Art and Global Media. Exhibition in the media space.

From the Print Media to the Electronic Media
Steirischer Herbst, Festival Graz / museum in progress, Vienna

With the aid of a media project taking place exclusively in the media space, steirischer herbst is attempting to make us aware of and visualise the way the media change and construct reality.

The aim of the media exhibition is to leave behind the traditional institutions and sites of exhibitions (such as museums, galleries, etc.). The project also leaves behind the traditionally restricted time structures of an exhibition. In a kind of physical placelessness, an exhibition will be organised that takes place only in the new media. The immaterial museums in progress has been organising exhibitions exclusively in media spaces since 1989 (posters, "Standard", "profil"). This is perhaps the first time in the history of art that such an exhibition in the media space is taking place in this form of international networking and interlooping. An exhibition focused on the social, economic and political consequences of the new media can logically only take place within these media.

The exhibition without a fixed location and with relative ubiquity corresponds to an exhibition without strict time, or rather relative duration. 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.

Some 40 artists all over the world, some with experience with these media, will be asked to create special works dealing with the aforementioned topics in the media and for the media Internet, TV, radio, magazines, posters.

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 we see on television? The artists' works will not only be implemented in one medium, e.g. TV, but will also refer thematically to the other medium, e.g. radio. (On television we see a radio spot being constructed, on the radio we hear a TV sport being created). 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.

(Vienna, May 1998)