Panel Statement

Panel: Artistic Identity on the Net

In this presentation, I will re-apply Benjamin’s critique of a ‘Mythic’ technological/historical progress, developed in his Passagen-Werk of the 1930’s, to the celebratory rhetoric which currently surrounds the Net. I will also examine the adequacy of Lyotard’s notion of the ‘Sublime’ — as the experience we have when faced by the necessity to represent for ourselves an experience which lies beyond our possible means of comprehension — when applied to representations of Cyberspace. Is such a postmodern rejection of master narratives simply a re-invention of the ‘Mythic’ denial of individual agency in the face of technological progress?

• John Byrne is a senior lecturer in contextual studies at the Department of Design and Visual Arts of John Moores University (Liverpool). He received a B.A. in Fine Art from Lancashire Polytechnic and an M.A. in Art History from Leeds Polytechnic. He is currently researching the history of British video art for a Ph.D. thesis, entitled Video Aesthetics – a Materialist Critique: British Video Art from 1974 to the Present.