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June 19th 2006

Short Interview by C.J.Yeh appeared on October 2006 on Journal Of National Taiwan Museum Of Fine Arts #66 Oct. 2006, Ginger Lilies and Plastic Roses by C.J.Yeh, pag. 47 & 52 (Chinese)




1. How do you see the system of support/art market/economics of being a new media artist?

The interest for these kinds of works is growing very slowly but hopefully it is growing. Personally I think tech art festivals and tech amateurs are not helping the process, instead they add chaos to an already complex and complicate situation/ambient: the art world. Art world is often seen as a sea where to clean people's frustrations, where to test the latest geek device or script. Personal egos are super amplified and the net makes them outright visible for a worldwide audience. This fascinating attitude (Do it Yourself + Global Broadcasting) in a way is a resource, generating a quickly and fresh circle of ideas, but at the same time it adds noise and make professional curators and dealers choices very difficult and very risky. So that's why just a few so-called "new media" artists are invited to important biennials or art fairs.
Up to now a large part of international dealers, curators and collectors aren't at their ease with tech-based pieces; they didn't grow up with them; they didn't study any technology.
Which doesn't mean they have to be coders (I'm not either) to get the point, but at least they should be able to smell the elements adopted to make the work. I strongly believe that the final result is always a major part of making art, above all today where so many artists just mix up famous styles from previous decades. At the same time, it is obvious that knowing the process helps the understanding of the work itself.
This uneasy situation then affects the economics. Despite the fact that some new media works could scare because of an apparent difficulty in collecting/preserving them, I see the above described reasons as the main constraints to a large diffusion of the latest art practices.

2. Do you think your work should be "preserved" at all cost even if that means preservation experts will be rewriting codes and/or replacing hardware to create the emulation of experiential condition of your work?

I think this has to be a personal artistic choice. As for my works, there are some of them I don't care they disappear. They will live only thanks to some printed documentation or so. In other cases I would hope to have them working even in a far future (I'm very optimistic). So this is a very delicate matter involving the nature of the work itself. I want to give you an example, which isn't exactly about preservation, but from which you can get the right perspective of my view. In 2001 I was selected for a show at P.S.1, the MoMA affiliate in New York. I remember they were asking for videos. Since the work I was working on was even based on the idea of a temporary state of its saving format, I remember I just exported/saved that work - an animated gif - as a DVD Video. And to me that approach was perfect, it was a kind of performance. Another example could be my sculptures server Altarboys, first realised in 2003. In these cases, the preservation is self-contained in the work itself (at least until the hardware collapses). These sculptures were based on a painted metal case, hosting a laptop hidden in a shell of the case (running as server and hosting the code of the work) and another lcd screen encapsulated in the other shell to show the piece. In this way - beyond preserving the work - the sculpture server acts as a perfect selling device for collectors: it is then up to them the decision to plug it into the Internet, leaving the work available for a worldwide audience under the form of a website or rather don't plug it, living it privately, running it offline in the secret of a private living room.