Mapping New Tendencies and the Emergence of Networked Thought
par of the Digital Crossroads project
lecture and discussion held in English
Medosch will present the ideas tackled in his recently published book “New Tendencies - Art at the Threshold of the Information Revolution (1971 - 1978)” (MIT Press, 2016, mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-tendencies).
After the lecture, Medosch will engage in conversation with Darko Fritz, curator of the gallery program of the grey) (area, who as an independent curator conceptualized so far the most comprehensive retrospective exhibitions on New Tendencies, which took place in Graz and Karlsruhe 2007- 2009.
New Tendencies, an art movement, emerged in the early 1960s in Zagreb. It represented a new sensibility, rejecting both Abstract Expressionism and socialist realism in an attempt to formulate an art adequate to the age of advanced mass production. In this book, Armin Medosch examines the development of New Tendencies as a major international art movement in the context of social, political, and technological history. Doing so, he traces concurrent paradigm shifts: the change from Fordism (the political economy of mass production and consumption) to the information society, and the change from postwar modernism to dematerialized postmodern art practices.
Medosch explains that New Tendencies, rather than opposing the forces of technology as most artists and intellectuals of the time did, imagined the rapid advance of technology to be a springboard into a future beyond alienation and oppression. Works by New Tendencies cast the viewer as coproducer, abolishing the idea of artist as creative genius and replacing it with the notion of the visual researcher. In 1968 and 1969, the group actively turned to the computer as a medium of visual research, anticipating new media and digital art.
Medosch discusses modernization in then-Yugoslavia and other nations on the periphery; looks in detail at New Tendencies’ five major exhibitions in Zagreb; and considers such topics as the group’s relation to science, the changing relationship of manual and intellectual labor, New Tendencies in the international art market, their engagement with computer art, and the group’s eventual eclipse by other “new art practices” including conceptualism, land art, and arte povera.
“Carefully researched and deeply insightful, Medosch's overview illustrates that New Tendencies was much more than a highly relevant exhibition series: a playing field for exploring key ideas of the information revolution, from cybernetic control systems and networked communication to information aesthetics and digital art as visual research. A must read for anyone interested in the evolution of contemporary digital art and its complex technological and socio-political histories.” —Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum, Associate Professor, School of Media Studies, The New School
About authors
Armin Medosch, PhD, MA, is Professor of Theory and History of Art and Media at the Faculty of Media and Communications at Singidunum University, Belgrade. He is an artist, curator and author working in art and media art theory and network culture. His work as curator includes exhibitions such as: Waves (Riga, 2006; Dortmund, 2008); and Fields (Riga Culture Capital 2014). He is initiator of the Technopolitics working group in Vienna and initiator and maintainer of the cooperative web-space thenextlayer.org. His book “New Tendencies – Art at the Threshold of the Information Revolution” is published by MIT Press in 2016.
Darko Fritz is an artist, independent curator and researcher. His work bridges over the
gulf between contemporary art, media art and network culture, taking up topics such as the glitch, error, and surveillance. Recently he has been developing horticultural units in public spaces. His curatorial work and research on New Tendencies and early computer art has earned international
acclaim with exhibitions at Neue Galerie Graz (2007) and ZKM (2009). 2002, he published "A Brief Overview of Media Art in Croatia (Since the 1960s)" and edited related database at the portal Culturenet. In 2010 he start the research "The beginning of digital arts in the Netherlands (1955 - 1980)", awarded by grants by Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam. Fritz is founder and programmer of the grey) (area - space for contemporary and media art since 2006. http://darkofritz.net
