In the early years of the century art movements such as the Futurists
and the Surrealists habitually produced manifestoes; at the last gasp of
the millennium it is hard to conceive of identifiable art movements let
alone public declarations of action.
Experimenta Media Arts revives the public declaration, re-inventing it
at the threshold of culture and the 21st Century with the MANIFESTO
event. From the past, in the present and into the future. Manifesto
consists of Time Capsule, an exhibition of installations by contemporary
artists working with technologies old and new, digital and analogue,
actually launching a purpose built Time Capsule into the future; there
is a screening program of experimental film and video that looks back
over the 20th Century and the legacy of the historical avant-garde in
Zen Cinema. Here in hothouse we are inviting artists, commentators and
critics to join in online discussion. From 2nd November the hothouse
media laboratory will be open for online collaboration via the
contribution of media files (sound, movies, interactive works, etc). If
you have anything that perhaps reflects aspects of contemporary media
arts and your relationship to it check http://www.experimenta.org from
the 2nd November to contribute it to the hothouse media lab.
Experimenta Media Arts demands action, forging a media arts MANIFESTO
into the 21st Century.
Perhaps we could start with some questions:
Has the idealism gone from arts practice?
Has the shift from the post-industrial era to the information age
distributed networked artists away from the materiality of their work to
isolated intangible digital nodes?
Have artists, once at the vanguard of cultural development, now become
guinea pigs testing information technology software: research and
development for the global capitalist machine?
Has the public declaration become the Mission Statement, the Corporate
Vision, the Business Plan?
Experimenta Media Arts
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hothouse: media arts discussion and action at the threshold of
technology and the 21st Century
MANIFESTO 2nd - 12th November 1999 Experimenta Media Arts
www.experimenta.org
