[ISEA2011] Panel: Beryl Gra­ham – How De­mo­c­ra­tic? New Media Art and Par­tic­i­pa­tion

Panel Statement

Panel: From New Media to Old Utopias: ‘Red’ Art in Late Capitalism?

CRUMB, the re­search cen­tre CRUMB at the Uni­ver­sity of Sun­der­land in the UK, has a deep in­ter­est in how the ‘be­hav­iours’ of new media art, such as con­nec­tiv­ity, com­putiv­ity and in­ter­ac­tiv­ity, pre­sent op­por­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges for cu­ra­tors. In­ter­ac­tiv­ity, in par­tic­u­lar, high­lights how be­hav­iours of in­ter­ac­tion, par­tic­i­pa­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion have often been im­por­tant in art, in­clud­ing ac­tivist art, con­cep­tual art, and more re­cently, re­la­tional aes­thet­ics. This pre­sen­ta­tion con­sid­ers art­works and ex­hi­bi­tions in­clud­ing those by Hans Haacke, Chris Bur­den, Rirkrit Tira­vanija, Les Liens In­vis­i­bles, Josh On, Pad.ma, Har­rell Fletcher and Mi­randa July, and Heath Bunting. It sug­gests a crit­i­cal de­f­i­n­i­tion of types of par­tic­i­pa­tion which draws on both po­lit­i­cal and net­work vo­cab­u­lar­ies.
crumbweb.org

  • Beryl Gra­ham is Pro­fes­sor of New Media Art at the School of Arts, De­sign and Media, Uni­ver­sity of Sun­der­land, and co-ed­i­tor of CRUMB. She is a writer, cu­ra­tor and ed­u­ca­tor with many years of pro­fes­sional ex­pe­ri­ence as a media arts or­gan­iser, and was head of the pho­tog­ra­phy de­part­ment at Pro­jects UK, New­cas­tle, for six years. She cu­rated the in­ter­na­tional ex­hi­bi­tion Se­ri­ous Games for the Laing and Bar­bi­can art gal­leries, and has also worked with The Ex­plorato­rium, San Fran­cisco, and San Fran­cisco Cam­erawork. Her book Dig­i­tal Media Art was pub­lished by Heine­mann in 2003, and she coau­thored with Sarah Cook the book Re­think­ing Cu­rat­ing: Art After New Media for MIT Press in 2010. She has chap­ters in many books in­clud­ing New Media in the White Cube and Be­yond (Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Press), The­o­riz­ing dig­i­tal cul­tural her­itage (MIT Press) and The ‘Do-It-Your­self’ Art­work (Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­sity Press). Dr. Gra­ham has pre­sented pa­pers at con­fer­ences in­clud­ing Nav­i­gat­ing In­tel­li­gence (Banff), Mu­se­ums and the Web (Van­cou­ver), and De­cod­ing the Dig­i­tal (Vic­to­ria and Al­bert Mu­seum). Her Ph.D. con­cerned au­di­ence re­la­tion­ships with in­ter­ac­tive art in gallery set­tings, and she has writ­ten widely on the sub­ject for books and pe­ri­od­i­cals in­clud­ing Leonardo, Con­ver­gence, and Art Monthly. berylgraham.com