Cultural practice in the Internet
Access to the Internet
Whenever use of the Internet in Africa, Asia/Pacific and Latin America is discussed, the current restrictions to access unavoidably come up. Among others in our forum, Armin Medosch and Sue Williamson commented upon this. Williamson wrote, for instance: »For many artists in South Africa who do not have the money to buy the basic art materials they need to make work, the internet is still regarded as inescapably elitist.«
As important as it is to be conscious of these problems, a number of participants were also right in saying that one should complain less about the current state, and instead should much more intensively discuss possibilities which already exist, as well as the potential use of the Internet in the future. Because even in the less developed regions of the world, the medium is increasingly spreading. »The rapid pace with which its demographics have changed over the past few years is a revealing indicator.« (Olu Oguibe)
New structures of mediation and diffusion?
With the Internet exists for the first time ever a medium via which one's own cultural contents can be brought closer - at least potentially - to an audience of millions. One of the questions posed at the beginning of the forum was, if it has now become possible to avoid the established structures, i.e. the excluding mechanisms of the dominant art and cultural system? Can the Internet help to overcome the dichotomy between »curated and curating cultures«?
Beral Madra from Istanbul was one of the many participants who addressed this topic: »At least now the intellectuals of the curated cultures have a medium to discuss or to announce the sanctions imposed on them by the curating forces. ... I worked very hard to make myself and my art center known in the international art scene and to break through the prejudices of Western institutions; the process has put on speed as soon as I had a web-site...«
However, expectations of expanding one's own operating space should not be too high. Coco Fusco wrote, artists »face the problem of how to gain access to audiences in an overwhelmingly large virtual space where huge commercial entities have the advantage of controlling channels that put internet users in contact with the services and entities that interest them. All this to say that it is extremely difficult to break through hegemonic corporate control of the internet.«
Effects on the »real« art system?
Among those who commented on the question as to what degree the ÈrealÇ art system can be affected by the Internet was Gilane Tawadros, Director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA) in London. She doesn't believe that Internet can appreciably change the established value systems. »Not as long as the principal sites for the dissemination and validation of art works and of cultural values remain the art gallery and the art journal. There may indeed be a proliferation of discussions, art works and interactions among artists, curators and critics from different parts of the world on the Net and this is vital to shifting the cultural emphasis way from the 'centre'. But these discussions, artworks and interactions will remain peripheral to the established art world for some time to come. The real issue is not how these conversations on the Net will shift the 'status quo' of the established art world but rather how these cyber-networks can create another space where ideas and images can be exchanged in a fluid, dynamic and open way, in contrast to the conventional spaces of the art world which are becoming increasingly parochial, conservative and market-orientated.«
Art on the Net
Numerous projects were introduced in the forum, but there was still relatively little exchange about the specifics of art in the Internet. Most of the exchange was concerned with the Internet as a space for artistic activities in a general sense.
Kim Machan commented on this in relation to the festival MAAP (Multimedia Art Asia Pacific, in Brisbane, Australia), which she directs, and the cross-cultural network which came as a result of it. »The active space that the Internet provides is one that is responsive and one that can morph to accommodate creative dialogue. Artists do have a great empowerment of their web space purely by their control of design and having an upper hand with the technology over many curators coming into the space.«
Pedro Meyer dedicated more attention to the theme of Web-art, as he thought about what »ZoneZero«, the on-line photography center he created, actually is: »a Magazine? ... a Gallery ? or a Museum ? or a Library ? or Book Store? or Book? or Cultural Center? ... These are all metaphors of our analog world that somehow do not seem to fit exactly to our anatomy ...« »If Marcel Duchamp took a urinal and declared it was a piece of art, what stops me from declaring that ZoneZero is a work of art as well?« Meyer finds a number of the websites presented as art completely boring. The many effects created with the help of Photoshop filters are astounding. »But are they art? Have we now all become artists? is the notion of art as traditionally understood in need of some severe revision?«
José Tlatelpas believes that »the art and culture published in the web are not, by themselves, a different culture and a different art. The web works as a media to distribute the cultural products and services and, in the process, affects its development, style and way, not the essence.«
Networking
A further question at the beginning of the forum asked about the concrete uses of cultural networks in the Internet. A few interesting examples were brought up here, too, for instance »Culturelink«, a »Network of Networks for Research and Cooperation in Cultural Development«, introduced by Aleksandra Ivir, or the »Cultural Diversity Committee« of the ISEA (Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts), presented by Cynthia B. Rubin.
On this topic, however, there could have been much more as well as a more practice-oriented exchange of experiences, since networking has fundamental meaning for interaction in the Internet. This is true for institutional cooperation as well as on informal levels. In her piece on Internet communities, Cynthia B. Rubin wrote: »To insure the place of alternative voices on the Internet, we need to actively work to construct new communities of independent artists, theorists, and curators.«
José Tlatelpas asserted that »the basics of the discussion still lies in the interactivity between the Occidental World and the 'South'... I think this is not the center of the problem. What about the relations of Africa with Latin America?... between Asia and Native America...?« It would certainly be important to deal more intensely with the so called »horizontal« communication and interaction on the Net in the continued debate.
Ravi Sundaram already touched on this topic in his statement: »The political impulse of a Third World cultural dialogue are as relevant as ever. The questions have, however to be reposed, outside the rhetoric of state managers and global policers of cultural politics. A critical intra-Third World cultural communication was always hampered by the old system of sovereignty (which privileged states). With the net it is possible for us to actually speak to each other, on a regular critical basis. This is a cheap technology of translation, but our tools of dialogue should respect the peripheral nature of our societies and reject the temporal acceleration of the metropole, not by repeating the old rhetoric but by a modesty and an intelligence.«
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Digital discourse / market mechanisms  |
Project direction: Gerhard Haupt - haupt@uinic.de
© House of World Cultures, Berlin. 1998/1999