[spectre] A disjointed conversation – Claire Bishop, The Digital Divide, and the State of New Media Contemporary Art.

[marc garrett]

Sorry for any cross posting...

A disjointed conversation – Claire Bishop, The Digital Divide, and the 
State of New Media Contemporary Art.

By Patrick Lichty.

I found Claire Bishop’s landmark essay on Digital Art, ‘The Digital 
Divide’ in  Artforum’s 50th Anniversary issue three months late through 
Lauren Cornell and Brian Droitcour’s equally polemic response, 
‘Technical Difficulties’ in the January 2013 issue.  Since September, 
there have been excellent conversations, both inside and outside the New 
Media community. There are a plethora of positions on Bishop’s highly 
successful essay; success in that it has created such a stir. The 
problem with the conversation, and I dare not say dialogue, is that the 
rhetoric resulting from ‘The Digital Divide’ is disjoint along several 
lines, in some ways schematizing some of the reasons for her polemic. 
Secondly, the resulting cross-takedown between Lauren Cornell/Brian 
Droitcour and Bishop remind me that I no longer live in the relatively 
generous era in which we built the genre of New Media in the 90’s.

The irony that I see in this cacophonous conversation is that we seem to 
be somewhere in the middle. Digital art and New Media works are more 
evident in the art market, art-institutional complex and community than 
Bishop lets on, but critics like Bishop take the position in places like 
Artforum to drop a mind grenade into the Contemporary Art milieu. I 
actually see this as a healthy irritant, as it has obviously spurred its 
proponents into action.

On Furtherfield's Community Blog.
http://www.furtherfield.org/blog/patrick-lichty/disjointed-conversation-%E2%80%93-claire-bishop-digital-divide-and-state-new-media-conte


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