***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 15:16:18 +0200
   [From]: Janet Swartz <JSWARTZ@museodemonterrey.org.mx>
     [To]: Cultural Exchange via Internet <forum1@hkw.kbx.de>
[Subject]: Re: [forum1] web curating/exhibiting

Dear Pat, Gerhard, and everyone:

I am writing from the Museo de Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. We have
recently had the pleasure of presenting a lecture by Benjamin Weil,
Director of New Media, ICA London and co-founder/curator of €da'web, and
inaugurating the second edition of our program "Virtual Tours: Thematic
proposals in Internet about art" online.

Mr. Weil presented his essay "Readme.txt - Browsing online art: An
exploration of various directions in networked art projects", wherein he
makes a curatorial selection with approximately 30 links to diverse art
works on the Net and places them within a theoretical framework while
beginning to loosely classify them. Among the many interesting points
that came out of his conference, he too commented on the difficulty of
investigating new works and artists outside of the existing "net.art"
community, due in part, to the extensive growth of the Internet, and the
fact that many artists maintain their own Web sites, which are not
always easy to find through customary searches. Mr. Weil suggested that
the traditional system of cultural institutions and art galleries may
continue to be necessary so that artists' works are commissioned,
promoted, and easily found.  Furthermore, the issue of conservation
remains unresolved due to plethora of complications in preserving Web
art such as software and the lack of compatibility with newer versions,
"parasite" projects whose content depends on other existing Web sites,
etc. In the end, more questions were raised than answered, but we must
not loose sight of the fact that net.art is still in its infancy.

The current "Tour" can be accessed at
http://www.museodemonterrey.org.mx/english/mediateca/tours/docs/weil/index.html 
and is available in both English and Spanish.  The previous project is
also online: "Cybermuseology - Taking the museum to the Net/bringing
digital media to the museum" by Steve Dietz, Director of New Media
Initiatives, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

I applaud all of you in your endeavors to be propositive and take risks
as we all search for answers.

Yours truly,

Janet Swartz
MEDIATECA ARTE ACCESO
Museo de Monterrey
Tel: (52 8) 328-6278  Fax: (52 8) 328-6070
http://www.museodemonterrey.org.mx



Pat Binder <pat@uinic.de> wrote: 
Fri, 08 Oct 1999 07:37:29 +0200:

> hello everybody,
> hi Christy,
> 
> "A second idea has to do with the curator as talent scout.  I think many
> curators depend too heavily on their existing networks. Exclusionary
> tactics are often not tactics at all.  People don't have enough time or
> impetus to search for new voices.  When selecting work for My Millennium
> and when creating a syllabus for a trace Writer's workshop I felt I
> should seek out and include projects from around the world." (Christy
> Sheffield Sanford on Wed, 06 Oct 1999)
> 
> First of all congratulations for your project's approach!
> 
> What I would like to ask you and the other fourm's members, if there
> shouldn't be a web-specific curating-exhibiting modality. The audience
> usually doesn't take the time to really get through the proposed
> web-works, since online-time is money. On the other hand it is really
> important, since the audience is spread around the world, to give some
> hints of what the work is dealing with, or what one should be looking
> for, or what technical feature is being used in an original way, or some
> references to previous works (maybe "real" works of the same artist, or
> a specific cultural context the work should be framed in, etc.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> pat