CRITICAL STRATEGIES IN ART AND MEDIA: PERSPECTIVES OF NEW CULTURAL PRACTICES

CRITICAL STRATEGIES IN ART AND MEDIA: PERSPECTIVES OF NEW CULTURAL
PRACTICES

September 10, 2009, 1:30–9:00 pm
Austrian Cultural Forum (ACF)
11 East 52nd Street New York, NY 10022
http://world-information.org/wii/critical_strategies

"A roundtable discussion of digital theorists and practitioners on the future of cultural intelligence and freedoms with: Ted Byfield, Steve Kurtz, Amanda McDonald-Crowley, Claire Pentecost, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Konrad Becker, Jim Fleming

Among the questions to be addressed during this conference are:

Beyond the obsolete models of artist or author as genius and their fetish objects, what collective and collaborative practices are inventing new terrains and flows? As information and communication technologies saturate our world, how is art giving way to new forms of cultural symbolic manipulation? Can we identify new models to replace the auteur and the artwork? If so, where do they come from and what might that say about the future of critical practices? What new kinds of “virtual” spaces are opening up for cultural practice in electronic media? As “old media” begin to collapse under the pressures of the virtual, what new media can we find? How are didactic illustration and channeled dissidence giving way to new forms of surprise and intensity? What strategies elude the creative industries’ seemingly infinite appetite for things radical? Are there any strategies that can elude being reduced to styles in the service of sales, or are critical practices doomed to play cat and mouse with the forces of consumerism?"