Art and Global Media. A project about media in media

Society is increasingly becoming a media society. From law to financial markets, from leisure to the world of work, from eroticism to politics, there is no social sphere that hasn't been decisively shaped by individual and mass use of media. All over the world we can observe global economy and global mass media changing social structures. The mass media – from print media to electronic media – have formed and taken over the traditional functions of the construction of reality. This promotes the emergence of new forms of social communication, new classes and hierarchies, new forms of centralisation, new economic and political forces. Now at the close of the millennium, the construction of the public sphere and knowledge, history and memory, politics and society, is increasingly being dominated by the mass media, newspapers, Internet, TV and radio.

With the aid of a media project, taking place exclusively in the media space – from the print media to the electronic media – steirischer herbst is attempting to draw our attention to and visualise the changes and constructions of reality by the media. The way media construct society, history, memory, politics and the public sphere is the main focus of this project. Media and media constructions and fictions are reflected on in the media.

How is the public sphere constructed on the radio, how is intimacy constructed on television, what kind of politics do we read in the newspapers, what kind of news do wee see on television? The artistic messages are interlooped and interlinked; they refer from one medium to the other. It is not a matter of presenting the representation of reality in the media, but rather of shedding light on the various methods of construction of reality in the various media. One medium is reflected on in another medium.

Thus, the aim of the project, in co-operation with local and global media partners, is to leave behind the traditional institutions and sites of exhibitions (such as museums, galleries, etc.). The project starts with steirischer herbst 1998 and ends with steirischer herbst 1999. During this period, the exhibition will take place at specific points around the world in the following media: posters, daily papers, weekly magazines, art journals, radio, television, cable channels and Internet.

The "Art and global media" projects is comprised of an exhibition in the media space, a symposium and a film programme.

(Vienna, May 1998)