Issue 6: Primitive Technology
If the medium through which an artwork is realized is a necessary condition of that work, what happens when technology makes new kinds of previously unimaginable artworks possible? Conversely, what happens to the temporal field of technology when it enters the timeless realm of expression? What is the historical legacy of the new? While technological development has continued to expand the potential for artistic experimentation, it seems that there is actually a limit to what technology can offer art. More than a half-century after the introduction of unprecedented new technology to the inventory of artistic media, it seems possible to conclude that it is the art that shapes the technology, and not the other way around; art is the container of its medium.
Unfolding over the next month, the November issue of ART iT builds upon this train of thought to enact an archaeology of the relations between art and technology, and the many inversions in those relations that have occurred from the post-war period to the present. In our two-part feature interview, we talk with Peter Fischli and David Weiss about their anachronistic approach to making works in materials such as clay and polyurethane foam, and how they are driven by the schadenfreude of manual copying in the age of mechanical – and digital – reproduction. In a short interview, Seoul-based media artist Yeondoo Jung explains how his misuse of technology has led to a unique series of photographs and videos, while in a special contribution, Barbara London, the pioneering curator of new media art at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, reflects on the years she spent corresponding and collaborating with Nam June Paik.
Forthcoming contributions include media art and music specialist Christoph Charles writing about Katsuhiro Yamaguchi’s groundbreaking experiments with technology and performance over the course of a career that began in the 1940s, and curator Tsutomu Mizusawa on the activities of the short-lived post-war period collective Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop, 1951-57), of which Yamaguchi was a member, as well as artist Peter Coffin’s revelation in On Record of how and why he built a functioning flying saucer.
Additionally, we present the latest essays from regular contributors Dan Cameron, Hu Fang, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Noi Sawaragi, Minoru Shimizu and Kyoichi Tsuzuki.
– The Editors