A manifesto for global art

d.dekerckhove@utoronto.ca

Katowice

21 November 2008

Global Art

• What is it ?• Who does it ?• Do we need it ?

Not on Wikipedi

aNot communication art

Not space art

Not planetary art

Not network art

Not satellite art

But related to all the above

What is it ?

• Art that reflects and promotes a planetary sensibility – Change of scale (we are all globalized by carrying a cellular phone)

– Accelerating environmental awareness (the new ground of human experience)

– Continental imagination (Europe as an intermediate step for global community)

– Everyware (immersed in a single data environment)

– Ubiquity and simultaneity, a transcultural condition

7 Big Questions

• What is the influence of globalization on art ?

• How is globalization represented in art and in popular culture ?

• Did globalization initiate new genres ?• Is there such a thing as a global sensibility?

• How can the local reflect the global ?• Is global art socially and politically conscious?

• What new paradigm is reflected in global art?

Great variety

• Earth as artform (land art, etc.)

• Global spectacle (object of contemplation)

• Global connections • Glocal contractions• Interlocal interactions• Etc..

Marshall McLuhanThe planet and Nature were obsolesced by Sputnik in October, 1957, and have become art form also. Sputnik saw the birth of

ecology, and Art replacing Nature (1974).

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

La Terre vue du ciel

Historical Overview (the split of global art from

communications arts)• 1914: F.T. Marinetti uses a telephone in a pre-multimedia

performance at the Doré Gallery, London.• 1922: László Moholy-Nagy produces his "Telephone Paintings".• 1963: Nam June Paik: "Electronic Television".• 1968: "Art by Telephone", Museum of Contemporary Art,

Chicago.• 1969: "Wipe Cycle"• 1970: Gordon Mumma: "Conspiracy 8"• 1973: Elvis Presley: Aloha From Hawaii via satellite - First

music concert broadcast live via satellite around the world.• On December 29, 1976, with the support of the Contemporary

Arts Museum in Houston, Douglas Davis performs "Seven Thoughts" in the empty Houston Astrodome

• Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz: Satellite Arts Project - two groups of dancers are interacting at two different locations, three thousand miles apart.

Satellite Arts Project

• Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz (1977)

• July 1977: Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik and Douglas Davis perform live at Documenta 6 and are broadcast by West German TV to many countries, including the USSR.

• 1977: "Send/Receive", organised by Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp in New York, and by Sharon Grace and Carl Eugene Loeffler in San Francisco. ("le projet [...] utilisait un satellite pour une transmission interactive de quinze heures reliant les deux villes)"

• 1977: "WorldPool" collaboration (Robert Adrian, Norman White).• 1978: Open Space Gallery in Victoria, Canada, conducts several live Slow-Scan video

transmissions with other groups of artists in New York City, Memphis, Toronto, Oakland, Vancouver, San Diego and San Francisco.

• 1979: Audio Scene 79 at Modern Art Galerie, Vienna• 1980: "Artists' Use of Telecommunications Conference", Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

(curated by Carl Eugene Loeffler).• Galloway/Rabinowitz: "Hole in Space", New York-Los Angeles video link.• 1982: "The World in 24 Hours", by Robert Adrian, Ars Electronica, Linz• "Levittown", Utrecht, by Tom Klinkowstein.• "Telesky", Australia, by Eric Gidney.• "La Bourse de l'imaginaire", by Fred Forest, Paris ("projet réunissant la télématique, la

télévision, la radio et le téléphone").• In 1983 several authors in various countries were working on an interactive "planetary

fairy-tale" as part of Roy Ascott's project "La Plissure du Texte". Visitors to the exhibition Electra, which was organized at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1983, were able to witness the production of a text on screens connected to the authors' computer terminals.

La plissure du texte (1983)

Tom Klinkows

tein

Joining McDonalds of the world via videoconference

(1984)

Joe Davis

Red Ruby Falls (project 1984)

Jean-Marc Philippe

• Message à l’univers(1986 -)

Stéphan Barron

Le bleu du ciel (1994-2000) Tourcoing -Toulon and

Paris-Munich

Le Jour et la nuit (1995 - Adelaide-Paris)Ozone 1999

Fred Forest

Le centre du monde (Fred Forest 1999)

Philippe Boissonnet• Territoires (peau)ssibles (2003-2004)

La conscience des limites Gaia, 1992 Galileo,

1993

Ingo Günther• World processor (1998-2006)

Sensorium

The Japanese concepts of "I (myself)" and "human being" reflect the essential and ambivalent "network-like" nature of our being. The Japanese "I" ("jibun") implies the existence only within a relational context, one that comprises both the relational aspects within myself and the holonic and relational structure of the universe.

Stelarc Ping Body

During the Ping Body performances, what is being considered is a body moving not to the promptings of another body in another place, but rather to Internet activity itself - the body's proprioception and musculature stimulated not by its internal nervous system but by the external ebb and flow of data."

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Alzado Vectorial Mexico City 1999-

2000

Lorella Abenavoli

Le Souffle de la Terre (1996-2002)

Nox Materwith Nicolas Reeves2007

Maurice Benayou

n

Cosmo-PolisBeijing2007

Emotional Traffic

2005

TRANSINTERACTIVITY

Examples: BCE Place or Eaton Center, TorontoExample Sites – Initial

Installation

Galleria Vittorio Emannuelle II in Milan

Eaton Center - Toronto

Eaton GalleryToronto

People will approach a large screen onto which a live, life-size, remote image is projected.

Eaton Center - Toronto

People in one place will see and hear the distant persons as if they were physically present.

Eaton Center - Toronto

The distant surroundings will appear to be a natural continuation of the local space

Eaton Center - Toronto

Why do we need this category ?

• It invites patrons and the general public to graduate mentally and socially to the global scale

• It recognizes a visible trend in artistic activities

• It can communicate global emotions• It may improve attitudes towards

the environment• It functions homeopathically

Feeding global emotions

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

In the electric age, we wear all mankind as our

skin