the question:
subject: how was mixedmedia?
date: 6/3/06 9:23 PM
body: hi jan,i checked your blog hoping that you’d write something about mixedmedia. so how was it? did you like it? were there many people?
just curious,
have a great weekend,
x
my [slightly edited] response
subject: Re: how was mixedmedia?
date: 6/4/06 7:42 AM
body:hey xre: mixedmedia. the reason i did not blog about it is that i was kinda dissapointed.
and i did not feel like dissing it either. and in all fairness, i could not have done so, since i only went there for one of the three days. and we did not even stay for the evening.
to be honest, i thought this was a rather confused and confusing festival.
not very focused. i found it to be kind of a stretch to have mediaart/software art, digital architectural art and electronic music all covered in one festival. the common ground being the digital, evento di cultura electronica. i think a small festival would do much better to focus on one of these aspects. or if you want to cover all aspects of digital creation where was graphic art? where animation? etc. to me this felt haphazard. it was hard to understand and not really communicated why this selection was made and what the disciplines had in common.
then the mediaart/software art they exhibited did not exite me. it was of course great to see jim campbell‘s work. again. but his work is of course very well known for being shown in zkm and everywhere else really. and then maybe the piece by dotdotdot.it. i liked it, a sort of interactive dancefloor that people used very exitedly. and of course there is always the problem, how do you show software art…
but even more fundamentally i thought most of the art they showed was too sleek, too clean, too meaningless. it was all works that focus on doability, yet ignore message. art where functionalities and interface are more important than narrative. and lately i get much more exited by narrative, by message. again. a return to narrative after abstraction got boring somehow. and then i like a downplayed, homemade aesthetic. slick is boring. i realise i just interchanged sleek and slick . which is it? i think both work, or, hmm, maybe my english has reached its limits.
but to illustrate my point, watschendiskurs was THE strongest piece in linz last year imho.
the conference part was kind of hard to understand for me, because of the italian. but again, it was kind of the same modus. anyone have a go. first something about mediaart, then architectural, then music. i think mixedmedia would profit hugely from much more focused curating. the location hangar bicocca is excellent. outrageous even. the potential huge.
maybe next year it will be better.
greetz jan
ps: tom sachs was a great tip. thank you so very much. excellent, relevant, outrageous work. if only the prada-clad ushers did not spoil it for me …
and here are a few more of my photos from mixedmedia. with more to come under that tag.