Book review of Beyond New Media Art by Domenico Quaranta, Link Editions, Brescia,

2013, free e-book or purchasable soft cover, 290 pages, ISBN 9781291376975

Published at On-Verge here:

http://www.on-verge.org/reviews/book-review-beyond-new-media-art/

Domenico Quaranta, a curator and art critic who regularly writes for Flash Art and

Artpulse, has just released a new book Beyond New Media Art that is particularly topical

and noteworthy, as it is very much in the current inclination to formally re-evaluate

contemporary art in terms of a developing post-media understanding. In it Quaranta

deftly juxtaposes Peter Weibel's notions of post-media against those of Rosalind Krauss

(who dismisses the post-medium condition) and Flix Guattari (who embraced a critical

and political post-medium condition), questioning their distinctions in a post-media world

in which perhaps it no longer makes sense to distinguish between art that uses computers

and art which doesnt. (page 212)

But perhaps it still does. Possibly there is something strangely cognitively dissonant in

the medium-specificity of computers themselves, as Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg

already in a 1977 essay suggest, with their understand that the Dynabook (an early

multimedia computing system) should be viewed as a medium in and of itself while

simultaneously containing the powers of most other media put together. Hence already

proposing the idea of the computer as metamedium.

But the focus of this book is tighter than that and begins by telling the history of the gap

between the mainstream curatorial contemporary art world and the so-called new media

art world. This little known history is the crux of this pertinently revised, updated version

of an earlier 2010 book Quaranta published in Italian, with the title Media, New Media,

Postmedia (Postmedia Books, Milan). Through the circulation of interviews around that

book, Quaranta contributed a bit to the heated debate outside of Italy concerning the

majority of powerful contemporary art historians and curators ignoring (in what seemed

like a blanket rejection) of new media and digital art per say, and their enforced taboo

against artists who address our era of digital technology head-on.

In an art world that seemingly accepts absolutely any hybridity, any material, any

theoretical model, any remediation, any critical inspection, and any aesthetic approach at

all - the extent of which Jed Perl in his recent book of collected essays Magicians &

Charlatans (Eakins Press, 2012) deems a condition of irony drenched, laisser-faire

aesthetics (page 15) - the peculiar question of the rejection of anything raises eyebrows of

concern. What peculiar and dastardly Luddite bias is at work here? And how can it be

eradicated in an era in which digital media are powerfully reshaping the political,

economic, social and cultural organization of the real world?

This problem is an oddity that has baffled me for over two decades, but now seems to be

waning, and this book both advances and celebrates that wane. Quaranta makes the point

that within a post-media art world, so called technology-based - or new media - art

(digital-based art now is more accurate to our times) has slipped back sideways into the

acceptable means of creating art, provided it does not (1) mention by name the

technological or digital, (2) describe itself as technological or digital, or (3) lovingly

point at anything outside itself that is overtly technological or digital. In other words,

technological or digital connected art is now acceptable to select art editors, curators and

critics so long as it is an art that dare not speak its name.

But we may question, how did we get to such an imprecise position today towards once

modernist conceptions of medium-specificity? Can it be merely an overreaction to foolish

technologically determinist positions? This book reviews that issue in depth, as it

explores some of the historical, sociological and conceptual reasons for the weirdly

under-recognized, even marginalized, position of the digital within recent art history. On

the other hand, the book is also an attempt to suggest new critical and curatorial strategies

to turn around this marginalization and to emphasize the topicality of art that touches on

digital media and the issues of the information age.

It does so by citing some key examples of the problem. For example, in 2010, this

marginalization dispute flared up around Nicolas Bourriauds out-of-hand rejection of

digital art in his statement about new medias impoverished appreciation of art history

and recent aesthetic and theoretical developments on the panel that Edward Shanken,

author of Art and Electronic Media (Phaidon Press, 2009 & 2011), conducted at the Basel

Art Fair. This was perversely odd, as Bourriaud often defends his metaphoric references

to networks and computer culture as inspirations for his own curatorial work, while

refusing the actuality of computers in art. This, what might at first assumed to be an

anomalous event of unwarranted tactical minorization of art and technology within a

technological society, has been the dominant trend. But in Basel, Shanken came up

vigorously against Bourriauds avoidance of the notion of medium altogether, while

Bourriaud pleaded willful ignorance, instead insisting on developing non-technically

determined notions for his curatorial agenda with terms similar to Krauss', such as

automatism and technical support.

We next explicitly saw this discussion fume up last year around Claire Bishops essay in

Artforum. These and further biased persuasions of powerful people within the art

institutions of the digital age, convinced Quaranta to rewrite his 2010 book and release

this extensive, very understandable and attention-grabbing book in English, only a few

months ago. It is a bit wispy on illustrations, but makes for remarkable reading, given the

wild swings in opinion and convoluted rationalizations that must be sat with here.

To situate us in this maze of new media marginalization, we must grasp Quarantas point

that now it is already too late to talk about a New Media Art in our time of post-

convergence, a convergence of every medium into digital territory (hence the relevance

of the term post-media). However, Quaranta goes to lengths demonstrating and analyzing

so-called New Media Arts appearance, early reception, rejection and recent reappearance

within the wider field of contemporary art. And he makes some keen distinctions in this

regard, for example defending the outmoded term Media Art, a term he says that is

particularly popular in German academic literature, extends the reach to all media: press,

radio, fax, telephone, satellite communications, video and television, light, electricity,

film, photography, and also computers, software, the web and video games. As

underlined in the online encyclopedia Medien Kunst Netz, launched in 2004 and edited

by the German scholars Rudolf Frieling and Dieter Daniels, the term Media Art forges a

tradition that goes from Man Ray to Nam June Paik to the current use of computers and

the web, while Digital Art covers at most a story that begins in the late sixties, the period

of the first experiments that used computers to make art. (page 23) But the book mostly

focuses on the last twenty or so years (generally the mid-90s on), and is thus foremost an

explanatory history book for people that were either too technophobic, too young, or just

not paying attention at the time.

Having actively lived and worked in the thick of things then, I can attest that Quaranta

basically gets the big history right, if, I suppose inevitably, somewhat partially. I

particularly was impressed by Quarantas ability to fairly accurately report on what

happened with new media and digital art both throughout European capitals and in New

York City. However, a few regrettable errors of omission were made, for example in

listing the history of art galleries that supported/support so-called new media art in New

York (starting with still striving Postmasters). Here one egregious error was Quarantas

omission of the work of Universal Concepts Unlimited, an early new technology based

gallery with a limited but fertile run at 507 West 24th Street between the years (and tears)

of 2000 and 2006. But the rise and fall of interest for mew media art within the museums

at the turn of the century is rather comprehensive, covering 010101: Art in Technological

Times at San Franciscos SFMoMA, Art Now: Art and Money Online at the Tate curated

by Julian Stallabrass, through BitStreams at the Whitney Museum curated by Lawrence

Rinder and Debra Singer, to Data Dynamics, also at the Whitney curated by Christiane

Paul, Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace at the Walker Art Center curated by

Steve Dietz (it toured six other venues in 2001), Game Show at MASS MoCA that was

curated by Mark Tribe and Alex Galloway from Rhizome, on to lesser known shows and

venues, such as Dystopia + Identity in the Age of Global Communications that was

presented at Tribes Gallery in New York and was curated by Cristine Wang.

After reviewing this history, Quaranta essentially concludes that this first wave of

acceptance of new media in the art world waned due to a combination of hubris and

blatant self-interest. The self-interest came in the form of often technology-related

corporate sponsorship. The hubris came from those making overly revolutionary and

technologically determined evaluations by way of claims to superiority based on the

wonder of technological newness alone, as we saw at times with the farcical claims made

for virtual reality, and for example with the always funny field of teledildonics.

But the major, systemic and deep failure that Quaranta points to (and here I corroborate

him), was that of the critical and curatorial art communities, with their failure to take an

informed and even-handed interest in art that uses technology. Thus such art in the mid

00s remained under-recognized, under collected and essentially disregarded. As a result,

many in the critical and curatorial field either unintentionally missed or intentionally

ignored much art that is not bound to, or only about, technology for its own sake, missing

or ignoring art that is content driven (as is required now, according to Quaranta), with the

technological component playing a crucial but secondary role. And this is what has

changed just in the last three years, a change that started with Christiane Pauls Whitney

show of Cory Arcangel, soon followed by some concentrated coverage of Arcangel in

Artforum and other art magazines.

The book basically winds up with Arcangel; pointing at a hopeful convergent new realty

where now we can accept so-called new media (or digital media) in art so long as it does

not speak its name. Unfortunately, Quaranta misses the best evidence for his thesis with

his exclusion of Wade Guyton, the digital artist who in 2012 received a rave retrospective

at the Whitney Museum, but whose name does not appear anywhere in the book. More

the pity, for with the financial success of Guyton in the collector sector (his works

regularly sell for more than $1 million at auction and privately and an untitled Epson

UltraChrome inkjet on linen of 2005 established an auction record for the artist when it

sold for $2.4 million at Christies New York in 2013) Guyton proves Quarantas end

point, utterly.

Not that Quaranta always and easily blames those damnable art critics who were unable

to grasp the equal universality and specificity of digital technology. Nor does he

uncritically praise those astute collectors and Whitney curators; as during the 2000 period

and before, new media artists (and some theoreticians) spoke and acted in conflicted

manner - some desiring understanding, sales, praise and acceptance within the art world -

while others fully rejecting such a goal, often insisting on putting first the technological

component of their work, happily remaining encrusted within the university context

and/or festival circuit, contentedly insisting on the freedom of the benefits of their

marginalization from the market - safe from within the confines of their techno-

ghettoization. So its been a bumpy ride all the way down, and thus, to explain this

colliding dynamic, Quaranta points us, kind of bizarrely, at The Painted Word, a

successful pamphlet on the art world published in 1975 by the American satirical writer

Tom Wolfe.

Quaranta retells how in it, Wolfe ironically describes the relationship between avant-

garde movements and the art establishment as a bizarre mating ritual, that takes place in

two stages: the Boho dance, in which the artist shows his stuff within the circles,

coteries, movements, isms, of the home neighborhood, bohemia itself, as if he doesnt

care about anything else, and the consummation, in which culturati from that very same

world, le monde, scout the various new movements and new artists of bohemia, select

those who seem the most exciting, original, important, by whatever standards - and

shower them with all the rewards of celebrity. (page 123)

I usually abhor such simplistic thinking such as Wolfes, as I find it massacres the subtle

layering of art ideas and art practices as they enter society at large. But Quarantas

conclusion is that such a consummation is finally at hand.

Joseph Nechvatal

joseph@nechvatal.net