MEDIA AND ETHICS, Helsinki 09/96

[abroeck@v2.nl (Andreas Broeckmann)]

Adele Eisenstein writes:


- AN INVITATION FOR PROPOSALS TO -

an Ars Baltica Project

MEDIA AND ETHICS
of the contemporary critique


A SYMPOSIUM AND GATHERING FOR CRITICS AND ARTISTS
in the field of photography, multimedia, video, installation and performance



Helsinki,  September 12th-14th, 1996

@
Organisers:  Arts Council of Finland, MAP (Media-Art-Photography) Project

Programme Coordinator:  Tapio Makela  <director@kaapeli.fi>

Producer:  Adele Eisenstein  <adele@caesar.elte.hu>


MEDIA AND ETHICS
of the contemporary critique


CONCEPT
The symposium in Helsinki will be a gathering of critics and artists from
the Baltic Sea countries and the surrounding region. The main topic under
discussion is new media as a twofold challenge. The first challenge focuses
on the potentialities of emerging art spaces, such as www, cd-rom and
telematics. The second challenge is to discuss these media as critical
forums and dialogical spaces. How do traditional museums, galleries,
newspapers and other mainstream media react to these changes? What types of
alternatives have been developed?

Discussion of ethics in the new media culture is a central theme of the
symposium. If defined as one's personal politics, ethics of the
contemporary critique deals with choices, which for the artist are
questions of inclusion and exclusion. As ethical discourse is dangerously
close to moralistic discourse, the symposium foregrounds questions of free
speech and free artistic expression.


SUBTOPICS
(1) Media: Space;  (2) Media: Theory and Tradition;  (3) Ethics;  and
(4) Artists and Critics I/O

(1) Media:Space
Medialization, art becoming communication and vice versa, is a challenge
for tradtional ways of making and evaluating art. How are museums and
galleries suited for media art - or for performance? What are the new
characteristics of space that cd-rom, interactive installations, world wide
web, or art in the city space create? How should critics view, feel, smell,
and listen to these spaces and rewrite them?
Workshops: (a) Theories of space;  (b) Museums and galleries: ruins or new
methods?;  (c) From infocult to critical strategies

(2) Media: Theory and Tradition
Artists using new media are combining techniques of visual arts, cinema,
video and performing arts, yet their theoretical background may be from one
genre. These complex situations require awareness on the part of the critic
to use multiple interpretive strategies. Are such new genres as cd-rom
production, interactive theatre and computer animation suited for film
critics, visual art critics - or do we need media art critics?
Workshops: (a) Research as media critique (with particular attention to
different traditions of art history, cinema studies, cultural studies and
aesthetics);  (b) Art work as research and theory;  (c) A dialogue between
critics and performance artists

(3) Ethics
In the days of personal satellite tracking devices, it is possible to tell
one's precise geographical location. What do you do with that kind of
information in media culture? What kind of borderlines are drawn in
cyberspace? On whose terms can one do art work using communication
technologies? Media culture allows cultural remapping and both painful and
pleasurable dislocations. As national borders dissolve (if they do) and
modernist states make room for post-industrial societies (if they do),
there is a desire for fresh ideas and points of view (if there is). What
kind of ethics will influence the future critique? How are artists and
critics dealing with censorship and conservative ethics?
Workshops: (a) Social and environmental changes, crises and critique;
(b) Ethics and politics of critique

(4) Access and Interactive Critique
The question of access to the media for artists, potential audiences and
critics is crucial. Are you I/O (In or Out)? How does high technology in
the arts affect artists in the post-communist countries. After access - can
there be interactive critique, where critics' texts are criticized by the
artists? Will criticism transform into cultural dialogue in the next
millenium?
Workshops: (a) How to use www and other Internet tools for critical
discussion: a hands-on introduction;  (b) Interactive and independent
critique: a dialogical space;  (c) Cultural difference and national
politics in the age of optic fibre




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V2_Organisatie * Andreas Broeckmann * abroeck@v2.nl
Eendrachtsstr.10 * NL-3012XL Rotterdam * t.+31.10.4046427 * fx.4128562
<http://www.v2.nl> <http://www.dds.nl/n5m> <http://www.v2.nl/east>

coming up: DEAF96, the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, 17 - 22 Sept 1996