In che modo oggi gli artisti usano Internet nelle loro opere?

Texts
DISNOVATION.ORG, Shanzhai Archeology, 2015-2018. Courtesy: the artists. Photo: Seraina Wirz. Installation view, exhibition Escaping the Digital Unease at Kunsthaus Langenthal, 2017

Valentina Tanni. L’uso artistico delle reti telematiche ha una lunga storia, che ha avuto il suo picco con il movimento della Net Art nella seconda metà degli Anni Novanta e primi Anni Zero. Esaurita la spinta avanguardistica, e dissolti movimenti e correnti (compreso il controverso Post-Internet), cosa resta oggi? In che modo oggi gli artisti usano Internet nelle loro opere?

Domenico Quaranta. Da un lato il Post-Internet ha cancellato con un colpo di spugna gli ultimi residui della specificità mediale, facilitando l’emergere di artisti che portano i linguaggi e le culture digitali davanti a un pubblico più ampio, trasversale e globale. Per molti aspetti positivo, questo processo ha però danneggiato la riconoscibilità del fenomeno e la compattezza della comunità che l’ha fatto fiorire, riconducendola alle dinamiche individualiste del mondo dell’arte.
Tuttavia sono restio a vedere in questa transizione un passaggio senza ritorno. Le pratiche di networking e la Rete come piattaforma produttiva e distributiva sfidano ancora i formati e le logiche del mondo dell’arte; e, nonostante i suoi cambiamenti, la Rete non ha ancora smesso di sorprendere: blockchain, browser alternativi, mesh network, bot e intelligenze artificiali, deep web, residui strutturali della vecchia Internet lasciano aperti degli spazi a un uso dal basso, radicale e corrosivo delle reti.

In Valentina Tanni, “Internet e gli artisti. L’opinione di 5 esperti”, Artribune, January 30, 2020.

New Media Art vs Mainstream

Debate, Quote

For those who want to see the war of worlds in the making, an interesting debate is taking place this month on the CRUMB mailing list. The discussion responds to a recent review of the book Art And the Internet (Blackdog Publishing, 2014), written by Pac Pobric and published on the Basel edition of The Art Newspaper. Pobric blames internet art for “provincialism”, and writes:

“Artists have been making work on the internet for more than 20 years, but it is scarcely seen outside of small circles. It is virtually nonexistent in galleries and museums, and is seldom for sale at auction. Because the work operates at the margins of the art world, it lies in the suburbs of cultural conversation. Few artists break into the mainstream, and those who do rarely take the internet as their primary interest—Seth Price is a good example.”

If you don’t subscribe to the list (which is recommended), it’s pretty hard to lurk in, so I add here a direct link to the online archive for June 2014.

Below a couple of catchy quotes:

“The ongoing mainstreaming of new media art has many benefits, not least of which is to engage a new generation of artists and curators with the intellectual toolkit of art historical methodologies (and vice versa.) But something is being lost when new media art is denied existence as a legitimate or discrete subject; when it is assimilated into the art world only one-by-one as “contemporary” artworks and not studied as the collective tangled mix of media/artworks/technology/theory/industry/practice/community that it is.” Richard Rinehart

“We should not be frustrated by ignorant articles of people writing for the Art Market, which has other interests. Over the last fifty years, media art has evolved into a vivid cultural expression. […] We therefore should not stop communicate, that digital art is able to deal with the big issues of our time, all thematized on festivals and meanwhile 200 biennials all over the world. We should not count on the art market, but we should remind our tax financed museum system (in Europe) that it is their job, by law, to document, collect and preserve the relevant art of the time.” Oliver Grau