Monday, February 6, 2012

Basics and contexts of displaying new media art

The two narrate peculiar characteristics that distinguish new media art from other conventional forms, including its questioning of time and space, its immateriality, and also consider the inherent challenges of the medium - incorporating video art, conceptual art, socially engaged art and performance art - in order to broaden the scope of a comparative study vis-à-vis traditional art forms.

An introductory essay, quoting curator Steve Dietz states: “The works, difficult to classify according to the traditional art museum categories determined by medium, geography, and chronology does present the curator with novel challenges involving interpretation, exhibition, and dissemination.”

The core idea behind ‘Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media’ is to re-position and reorient relevant curatorial practices, offering new media art curators a wide array of artistic tools. It offers curators a route through the hype around platforms and autonomous zones by following the lead of current artists' practice in order to dispel the false notions that envelope our vision of new media art.

New media projects and exhibitions are innately complex. They frequently involve much higher levels of public participation and interactivity. The book provides an intelligent, well-informed, and creative analysis for a better understanding of this fast-changing field and exciting opportunities it offers.

The issues raised in the timely documentation of a dynamic form of creativity are quite pertinent and relevant to art and artistic expression as whole - as basic as ‘What can be termed new media art, and is this art in the first place?’ and ‘How much technical expertise does new media art curators need?’ to as complex as ‘What might we imbibe from artist-led/ collaborative modes of working?’ and ‘Do new media art practices have to fear institutionalization?’

The first part of the book specifies the characteristics that are inherent to new media art and explains how it traverses traditional boundaries of space, time, taxonomy, disciplines etc. The next half investigates both modes and ways of curating new media artworks - inside and outside institutions, fares and galleries. Even though they come with certain challenges and idiosyncrasies, alternative curatorial spaces harbor an opportunity to collaborate and share knowledge, to mix disciplines.

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