Pete Hindle's Repository of Stuff

Media Art Undone

Panel Discussion: Timothy Druckley, Diedrich Dierdeirichsen, Inke Arms and Olia Lialina

Four presentations from each member of the panel aimed at offering alternative viewpoints around issues of whether the term Media Art is no longer relevant. This year was the 20th year of Transmediale and saw it change the subtitle of the festival from ‘festival of Media Art’ to ‘Festival of art and digital technologies’.

The Panel also discussed the position of ‘Media’ art within the wider umbrella term of ‘Contemporary art’ and what separations, cross overs occur between the two.

By all accounts this ‘discussion’ was a lot tamer than what I expected and a lot of time was wasted discussing titles and terms which should replace ‘media art’ to better represent art and new technologies. It’s not that I disagree with the argument, but I remain sceptical about whether a name really changes what something means.

The presentations from Dierdeirichsen and Druckley proved to be most interesting and most opposite. Dierdeirichsen representing (metaphorically) the gallery and contemporary worlds and Druckley speaking on a collective ‘we’ defining the media art community.

There was very little time left after all four speakers had said their part and therefore the discussion didn’t really get much of an opportunity to develop.

Overall it was quite a mediocre summery of a ageing topic, with a lot of unexplored potential.

Apologies for misspelling of names and words etc, im sure you get the general idea.