Curator Statement

GOETHE INSTITUT

This exhibition gives an outline of German and international artistic production in the field of new media. It includes 25 works produced between 1997 and 2000 on film, CD-Rom and the Internet. In parallel, Media Art Action (1960 — 1980) and Media Art Interaction (1980 — 2000) provide a CD-Rom panorama of the history of media development.

‘Update 2000’   -an update of theme-based software- presents the paradoxical and multi-facetted beginnings of media art, where current affairs are very much present including fashion, trends, or political, social and artistic contexts. An endless flow of commercial visual codes, productivity outbidding, or ironic radicalization of systems and contexts in the media; the refusal to believe that our information society implies progress; social normality and a power struggle in an Orwell-type ‘Big Brother’ state; a new liberal economy, artistic and social practices in the network community, emphatic concept of participating in the web and its limits; illustrations of these numerous contradictory aspects of the information society.

• ZKM, Zentrum fUr Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany