From Literal to Metaphorical Utopia: Space and Time in the White Cube
Symposium:
- ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art
- More presentations from ISEA2011:
Session Title:
- From New Media to Old Utopias: ‘Red’ Art in Late Capitalism?
Presentation Title:
- From Literal to Metaphorical Utopia: Space and Time in the White Cube
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Panel: From New Media to Old Utopias: ‘Red’ Art in Late Capitalism?
In its original meaning u-topia means the lack of topos. This condition is inherent in the new media artwork. Due to its immaterial quality and non-object status, the new media art is not physically tied to a specific space unless displayed. Thus the white cube, turned black for the occasion, hosts its virtual and ephemeral image, or, in other words, it becomes the topos of its physical realization. Whereas the non object-based art is a predominant tendency spanning through the 20th century, the time-based media introduce a new multi-layer spatio-temporal condition within the work. The moving image, derived from the cinematographic paradigm, has by definition its own virtual spatio-temporality which unfolds during its projection.
As far as the software and net-based creations are concerned, supplementary layers are automatically added. When the artwork is installed in a physical space, a new dimension appears: the real installation space and time as experienced by the spectator. Since both virtual and real spatio-temporal layers coexist simultaneously, the work evolves within this dialectical pattern. This literally “u-topian” condition results from the utopian (in the sense of revolutionary) nature of the new media art that rises above questions of unique prototype, controlled reproducibility and object ownership; hence, a new genuinely utopian artistic condition emerges. To speak in Marxist terms, it is the a priori negation of the commodity fetishism that imposes the literal, as well as the metaphorical, utopia. Thus, new media, the pillar of the late capitalism public sphere, becomes the new field of revolutionary cultural practices. I will further analyse this paradoxical -or rather coherent, according to Frederic Jameson- condition where the Marxist logic is fully implemented in the most emblematic form of the post-modern art: the new media.