Artmedia VIII – From Aesthetics of Communication to Net Art (Conference)

November 29 – December 2, 2002 – Paris, France
http://www.olats.org/artmedia8.html

Reviewed by Maia Engeli, CAiiA-STAR
maia@enge.li

Artmedia is among the first conference series posing theoretical questions as well as looking at experimentations regarding art and communication technologies. It was founded 1985 by the philosopher Mario Costa at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Salerno and was held there seven times in a roughly bi-annual rhythm. There seem to be different reasons why artmedia VIII was held in Paris this year, one is the possibility to broaden the circle of influence, another is the fact that Paris is currently a place of most interesting new electronic art activities.

Artmedia VIII was co-organized by the French artist Fred Forest, the Italian Philosopher Mario Costa, and the French writer and theoretician Annick Bureaud.

They first defined the theme and the rough sequence and special focus of the sessions and then looked for the appropriate speakers to invite. The idealistic goal was to have a 50:50 ratio between theoreticians/philosophers and artists, older generation and younger generation, foreigners from many different parts of the world and French, women and men. In some aspects intention and reality did not quite match. The number of female presenters was very low. There were no representatives from Eastern Europe, partially due to a rather tight budget that only allowed a very small number of foreigners to be invited. This then led to an obvious French domination. The conference was attractive because it brought together established key personalities of the field such as Mario Costa, Fred Forest, Roy Ascott, and Pierre Lévy, and artists and theoreticians from a younger generation like Oliver Auber, Andreas Broeckmann, Maurice Benayoun, Tina Cassani and Bruno Beusch, Steven Dietz, Edourdo Kac, Wolfgang Strauss, Victoria Vesna, and many others.

During the first three days 45 presentations, most of them in French with simultaneous translation, were given. The conference was concluded on the forth day with a panel discussion. The topics of the sessions progressed in a succinct way from history to body, cortex and networks. Personally, I found the first sessions were very hard to follow, because philosophical issues were presented in a rather complicated manner, with too few references to actual art works or other familiar examples. In contrast the sessions on "video games and hybrid arts", "net art in the museum context", and "architecture, urban design and communication technologies" were very illustrative, interesting, but in some respects also a bit superficial. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the very professional presentation of Bruno Beusch and Tina Cassani, who gave an overview of mobile gaming, and also the enlightening speeches about curating net art by the curators Steve Dietz (Walker Art Center) and Jemima Rellie (Tate Gallery). The third day, Sunday, was the most exciting day of artmedia VIII, because finally some rather provoking thoughts were expressed. It started with Pierre Lévy’s presentation of a taxonomy for cultural design. This talk was not entirely appreciated because of the lack of chaos and dynamism in his new approach. Andreas Broeckmann criticized Lévy’s simplification or idealisation of cyberspace and that there is not necessarily a collective intelligence but it could as well be a collective stupidity. In later sessions Victoria Vesna expanded the discourse about networks to include nanotechnology and Roy Ascott added the aspect of shamanic practices. Francois Soulages contribution on the subconscious, was, it seems (I was unable to attend) another highlight of the day. There were also a few small exhibitions in front of the lecture hall. The exhibition on the history of artmedia and aesthetics of communication showed numerous interesting historical documents and to an artmedia-newcomer like me communicated a sense for the continuity in the ongoing discourse since 1985. There was also access to an online exhibition with works selected by invited curators and symposium participants, but it was basically impossible to find time to look at it. (It is to be hoped that this exhibition will be made accessible over the internet.)

Thanks to the perfect organisation and the tight supervision by Annick Bureaud, everything worked and all the sessions started and ended on time. The conference was free and attracted a loyal, mostly French audience over the three day "marathon". Even on the forth morning, Monday, a reasonable crowd showed up for the final discussion. This was held in French and no translation into English was provided, therefore I attended it only for an hour and then left, exhausted from the French philosophical lingo but without knowing if any concluding statements or important questions for the ongoing discourse were elaborated. All in all there were only few surprises at the conference. One reason could be that there was no call for contributions, but the organisers directly chose the speakers. The schedule was very tense, too many speakers, too little time for questions, too short lunch breaks. Nonetheless the program and conference format allowed networking and interesting discussions in many of the over thousand restaurants of Paris - especially after walking through streets illuminated by most wonderful Christmas decorations.