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| Blackout Collective 15 years strong * 2002 - 2017 |
Showing posts with label new media art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new media art. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
suppressing Indigenous Arts innovation in Australia
National Indigenous Art Award suppresses innovation in Australia
Darwins Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory has removed the New Media Art Category from the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award this year leaving artists in the lurch.
“In true Australian style, there was no announcement or discussion, the option for the New Media category just wasn't on the entry form this year, which was devastating because we had spent tens of thousands of dollars and years creating a new project, with intention for the Australian premiere at the official NATSIA Award Ceremony” said Jenny Fraser, a spokesperson for the Blackout Collective.
The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award has cancelled the New Media Category after only a short run, having been first established in 2010. According to the awards 2011 website, “the Telstra New Media Award was introduced in recognition of this emerging field in Indigenous art practice. This category has become a permanent fixture following last year’s inaugural success at Telstra NATSIAA and will attract $4000 along with other categories.”
“Some of us had already been entering New Media artworks long before the inception of the new media category in 2010, so alarm bells had been going off since then because none of the Blackout artists had ever been preselected for the new category. Its a very strange attitude toward the field, and the message that it sends is that the Museum has very little expertise in the areas of innovation and also fails to engage curators, preselectors and judges who do” said Jenny Fraser.
In an article titled 'Mix of old and new adds dynamism to Indigenous art' about the 2013 NATSIA Award, Telstra Chief Financial Officer Andrew Penn wrote “The awards have grown and innovated, introducing new forms and mediums. The "new media" category was introduced in 2010 and is perhaps viewed by some just as Impressionism was in the 1870s but it is simply a reflection of the fact that we are living in a digital world. The fact that artists are using (as they always have) new tools as they become available, should be celebrated.”
The artists commissioned by cyberTribe to make new experimental work for Superhighway across the Sky were Christine Peacock, Jason Davidson and Michelle Blakeney, whom all travelled to Toronto to speak on a roundtable with other International guests at the annual festival. In accordance with the Telstra NATSIAA Award strict guidelines about previously exhibiting entries, the blackout collective was careful not to show the work publicly in Australia. Working around the guidelines, they strategically presented a special private preview of their new online art project ‘Superhighway across the sky’ at the 2013 imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada, which was well received. The plan was then to enter the project into the Telstra Award, which would be the Australian premiere and launch of the project which had been in the making for 9 years.
“The namesake of the Superhighway project is a song by the world famous Aboriginal band Yothu Yindi, so another great motivating factor to launch the project, particularly in the Northern Territory, as it is the homeland of the songman, Dr Yunupingu and his Visual artist sister, both of whom only just died in recent years. It would have been a fitting and touching tribute to their inspirational and innovating lives, but unfortunately the Museum staff could not even answer when asked which category we should be entering now that theyve canned the new media specific one” said Jenny Fraser.
In an article titled 'New media shines at Aboriginal Art event' is quoted as stating “Mr Arpin, who has been at the helm of the museum for three years, says the genre is gathering momentum. "I think it's demonstrating...that more artists are using new media to express themselves," he says. "Younger artists in particular and artists who may be academically trained or working in a university or in an art department ...will see that these platforms are available as a mode of self expression, and I think it's just a reflection of the fact that we're living in a more and more digitally mediated age."
All is not lost however, as Blackouts project Superhighway across the Sky has just been officially preselected for competition in the 2014 15th Anniversary of imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto, which is particularly timely as this year the spotlight is on Australia. The work will also be featured with cyberTribe, an online gallery focused on nurturing digital art. cyberTribe has been at the forefront of exhibiting cutting edge and politically important artworks from Indigenous Artists internationally, both in its online gallery and other gallery spaces across the world. Over the past decade cyberTribe has brought together Indigenous artists from places across Australia, the Pacific, the Americas and elsewhere to participate in exhibitions of international standing.
“The irony of the fact that this Indigenous Art Award is sponsored by a major telecommunications company and internet provider is not lost – it says a lot about how museums are keeping Indigenous culture in Australia trapped in the past, and their refusal to employ Indigenous curators of Aboriginal Art forever perpetuates that. It is always remarkably much easier and much more gratifying to organise engagement overseas, than it is in our culturally apartheid homeland, especially given the greater divide between the film and new media arts here, and the lack of major Indigenous arts institutions, staff and interest. Highlighted again upon returning home to find that the short lived New Media category has been canned from of the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, without any prior warning to the field of artists, nor consultation.” said Jenny Fraser.
The Blackout Collective is a group of creators from all over Australia who fluidly communicate and contribute towards screen- based culture locally, across Australia, and internationally. “Australia, in itself is a big brown land, so it is difficult for us to maintain face-to-face contact even in our own country. It is important professionally and spiritually for us to travel together, and engage with Native Canadian artists at the festival, as we struggle in a very niche artform area in our own country, and are usually excluded from mainstream new media exhibitions” said Jenny Fraser.
The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is an international festival in Toronto that celebrates the latest works by Indigenous peoples on the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio, and new media. Each year, the festival presents a selection of the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from around the globe. The festival's screenings, panel discussions, and cultural events attract and connect filmmakers, media artists, programmers, buyers, and industry professionals. The works accepted reflect the diversity of the world's Indigenous nations and illustrate the vitality and excellence of our art and culture in contemporary media.
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artists Jason
Davidson, with Native Canadian Dancer, Jenny Fraser and Michelle
Blakeney
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cyberTribe www.cyberTribe.culture2.org
cyberTribe on facebook https://www.facebook.com/cyberTribegallery
related articles:
2013 Mix of old and new adds dynamism to Indigenous art
2013 New media shines at Aboriginal Art event
2011 : 28th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Aboriginal New Media Artists excluded from international event, ISEA Sydney
Aboriginal New Media Artists have been building on exhibition momentum over the past 15 years, but now brought to a stand still having been excluded from ISEA Sydney. ISEA which is an acronym for International Symposium of Electronic Arts has been running since 1988 in the Netherlands, and it tours to different host countries every year or so. The last time it was hosted in Australia was 21 years ago in Sydney, 1992. ISEA Sydney 2013 has been organised by an Australian-based committee with very little Aboriginal New Media Arts input, despite a face to face meeting between artists and ISEA Sydney interests in 2011.
Instead, the Sydney ISEA Curatorium have blocked Aboriginal New Media Arts entities such as the Blackout Collective, which is a group of Aboriginal creators from all over Australia who communicate fluidly and contribute towards screen-based culture in new ways.
Jenny Fraser says “even if we didn’t have a name, such as blackout, we would still be a collective, because we work in a minority artform, in the minority Aboriginal art industry and we all struggle to represent as new media artists, with very little support or inclusion in Australia”.
While the collective may be small in number, and spread across the country, many of the artists have represented at international electronic arts events such as ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica in Austria and the InteractivA Biennale in Mexico. This includes Aroha Groves (NSW) who was in ISEA Istanbul in 2011, r e a (NSW) in SIGGRAPH San Diego 2007, Genevieve Grieves (NSW) and Jenny Fraser (QLD) in ISEA/Zero1 San Jose 2006, and Jason Davidson (NT) in ISEA Helsinki in 2004.
ISEA opened on Friday the 9th June with an Aboriginal welcome to country and performances for International and interstate guests at carriageworks in Redfern. “The Australian ISEA organisers consider the welcome performance as the be all and end all of an Aboriginal presence at ISEA Sydney, but really a welcome and performance are just a normal part of Aboriginal culture, which should occur at every significant gathering in our country, aside from that there’s a small exhibition of painters works that have a new life with animation, but where are the Aboriginal New Media Artists for ISEA in Sydney? Is this cultural apartheid?” said Jenny Fraser.
“Not only have the Australian ISEA organisers excluded us from exhibiting at an international electronic arts event in our own country, but they have failed to manage the situation professionally. We jumped through their hoops and proposed new projects a year ago, and have been on the short list since December with significant budgets being offered, only to find out final rejection notification the day before ISEA started in Sydney. It’s been a huge waste of money upfront and good energy in trying to meet the deadline with little useful communication from the organisers” said Jenny Fraser.
However, International guests are interested in Aboriginal New Media Arts and on Thursday June 13, some Aboriginal artists were provide with an opportunity to speak publicly at the ISEA conference as part of the Latin American forum panel titled ‘Re:imag(in)ing Indigenous Media Art Histories’ alongside Columbian practitioners. The discussion focused on histories of Indigenous Australian artists working with new media, and in particular the inroads and dialogues established in international networks. More broadly the session addressed issues of identity, representation and visuality in the so-called ‘Global South’.
The panel was organised in a partnership between the Latin American Forum and an ARC Linkage project undertaken at the National Institute of Experimental Arts in Australia. Acknowledging that international publications and online archives dedicated to the study of media art are often dominated by white European and North American exemplars, and to further the discussion by drawing attention to the multiple trajectories that have sprouted from outside of the usual centres and dominant paradigms.
Later in the year, the blackout collective will also present their new online art project ‘Superhighway across the sky’ at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada. The artists selected to make new experimental work are Christine Peacock, Jason Davidson and Michelle Blakeney who will travel with artist/curator Jenny Fraser to Toronto to speak at the annual festival, and also travel on to London to present at the inaugural indigeneity.net conference in the UK.
The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is an international festival in Toronto that celebrates the latest works by Indigenous peoples on the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio, and new media. Each year, the festival presents a selection of the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from around the globe. The festival's screenings, panel discussions, and cultural events attract and connect filmmakers, media artists, programmers, buyers, and industry professionals. The works accepted reflect the diversity of the world's Indigenous nations and illustrate the vitality and excellence of our art and culture in contemporary media.
‘Superhighway across the sky' will be featured with cyberTribe, an online gallery focused on nurturing digital art. cyberTribe has been at the forefront of exhibiting cutting edge and politically important artworks from Indigenous Artists internationally, both in its online gallery and other gallery spaces across the world. Over the past decade cyberTribe has brought together Indigenous artists from places across Australia, the Pacific, the Americas and elsewhere to participate in exhibitions of international standing.
An important milestone for cyberTribe over the years includes winning the ABC Radio National Indigenous Cultural Centre/Keeping Place Award in 2009, for creating a unique place for Indigenous artists to create and exhibit new media work as well as more traditional forms. Museums Australia Director, Bernice Murphy, commented in the ABC RN announcement: “The award to cyberTribe reminds us all that Indigenous creativity needs to be supported in the most up-to-date forms – even in ‘regional cyberspace’ – as well as out back where communities are keeping fires of tradition and continuity burning strong.”
Links:
a previous article discussing cultural apartheid in Australia:
'The Digital Dreamtime: A Shining Light in the Culture War'
http://tekaharoa.com/index.php/tekaharoa/article/view/105/66
cyberTribe http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org
blackout http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org/blackout
cyberTribe on facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/cyberTribe-online-gallery-and-supporters/192081330862011
ISEA Latin American Forum #3
http://www.isea2013.org/events/latin-american-forum-presents-3
ISEA Sydney 2013 http://www.isea2013.org
ISEA http://www.isea-web.org
Past ISEA http://www.isea-web.org/symposia/past-isea-symposia
ISEA Sydney 2013 on facebook https://www.facebook.com/ISEA2013?fref=ts
Instead, the Sydney ISEA Curatorium have blocked Aboriginal New Media Arts entities such as the Blackout Collective, which is a group of Aboriginal creators from all over Australia who communicate fluidly and contribute towards screen-based culture in new ways.
Jenny Fraser says “even if we didn’t have a name, such as blackout, we would still be a collective, because we work in a minority artform, in the minority Aboriginal art industry and we all struggle to represent as new media artists, with very little support or inclusion in Australia”.
While the collective may be small in number, and spread across the country, many of the artists have represented at international electronic arts events such as ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica in Austria and the InteractivA Biennale in Mexico. This includes Aroha Groves (NSW) who was in ISEA Istanbul in 2011, r e a (NSW) in SIGGRAPH San Diego 2007, Genevieve Grieves (NSW) and Jenny Fraser (QLD) in ISEA/Zero1 San Jose 2006, and Jason Davidson (NT) in ISEA Helsinki in 2004.
ISEA opened on Friday the 9th June with an Aboriginal welcome to country and performances for International and interstate guests at carriageworks in Redfern. “The Australian ISEA organisers consider the welcome performance as the be all and end all of an Aboriginal presence at ISEA Sydney, but really a welcome and performance are just a normal part of Aboriginal culture, which should occur at every significant gathering in our country, aside from that there’s a small exhibition of painters works that have a new life with animation, but where are the Aboriginal New Media Artists for ISEA in Sydney? Is this cultural apartheid?” said Jenny Fraser.
“Not only have the Australian ISEA organisers excluded us from exhibiting at an international electronic arts event in our own country, but they have failed to manage the situation professionally. We jumped through their hoops and proposed new projects a year ago, and have been on the short list since December with significant budgets being offered, only to find out final rejection notification the day before ISEA started in Sydney. It’s been a huge waste of money upfront and good energy in trying to meet the deadline with little useful communication from the organisers” said Jenny Fraser.
However, International guests are interested in Aboriginal New Media Arts and on Thursday June 13, some Aboriginal artists were provide with an opportunity to speak publicly at the ISEA conference as part of the Latin American forum panel titled ‘Re:imag(in)ing Indigenous Media Art Histories’ alongside Columbian practitioners. The discussion focused on histories of Indigenous Australian artists working with new media, and in particular the inroads and dialogues established in international networks. More broadly the session addressed issues of identity, representation and visuality in the so-called ‘Global South’.
The panel was organised in a partnership between the Latin American Forum and an ARC Linkage project undertaken at the National Institute of Experimental Arts in Australia. Acknowledging that international publications and online archives dedicated to the study of media art are often dominated by white European and North American exemplars, and to further the discussion by drawing attention to the multiple trajectories that have sprouted from outside of the usual centres and dominant paradigms.
Later in the year, the blackout collective will also present their new online art project ‘Superhighway across the sky’ at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada. The artists selected to make new experimental work are Christine Peacock, Jason Davidson and Michelle Blakeney who will travel with artist/curator Jenny Fraser to Toronto to speak at the annual festival, and also travel on to London to present at the inaugural indigeneity.net conference in the UK.
The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is an international festival in Toronto that celebrates the latest works by Indigenous peoples on the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio, and new media. Each year, the festival presents a selection of the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from around the globe. The festival's screenings, panel discussions, and cultural events attract and connect filmmakers, media artists, programmers, buyers, and industry professionals. The works accepted reflect the diversity of the world's Indigenous nations and illustrate the vitality and excellence of our art and culture in contemporary media.
‘Superhighway across the sky' will be featured with cyberTribe, an online gallery focused on nurturing digital art. cyberTribe has been at the forefront of exhibiting cutting edge and politically important artworks from Indigenous Artists internationally, both in its online gallery and other gallery spaces across the world. Over the past decade cyberTribe has brought together Indigenous artists from places across Australia, the Pacific, the Americas and elsewhere to participate in exhibitions of international standing.
An important milestone for cyberTribe over the years includes winning the ABC Radio National Indigenous Cultural Centre/Keeping Place Award in 2009, for creating a unique place for Indigenous artists to create and exhibit new media work as well as more traditional forms. Museums Australia Director, Bernice Murphy, commented in the ABC RN announcement: “The award to cyberTribe reminds us all that Indigenous creativity needs to be supported in the most up-to-date forms – even in ‘regional cyberspace’ – as well as out back where communities are keeping fires of tradition and continuity burning strong.”
a previous article discussing cultural apartheid in Australia:
'The Digital Dreamtime: A Shining Light in the Culture War'
http://tekaharoa.com/index.php/tekaharoa/article/view/105/66
cyberTribe http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org
blackout http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org/blackout
cyberTribe on facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/cyberTribe-online-gallery-and-supporters/192081330862011
ISEA Latin American Forum #3
http://www.isea2013.org/events/latin-american-forum-presents-3
ISEA Sydney 2013 http://www.isea2013.org
ISEA http://www.isea-web.org
Past ISEA http://www.isea-web.org/symposia/past-isea-symposia
ISEA Sydney 2013 on facebook https://www.facebook.com/ISEA2013?fref=ts
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