config.media.art Konfigurationen. Zwischen Kunst und Medien Kassel 4. - 7. September 1997

Alice Mansell (Halifax): The Artist and the CyberUnivers~ity: Claiming a Cultural Perspective in the Global Village Samstag, 6. September 1997 11.45 Uhr - Bali-Kinos, Kulturbahnhof

Abstract Alice Mansell with Arthur (Mickey) Meads, from Halifax. Much has been made of the image of a map as a way to situate a critical position or art practice. With increased layers of knowledge, the negotiation about which systems to engage has become more complex. With that negotiation comes the awareness that each situation, location of a point on the map, is temporary and partial, but crucial to finding further »points« of perspective. In recent years, the worlds that artists, and their industries, inhabit have shifted both conceptually and physically, as the identity locations of populations and nations have changed. In this paper I wish to use a review of recent work to explore the ways in which a triangulation of several modalities may locate an effective art practice at the beginning of the electronic era. The title alludes to the universe, and the university, and their docking in language as the global/local space wherein much of North America, as seen from north of the border, sees the creation and chronology of cultural practices. Locating and dislocating a regional perspective is crucial in the age of new technologies. Electronic vehicles offer the artist opportunities to apply his/her practice to »affect« the generation and representation of local identity practices. At the end of a period of »post-modern practices« within which artists overtly tried to structure and form their imaging of social and cultural problems under the templates of theory, the time has come to apply a practice expressive of particular experience to test and form more nuanced theories of art practice. In Canada, we have been engaged in debates about national and ethnic/local identity, since the beginning of this century. As a nation self-consciously assembled from sets of ethnic and regional cultural identities there is a widespread sense of isolation, and marginalization, generated from within and from without. Theories about the ways that cultural production identifies us as individuals and communities have been central to those artists whose work has engaged with what separates and connects us in political and social processes. The noted Canadian Historian, Harold Innis initiated an analysis of the nation’s identities through an analysis of our systems of communication, travel, publication and education. These systems he argued were the key to understanding the base from which a geographically dispersed and ethnically diverse country would need to design and build a civil democratic entity / country. His work led to policies that created some of our national cultural institutions and supports. His work will background the ways that artists using electronic technologies can create and communicate works to facilitate debates that may enable individual perspectives, the regional voices, to create and contribute to a democratic culture here and abroad. Vortrag in englischer Sprache

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