With the digital medium, Benjamin’s theory about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction seems to have reached its dead end. When there is no difference between copy and original, the aura fades and rarity can only be artificially simulated. Yet, is it always true? Playing with Benjamin and Groys, this article [...]
Reflections on Julian Rosefeldt’s American Night
By F. Javier Panera Cuevas
“The only technologies worth having are a six gun and a movie camera.”
Sam Peckinpah
Over the past decade we have witnessed the progressive incorporation of cinema into museum halls.1 Although this phenomenon is not entirely new, the reason it has become commonplace can be found [...]
There is an esprit d’époque called “neo-modern” which has been manifesting itself in realms as disparate as the visual arts, architecture, religion, economics, politics, and philosophy. It’s not new; it goes back to the 1980s, and although the concept is not very innovative, its overwhelming presence in very different fields makes its codification inevitable and [...]
The digital display attached to the existing network technologies facilitates new opportunities for visual creation. In addition to real and virtual video art, new forms incorporate the category of machinima.
By Cristina García-Lasuén
Visual creations today arise from a challenging technological, cultural, and formal mix, and reflect our early twenty-first century society. As such, these visual expressions [...]
By Michele Robecchi
The idea is not exactly new — in the past decades quite a few artists, including Larry Clark, Rebecca Horn, Isaac Julien, and Julian Schnabel, have given it a shot, with mixed results. Others, like Chantal Ackerman, Matthew Barney, Andy Warhol, and some Fluxus artists just paved their way through it by simply [...]
By Paco Barragán
Many people in the wine industry claim wine is an art, not a science. I guess there must be something really ‘arty’ to it, as in every gallery and museum-be it private or public, and regardless of their nationality-openings are accompanied in an almost exclusive and quasi-liturgical manner by this sophisticated drink. Yet [...]
By Michele Robecchi
It is difficult to imagine anything more tedious in London than a Henry Moore exhibition at Tate Britain. However, the recent survey of the work of the acclaimed British artist curated by Chris Stevens and Michael Parke-Taylor is quite a pleasant surprise. The show offers a fresh view on Moore’s work while reminding [...]
So-called mobile art has forcefully entered into the field of media art. Over the past decade its potential as a creative tool has manifested itself in hundreds of projects, exhibitions, fairs and workshops. Is mobile art a new means of exploring and reflecting on our relationship to technology? Does mobile art allow for the experimentation [...]
In the past few months, when people have asked me to suggest something inspiring to read, I’ve always replied: “Go to oliverlaric.com and select Versions.” True, Oliver Laric is not a writer but an artist, and Versions is not an essay but a video-or, better, an ongoing art project involving two videos, “a series of [...]
By F. Javier Panera Cuevas
Those of us who like to narrate the history of cinema based on technological determinism find ourselves before a historic milestone at the start of the second decade of the twenty-first century. In just a few months Avatar, James Cameron’s movie filmed with new 3-D technology, has become the highest grossing [...]
