art for the couch potato
I am certainly in an untraditional position to critique or even speculate about the 2008 Whitney Biennial. I have not been to New York to see it. Rather, my Biennial experience this year is one that is entirely virtual. Everything I know about the 2008 Biennial I learned from the internet.
This year marks the 74th Biennial, a summary of contemporary art from the past year. Situated in the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Park Avenue Armory, 81 artist’s works will be on display. Interestingly, a great deal of the work is site-specific. Boasting the catch phrase, “where American art stands today,” Biennial advertisements do not speak highly for a thematic exhibition that emphasizes lessness, slowness, ephemerality and failure.
Unable to arrive at 945 Madison Avenue sometime before March 23, the curious long-distance viewer can experience the Biennial several different ways:
1. The Whitney has created a Flickr account with a collection of photographs from the exhibition. Not necessarily remarkable images, the photographs do provide the viewer with an idea of the installation and preparation processes for the show.
2. On March 6, 2008 the New York Times uploaded an interesting interactive feature on their website that allows viewers to explore the exhibition virtually. This feature is particularly engaging — allowing the viewer to see a panorama view of both the third and fourth floors of the museum.
I am curious to observe how exhibitions in the future will continue to take advantage of online tools to promote and proliferate art work. I recognize that there is certainly no substitute for seeing a work in person, but the accessibility of internet media is making it easier to view and understand artists without ever stepping foot in a gallery or museum.
This idea of internet accessibility is one that is not particular to the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Photo District News recently released their PDN 30, a collection of 30 emerging photographers. Via their website, viewers can browse through each artist’s portfolio and read brief biographical information. Despite boasts of this topic as the cover story for the March issue of PDN’s monthly periodical, the sleek website offers access to full images as well as direct links to each photographer’s website. The virtual gallery is an amazing tool for spreading information quickly and without much hassle.
To close, the curators of the Biennial (Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin) seemed to get it right when citing ephemerality as a foundational element for artwork this year. When the internet makes art viewing as easy as flipping channels on the television, why bother leaving the couch?
March 12th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I’ve been playing with programming my Badnews installation so people could walk around in it… unfortunatly I am not as strong in that area as I used to be, so it’s sort of on hold.
It’s really exciting, the thought of being able to bring an installation to people anywhere in the world, I know it loses something, but if people can get atmosphere out of videogames maybe they can bring the same willingness to disbelieve their actual physical position to exploring art.
Gallery MMO?
March 12th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
This is interesting. I’ve often found that installation images via the web are wholly problematic. Yes you can view the said exhibition from a global perspective, and yes that is the point of the Internet, but I’ve often found these photographs manipulate much of what is actually seen in an exhibition. This may seem obvious but what I’m really getting at here is that these second hand, even tertiary, accounts can have the effect of propaganda, making the work look better than it actually is.
It is this virtual ideal experience that I have come to detest, even more so when blogging. The screen, the monitor, does sometimes show the tonality of a photograph better than a physical experience but it can also misrepresent the physicality of an artwork that is otherwise corporeally incredible. In fact I question how well electronic submissions and projector critiques represent, for the lack of a better word, the “spirit” of an actual photograph/artwork.
However, look at what this technology has done. It has allowed my words to reach your eyes and create an interesting if not important discourse.
March 14th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Living a great distance from New York like Suzy, I do not believe I will be able to experience the Biennial in-person and the online format respectively allows me to do so. Because of this, the Biennial reaches an audience much more vast than ever thought possible; one does not need to ’step’ through the Whitney’s doors in order to ‘view’ the Biennial. For that reason alone it is truly incredible.
That being said, I feel that viewing the exhibition in-person remains a wholly different experience versus viewing the exhibition on the 24″ monitor I am currently using to experience it with. I want to walk through and move my body. I want to press my eyes close to the pieces and view the detail, the brush strokes, the pixels, the finish, and countless other interactions. The computer does not allow me to do this.
Perhaps most importantly, what the New York Times has done allows the Whitney Biennial to reach a much broader audience than ever imagined; art for the masses and not only for the museum goer or gallery hopper.
For this I applaud what they have set out to do and successfully accomplished.
March 15th, 2008 at 4:32 am
Noel, I’m not sure you can say it is worse. I wouldn’t say it is better, either.
It’s simply different. I heard a teacher call it Illuminated Media once, and I like the term, as a more technical one. It’s simply bright, screen, still or moving images. It’s only if we assume that it’s going to be the same or similar to a book or print or physical place that we start getting ourselves into holes.
Personally, when I make an image for print, I make it for print. When I make an image for screen, I make it for screen. I admit, for the most part, I make my images for screen these days. I don’t care as much about the print, I know that the majority of people, from my grandmother to a curator is probably going to be seeing it on the screen. Actually, I’m probably going to look at it most on the screen, for the average picture I take. Even if it’s on film, the first step after getting the film returned is scanning it.
I don’t see it as a misrepresentation. How could it be? It’s never been presented in any other form. Would I then call a print of the same image, created after the digital version, a misrepresentation? I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. It’s simply a different representation.
If you make two prints of the same image on two different types of paper, one glossy and one matte, is one a misrepresentation? No, but one probably works better for your personal feelings about the representation of the image in general. I think it’s the same for any method of presenting it. There are certain images I like better as giant prints in a gallery, certain images I like better as tiny prints in a handmade book, and plenty of images I like to present digitally, quick and dirty or nicely organized. As long as it’s being taken into consideration, I don’t have a problem with it.
March 23rd, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Keeping it brief as it is an old post by now…
I viewed the pictures online, taking into accounts the points made on the blog…
Than saw actual show…
Seeing online images is like eating steak with a balloon on your tongue. Sure, your eating it, but…
May 1st, 2008 at 9:52 pm
[...] Some discussion on Pause To Begin’s blog about digital presentation of work. To sum up my current thoughts: How could a digital presentation be a misrepresentation of work if the work originated and exists primarily or only digitally? [...]