive subject matters 
> such as scopic regimes in the middle east; political conflict, and so 
> on and so forth. often the attempts to genuinely engage in an 
> interesting way into these debates result in regurgitating images we 
> see everyday on the news...yet presented in a white cube. art and 
> responsibility?  is that opening a can of worms?
>
>>  The
>> role of the curator has changed along with that of the artist. The 
>> media
>> art curator is not exclusively the ‘middle person’ between artists and
>> museums or galleries anymore. Curators do not merely organize
>> exhibitions and edit, filter, and arrange museum collections. Now, her
>> practice includes facilitating events, screenings, temporary 
>> discursive
>> situations, writing/publishing, symposia, conferences, talks, 
>> research,
>> the creation of open archives, and mailing lists.
> yup: long live the networked culture worker!
>>
>>
>>  Many emerging
>> practices can be experienced at media art festivals like Transmediale,
>> Ars Electronica, Dutch Electronic Art Festival, or ArtBot
> though one has to point out that the rigid format of those festivals 
> (the symposium, the panel, the exhibition, the performance) has become 
> almost as institutionalised as the idea of the museum itself.  anyway, 
> i am a bit obsessed with this idea of format at this moment: how to 
> break it within a festival setting.  are these festivals *working* at 
> all anno 2006?
>
>>  Venues for new media practitioners are not
>> predominantly festivals or museums but virtually distributed 
>> communities
>> such as the one that we inhabit right here.
> true.  but how to you reach out beyond your community?
>
>
> best wishes_
>
> nat
>
> ||_______--|||
> nat muller ||| free-lance curator | critic | delight-maker | foodie
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>