Panel Statement

Interactive art was the hype of the nineties, while today it is mostly criticised as a utilitarian or capitalistic form of engagement. But is there a space of potential resistance, or ‘im-positioning,’ with interactive art? Rather than forcing behaviours, can it activate an experience and practice for multiple yet singular styles of being and becoming? What are the potentials, politics, and ethics involved in designing, interacting with, and understanding works that attempt to do precisely this? This panel brings together a mix of philosophers, practitioners, curators and critics to discuss the creation of ethical im-positions, a minor politics, within the field of interactivity. This is not framed in opposition as such, but, as De Certeau proposes, as a minor tactic that might ‘elude discipline without being outside the field in which it is exercised.’ Tactics differ radically from strategies, which construct dualities and are therefore implicitly linked to power structures. The spaces we wish to work towards must always be contingent, or ‘in-process,’ rather than establishing a set ‘position.’ In this discussion-style panel, Andrew Goodman and Nathaniel Stern (co-chairs) will discuss with Lone Bertelsen and Andrew Murphie both the philosophical and the political imperative of shifts in thinking about interactivity, as well as speculate on techniques that might be employed within new media to create radical engagements. At stake is the historical import of interactive and media art, as well our future productions, rehearsals, and understandings of its work.

• Andrew Goodman is a visual artist and an occasional writer and curator whose work encompasses sculpture, sound, video, electronics and performance, drawing on Sci-fi explorations of the trans-human body. His art centres on expanded experiences of the body, with a focus on an ecological approach to participatory practices. Andrew’s current PhD research, Parasitic relations: thinking beyond interactivity, investigates noise as a generative tactic within relational art events. He currently teaches in art theory at Monash University. andrewgoodman.com.au