Panel Statement

Panel: Emerging Art Practices

Prologue: Instead of drowning in the waves of postmodernism, formalism has surfaced in terminal cultures. The genealogy of techno-formalism leads to the German Bauhaus. I present flashbacks of 1920s techno-utopias. Epilogue: Is formalism in media arts an erasure of identity, work, space? Instead of bipolarizing dystopias and utopias, content and form, the epilogue discusses acceleration and excess as strategies of deformalization. Flashy citations from works by Troy Innocent, VNS Matrix, and others are included.

• Tapio Makela (Finland) is director of MUU, a Helsinki-based artists’ organization for media arts, performance and environmental art and has a B.A. from the University of Turku. He has written essays and given lectures on media arts, is coordinator of a Kaleidoscope project EARNET (European Art Network), and project manager of Breaking Eyes, a Nordic media art exhibition.