Curating, Communication & Open Source:
Interference | Edited Forum
FORUM #003
New Media Space
The Internet — on the one hand — blended seamlessly into our life. Internet Art — on the other hand — stayed separated from the “art scene”. What causes this separation? As often stated by people working in this area it is first and foremost the “classical art field” that is unwilling to look over its own borders and to recognise art that incorporates (new)technology in general. But this argumentation reveals only the first in a series of problems emerging from viewing and reflecting Media and Internet-based Art from the “inside”: the focus on technology. This focus opened doors in the nineties when technology — and especially the Internet — promised several utopias. But now it is a boarder closing off the outside world. Often enough technology is covering the weakness of artistic projects or is — even worse — the solely focus.
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FORUM #002
Real Space Exhibitions
The context in which new media art is shown is important: Be it festivals or DIY/hacker-labs, what they have in common is to give those forms of art a truly “avant-garde” aura that maybe had it’s time but is now obsolete. New Media Art is an art form as is painting, sculpting etc. and deserves to be recognised like that. It maybe easier to rest on old cliches, but sticking to this “we are on the edge of it all” — behaviour makes urgent developments impossible. Above that New Media Art is normally not shown together with works of Fine Art. If it is shown in a gallery/museum context it is — most of the time — separated from the other works. This is something that broadens the gap even further.
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FORUM #001
Defining Contexts
What does “Open Source” mean? It is a term derived from programming where programs are not only distributed as executables but also with respecting source code. The idea behind this is that everyone who understands the respective programming language is able to find errors, make improvements and develop a better version of the program for users. Transferred to curating this means that we have some ideas how this show should run but are open to ideas from the outside. To us the cooperation with the community is more important than being lonesome curators/artists who don’t share their experiences. Art is a form of communication so why shouldn’t curating be one, too?
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