PIXELS AND PASSION
New media art and e-culture in The Hague
JUNE 2018
MA CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis TABLE OF CONTENT
Acknowledgements 5
1. Introduction 6
1.1 Some important notifications 6
1.2 New media art as a topic 6
1.3 Academic and social relevance 9
1.4 The research questions 11
2. Theoretical framework 12
2.1 Introduction 12
2.2 ‘New’ media 13
2.3 New media art 15
2.4 Active audiences and produsage 17
3. Methodological reflections 19
3.1 Introduction 19
3.2 The Hague and its art scene at first glance 20
3.3 Research Population 23
3.4 Methods of research 24
3.4.1 Participant observation 24
3.4.2 Semi-structured interviews 26
3.4.3 Online research 28
3.5 Data analysis 29
3.6 Ethical reflections 31
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis 4.‘There are no amateurs in here!’ 33 WHO ARE THOSE INVOLVED IN NEW MEDIA ART?
4.1 Introduction 33
4.2 Mapping new media art in The Hague 35
4.2.1 Problematizing the field 35
4.2.2 Amateurs and Gatekeepers 38
4.2.3 Other interesting players 43
4.3 Involvement of active audiences 47
4.5 Conclusion 51
5. ‘I am allergic to this label’ 52 WHAT IS NEW MEDIA ART ACCORDING TO THOSE INVOLVED?
5.1 Introduction 52
5.2 How do people involved define new media art? 53
5.3 What is the importance of a label anyway? 57
5.4 Online videos as a form of new media art? 60 5.4.1 YouTubing and vlogging 60
5.4.2 YouTubing and online video art 64
5.5 Conclusion 66
6. ‘Amsterdam offers quantity, we offer quality’ 67 WHERE IN THE HAGUE ARE EXPRESSIONS OF NEW MEDIA ART MADE VISIBLE AND IN WHAT WAYS CAN THESE EXPRESSIONS PRESUMABLY BE (BETTER) FACILITATED?
6.1 Introduction 67
6.2 Where in The Hague are expressions of new media art made visible? 68
6.3 Policy on e-culture 71
6.4 CultuurSchakel and e-culture 77
6.5 Conclusion 78
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis 7. Passionate people in a ‘pixelated’ framework 79
7.1 Introduction 79
7.2 Who are those involved in new media art? 79
7.3 What is new media art? 82
7.4 Where in The Hague are expressions of new media art made visible and in what ways can these expressions presumably be (better) facilitated? 83
7.5 Conclusion 85
7.5.1 Concluding : How are expressions of new media art within The Hague perceived and presumably (better) facilitated by those involved? 85
7.5.2 Suggestions for CultuurSchakel 86
8. Bibliography 88
9. Appendix 94
9.1 Original quotes 94
9.2 Images 95
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis has come about within the master’s program Cultural Anthropology and Sociology – Policy in Practice, at Leiden university. It seems fit to first address my teacher Janneke Verheije and supervisor Bart Barendrecht for inspiring and critiquing me with their knowledge, adding to the content of this thesis. Second, I owe my thanks to CultuurSchakel, in particular the Cultural Participation department for letting me roam around in their organization as well a giving me the freedom to conduct my research substantively. Stephanie Hermes, Hans van der Maas, Joan Biekman, Hélène Esenwein, Poernima Gobardhan, Katja Groenendijk, Tania Monteiro, Talitha van Ooyen, Magreet Schuemie and Arie Spaans were all part of the team that made me feel welcome each week, in their meetings and during lunch. Third, of course, there are my informants and their organizations, who I will name in the order I had the pleasure of meeting them. Impakt, Oneseconds, SETUP, Roland Smeenk, Bradley Groffen, Stef Katwijk (The Hague municipality), Brechtje Burger (Nest), Michel Behre (BorderSessions), Sanne van der Velde and David Middendorp (Another Kind of Blue), different employees from Stroom and West, Matteo Marangoni (iii), Sytze Schalk (Werelden van Schalk), Farouk, Minerva, Damani (CLOUD/DanceLab), Olof van Winden (TodaysArt), Cees van de Burg (Parts Project), Sarah-Jane Earle (COMM), Casper van Beusekom, Ingeborg Dennesen (Cultuur Coach at CultuurSchakel) and audience members and gallery owners I met at museums and gatherings throughout my research. I want to thank all of you for your time, insights, material and hospitality. Without you this thesis would never have come together! Not all your names have made it to the final thesis, but you nevertheless gave me knowledge I had in the back of my mind throughout my research and its analysis. Lastly, I need to thank people close to home who had to cope with me being away often and stressed out at times while working on this thesis: thanks for all the cups of tea and encouraging words!
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Some important notifications Before reading this thesis, it is important to take note of some general decisions I have made regarding the transcription of my field data. First, whenever I mention CultuurSchakel, I specifically mean the Cultural Participation department of CultuurSchakel. This is the division of CultuurSchakel that I worked with and that submitted their policy question towards Leiden University and, by doing so, to me. Within the master’s programme of Leiden University, CultuurSchakel is cited to be my societal partner, so I will also make use of this terminology within my thesis. Second, I conducted most of my field data using the Dutch language. However, considering new media art forms often have an international (online) character, which I will explain in this thesis, and my intended audience therefore likely will be an international one, I decided to write this thesis in English. I also deem it important that an English thesis will reach more academics who can benefit from this research as well. This topic has not extensively been researched within the field of anthropology and I consider it a relevant contribution to social scientists who are interested in studying new media art (see below). This language preference also needs to be addressed here, since it means I had to often translate quotes from my research participants from Dutch into English. The original quotes are all added in the appendix to minimize the risk of their words getting ‘lost in translation’. I addition, my collaboration with CultuurSchakel has led me to create a Dutch policy brief as well. This policy brief is not included in this thesis, since it is only meant for CultuurSchakel and The Hague municipality. Of course, the recommendations within this policy brief are based on the conclusions of this fieldwork, which are transcribed in the last chapter of this thesis.
1.2 New media art as a topic “Fieldwork is […] a trial trough battle in a war for which the novice has little preparation”
(Freilich 1970:16 in Robben and Sluka 2012:1)
I felt this quote to be very true, already before the official start of my fieldwork, when I had my first meeting with Stephanie, the leader of the team I was going to conduct my research for. She is a staff member of CultuurSchakel, an organization that defines itself as ‘the link between
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis education and the cultural sector of The Hague by means of combining supply and demand’.1 I met her at Het Koorenhuis, a place I had never seen, in a city I barely knew and got introduced to a topic I was not familiar with. I suddenly realized that, within the course of only a couple of months, I had to become acquainted with, or even ‘at home’ in this building and this city and, therewithal, become an expert on this topic she introduced to my only minutes ago: new media art. CultuurSchakel wanted to know where in The Hague they could find new media art expressions, performed by non-professional artists, and how they could assist these practitioners in a manner these artists themselves deemed appropriate. This focus on amateur practitioners was important for CultuurSchakel, since it is an organization concerned with non- professionals within the art world. CultuurSchakel reckoned an anthropologist would be suitable to conduct this information because of their “bottom-up way of working, in which they first collect data from the field in order to create a defection, instead of approaching their field using a top-down method in which they have their definitions ready and search for people who fit these definitions” (personal communication Stephanie Hermes, staff member CultuurSchakel). Indeed, I agreed this policy question could be approached by ethnographic research, but – as an academic – I did start with theoretical research on the topic before entering the field and gather the ‘bottom-up’ information CultuurSchakel was interested in. Within anthropology, there is an interest in new media and Internet phenomena and emerging anthropological literature on these topics (Wilson and Peterson 2002:450). This does not surprise, since new media and technologies are undeniably ubiquitous within almost every – social, cultural, economic and linguistic – aspect in the everyday lives of many people in many parts of the world (Coleman 2010). It might – therefore – be almost inevitable that modern technologies have gained influence in the art world as well. As one of my informants put it:
“New media art is just art. Art in a context of digital creativity and digital culture, because the world we live in is digital. We are connected 24/7 from the moment we are born”.
Olof van Winden, TodaysArt 2
There has been done little anthropological research on new media art in itself, but this specific topic contributes to the broader research field of ‘new’ media and its role in various aspects of society. Even though Wilson and Peterson proclaim an emerging interest within anthropology
1 https://www.cultuurschakel.nl/cultuurschakel/ visited last on 29-10-2017 2 Original quote in appendix, pp:94 – Quote 1
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis in their article on anthropology of online communities (Wilson and Peterson 2002), “anthropologists have been slow to enter this terrain—at least until recently”, as Coleman suggests in her insightful annual review contribution: “The diversity and pervasiveness of digital media can make them difficult to study, but also can make them compelling objects of ethnographic inquiry” (Coleman 2010:488). The ubiquity of digital media and modern technologies in society provides for a stimulating context for anthropologists to conduct their research in. The pervasiveness mentioned in Coleman’s quote, argues for topic-wise research within this context of digital and new media in order to make research comprehensible (Coleman 2010). This research on the topic of new media art will also be an example of topic- wise research within the broad and dynamic ethnographic corpus of new media. Art and material culture, of course, have always been part of ethnological research, and I found the question submitted by CultuurSchakel a great opportunity to combine these two fields of anthropological interests. In this thesis, I will also critically consider this focus on new media art or ‘e-culture’ (as it is called in the policy plan of The Hague municipality: ‘Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens’).3 Following Gershon (2017), I consider the possibility that this focus by policy makers might be a hollow rhetoric. That e-culture and new media art could be ‘hot and happening’-words that are used because one ‘has to include them’ in order to generate attention to certain policy plans, instead of it being the true content of interest in these plans. I do not doubt the genuine interest of the policy makers I interviewed in wanting to invest in and contribute to practitioners that need their help, but this does not necessarily mean there is expertise on or even familiarity with these ‘novel’ topics that are frequented in the policy plans I often read. While introducing new media art as a topic, it is essential to also make known the problems that arise with such a terminology. Although I will go into more detail about this in the rest of this thesis, I intend to first familiarize my readers with my use of the concept of ‘new media art’ as well as stating that this concept usually goes by many different definitions. In fact, the problems with defining and creating such a ‘label’ were omnipresent during my research, which actually resulted in writing chapter five. Nevertheless, it was useful to enter the field with a pre-existing working definition, and discuss this definition with my participants. My summarily definition of new media art in first instance consisted of two main characteristics:
3 Freely translated: ‘Room for People to/that play’. It is the name of the cultural policy plan of The Hague municipality. The online version can be found on https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/vrije-tijd-en- recreatie/kunst-en-cultuur/meerjarenbeleidsplan-kunst-en-cultuur-2017-2020.htm visited last on 22-05-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis
- It is an interactive form of art. This interaction can be between the audience and the work of art, as well as between the audience and the practitioner. - It makes use of modern technologies.
Of course, what ‘modern technologies’ are is debateable, as I will indicate in the next chapters. Nevertheless, these characteristics were the ones I found of most frequent occurrence in scholarly literature on the topic. Often, art that fitted my description was not defined by its practitioners as such. Vice versa, what these practitioners viewed as new media art did not meet the criteria set out by those studying these art forms. This in due time resulted in a more elaborate working definition and even my questioning of the practicality of definitions in the art world in general, which will all be part of this thesis.
1.3 Academic and social relevance As I realized during my fieldwork, both in the field and in literature, ‘newness’ is often assumed. It is a dictated trait of technologies and equipment that is not often questioned in itself. Of course, anthropologists are known for their critical view of concepts that seem to be taken for granted, as Gershon (2010) and Sterne (2003) profoundly did considering this topic of ‘newness’. Since the word ‘new’ is part of my very research concept, questioning this slippery adjective will also be part of my study. Throughout my fieldwork, at least five practitioners elaborated on the topic of newness as well, clarifying to me how and why they themselves similarly questioned this concept. It makes sense for these practitioners to occupy themselves with questions about ‘newness’, since it seems to be connected to general notions considering their art works. Problematizing and discussing this concept with my participants demonstrates the practicality of this debate. Academic relevance in this way is achieved by the contribution of a practical context in which debates about ‘newness’ can arise, namely the new media art scene. The emphasis on the practical implications of this debate is relevant since:
“Some people think it [research in social sciences] is a matter of isolated social scientists perched in their ivory towers, producing studies of no practical use, whose knowledge is unconnected with social reality.”
Olivier de Sardan 2006:198
This research will contribute to the understanding of ethnographic practices as both practical and connected with social reality, albeit in a minor field. It does so by combining anthropological insights with real life policy questions posed by CultuurSchakel in order to benefit people involved in new media art forms in ways these people themselves consider
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis advantageous. Answering the practical questions considering the facilitation of new media artists submitted by CultuurSchakel and, at a later stage, by The Hague municipality, gives me an opportunity to problematize and eventually alter a longstanding belief on the positioning of anthropology versus policy as posed by the anthropologist van der Geest:
“When anthropologists do study concrete practical problems, their analysis of the situation is usually a ‘post-mortem’ one and lacks useful suggestions as to how to solve or prevent such problems. Moreover, anthropological reports often appear many years after the facts, post- post-mortem one could say.”
van der Geest 2010:91
My research will not be post-post-mortem, nor post-mortem, but may help impose policy changes on and within cultural policies today and in the nearby future. My goal is not only to write this thesis, but also to present ideas towards the development of new policies by CultuurSchakel. This way, it might also change the public image of our academic discipline, at least for the people involved in this research and the readers of my thesis and reports.4 Practical implications have also led me to reconsider the applicable definition of new media art, and investigate options to broaden this category in order to respond to the request of my societal partner, as I will explain in chapter four and onwards. I will focus explicitly on online video art as a form of new media art in chapter five, where I will analyze possibilities for amplifying the applicable scholarly definition, asking relevant questions about this current definition as well. Lastly, by focusing on new media art, I also consider the role of technology within society. Taking the Netherlands as an example, we find that 97,1% of the households had internet access in 2017.5 There are mobile apps for almost every aspect or problem of our daily lives, including apps on ‘how to stay off your phone’.6 Technology is omnipresent, and this idea needs to be reflected on, since the impact seems incommensurable for the people that use
4 In my experience, both academics and non-academics can be critical or even skeptical on anthropological research and the ‘practical use’ of its findings. Van der Geest (2010) puts it like this: “Usually the anthropological case study makes little impression on non-anthropologists, because they want more solid assurance that certain observations or stories represent trends that deserve attention from policy-makers” (Van der Geest 2010:103). This is a shame since this idea can lead policy makers to put aside anthropological research that could prove important on the topic. By doing ethnographic research on a practical question I intend to assure policymakers of the value of anthropological research. 5 http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?VW=T&DM=SLNL&PA=83429NED&LA=NL visited last on 12-06- 2018. 6 For instance Forest (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/forest-stay-focused/id866450515?mt=8) or SPACE (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/space-break-phone-addiction/id916126783?mt=8)
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis and create these technologies as well as for policy makers who intend to create policies that take into account the risks and benefits of technology that influence the society they govern. One of my informants, Sarah-Jane, manager of COMM – the Museum for Communication in The Hague, told me school kids frequented their workshops on impact of social media and fake news on society every week. These are their most successful workshops so far, because they speak to the everyday lives of people and the influential role of technology therein. Forms of new media art often argue for both admiration of and a critical stance towards technology. Art is used as a medium to generate attention to the risks as well as the perks of the technologies that are part of all our lives, to create a certain awareness. It is a means of signaling possible problems before they arise, by creating an active and critical way of thinking and reconsidering within their audiences. As one of my informants made clear to me:
“Within this discipline, let’s call it media art, artists reflect on good and evil within technology. They look at how you can use technology, and they hack into it and create something new out of it. This is really important. These artists keep reflecting on computers and technologies and what they mean within society”.
Olof van Winden, TodaysArt7
Gaining attention for these forms of art, both on a practical (the art and its practitioners) and a policy level can thus generate this awareness of the role of technology within society, with The Hague – a modern city with great internet access – as relevant example.
1.4 The research questions In order to generate a comprehensive understanding of new media art and its role within society, I focused on as many people involved in these forms of new media art as possible, as well as CultuurSchakel and other policy makers within The Hague. This has led me to formulate the following question:
How are expressions of new media art within The Hague perceived and presumably (better) facilitated by those involved?
This question will be specified by three sub-questions:
- Who are those involved in forms of new media art? - What is new media art according to those involved?
7 Original quote in appendix pp. 94 – Quote 2
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis
- Where in The Hague are expressions of new media art made visible and in what ways can these expressions presumably be (better) facilitated?
In the remaining part of this thesis, I will first position the main concepts within these questions into wider academic debates to show their significance and usefulness to this research project. Next, I will introduce my research field and reflect on the operationalization of my questions and the methods I used, some of which proved more successful than others, and briefly consider some of the ethical considerations I had to take into account. Here, I will also problematize policy-oriented anthropology in itself and draw attention to its benefits and limitations. After creating this theoretical and practical framework, the remainder focusses on the answering of the sub-questions, divided into three chapters which will lead to the general conclusion at the end of this thesis.
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.1 Introduction The premise of this chapter is to inform the reader about the key concepts concerning my research within wider (anthropological) academic debates. Although a lot is written about arts within anthropological literature, I decided not to include these arguments, since this would cause an elaborate discussion on the meaning of art in society in such an intricate manner that it is no longer compatible with the amount of attention this topic receives during my ethnographic research. The focus of this chapter will therefore be on new media art more specifically, and the problems that arise while trying to define this fluid and slippery concept. Of course, I already mentioned how I had initially defined new media art based on the scholarly definitions in the previous chapter (interactive forms of art that make use of modern technologies). Hence, this chapter concentrates on more in-depth discussions on the topic, as well as on making tangible the problems that arise when referring to a technology or technique as ‘new’ or ‘modern’. This will be done in a more elaborate manner than in the previous mentioning of these complications in chapter 1. The caution that is important when denoting ‘newness’ appeared to be a prominent point of discussion during my time in the field. Next to problematizing the terminology used within describing my research topic, I deem it important to show and describe specific examples of new media art as well, in order to form the same image of these art expressions for the reader as I had when I entered the field.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis This way, I hope to create a background that can help understand the complexity of my field of research and at the same time provide enough knowledge about the matter to continue reading as an informed reader.
2.2 ‘New’ Media “People experience a communicative channel as new when it enables people to circulate knowledge in new ways, to call forth new publics, to occupy new communicative roles, to engage in new forms of politics and control—in short, new social practices” (Gershon 2017:15).
When discussing new media, we should address and at the same time problematize the very concept of ‘newness’. As Gershon (2017) argues, the social structures the audiences see themselves embedded in, imply if a medium is new and how it subsequently changes. These social structures are therefore more important to the ‘newness’ of a phenomenon than the time in which it is first invented. Within my research project, this means that ‘the use of new media’ or ‘the use of modern technologies’ as a characteristic of new media art, has to be looked at critically. Modern technologies do not necessarily have to be new inventions, but can be ‘older’ technologies that are re-invented and repurposed by artists. Also, artists and audiences choose to not use every form of media that gets newly invented. The definition of ‘new media’ therefore lies within the social context rather than in the product itself. One could say that newness is a social construct, it is being produced: “Some technologies come into being only because culturally and historically specific understandings of how communication takes place enable people to conceive of that technology in the first place” (Sterne 2003 in Gershon 2017:18). We can see this in the emerging use of vlogging, where people ‘shoot’ short clips of themselves and put these online. Film is not necessarily a new invention, but the use of short clips to get attention and even make money could be seen as something inherent to our current society in which an overwhelming (online) stream of information and amusement unfolds around us: things need to be short, fast and flashy to gain attention and avert people from shifting this attention elsewhere. This idea is endorsed by Silvio (2007): “To be compelling, a new media product must capture the psychic and social experiences of a particular time and place, and these include the experiences of older media, as well as the hopes and anxieties around the introduction of new media technologies themselves” (Silvio 2007:286). Vlogging could be seen as a technology that uses other and recombines previous technologies to communicate in a society that increasingly focusses on the online. This focus on the online could also be a welcome development for young people since they are generally
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis more involved in ‘new phenomena’ than older generations, and the internet’s mundane place in society often generates low costs for this platform: “Fans have increasingly turned to the Web to lower the costs of production and to expand their reading public” (Jenkins 2006:143). Jenkins (2006) offers a clear explanation for the popularity of using internet or digital media among young people as to create and distribute art. The charm of this kind of new media is important, since the social world has to be open to the use of a specific technology in order for it to emerge. Sterne (2003) refers to this insuperability as cultural possibility, which I find fitting within the new media debate since it focusses on the conditions that have to be met before something ‘new’ can develop. This can be linked to Gershon’s’ claim that not everything new is perceived as such and some inventions might even be discarded. Not only is it necessary for new or modern technologies to have a cultural possibility in order for them to emerge, the social structures in which they evolve also influence how they are being used: “When participant structures change, so too do the possibilities for stance-taking, the ‘taking up a position with respect to the form or content of one’s utterance’” (Jaffe 2009:3). This focuses on how exactly media are used (in)directly to express ideas. This of course is interesting within my research on how new media is used as a form of art and how the creation of these art forms can be (better) facilitated. We should consider not only how social structures influence new media, but also how new media influences these social contexts as well as the arts that emerge in such a society. As Gross (2009) argues, new media can change attitudes and belief systems and we cannot understand social lives nowadays without taking internet into account (Gross 2009:66-67). Internet plays an important role in my research, since part of the art performances I study are only viewable online. This, in itself, shows a means of using new media as way of expressing ideas and storytelling, which gives room to restructuring the distribution of arts (Jaffe 2003 Gross 2009). Anthropological research on new media and its influence on society and vice versa is challenging, as Spitulnik already realized in the early 1990s when she asks herself: “[…]it seems that the greater challenge lies in integrating the study of mass media into our analyses of the "total social fact" of modern life. How, for example, do mass media represent and shape cultural values within a given society?” (Spitulnik 1993:293). Nowadays, this challenge might be even greater, since the internet has become a research site in itself, and its total social impact cannot be overseen. I stress that my research will not try to generate an inclusive review on how internet and new media influence society, but only how certain members of society (practitioners in The Hague) use new media as a part of their art. As Coleman (2010) suggests in her annual review contribution, new media is so far mostly researched topic-wise, and this is
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis my aim as well, as I described in chapter one. Concluding, new media is a concept that keeps on changing, as do related terms such as modern technologies and so on. I still decided to use this concept, since it was the concept that was initially suggested by my societal partner (CultuurSchakel) and it was recognizable to most artists I worked with (without them necessarily agreeing on using the term). The fluidity of the concept will be iterated throughout this thesis, and remains a subject of research in itself.
2.3 New Media Art Of course, not everything that uses new media for artistic expressions is new media art. Defining what new media art is, on the other hand, is a debate in itself. According to Graham and Cook (2010) the problem of defining new media art lies within its everchanging nature, as it follows on new technologies and therefore keeps reinventing itself (Graham and Cook 2010:2). Poortman (2017) did excessive research on the definition of new media art within art literature, and concluded that a definition should entail that new media art is always inspired by technology and created by this technology (Poortman 2017:3). Hence, new media art emerged in the 19th century with the invention of photography: a new technology that inspired and created art. It further developed in the 20th century with the invention of digital photography and film (Poortman 2017). Nowadays, some photography is an artform itself. Technologies have further developed and the definition by Poortman gets an important addition: not only does new media art use technology, it also includes interactivity and/or connectivity within its artworks (Graham and Cook 2010:10, Poortman 2017:25). Interactivity refers to the role of the audience: people have to interact with the artworks in order to give them meaning. Connectivity refers to the idea of the art being connected – through technology – with art in other places in the world (Poortman 2017:25). An example of new media art in which all components are visible is Sleep Mode, by Rafaël Rozendaal. For this art work, he created screensavers, a form of technology that was first used in the 1980’s, as a purely functional part of one’s computer experience. In 2017, with Sleep Mode, Rafaël Rozendaal intends to show the artistic value of these screensavers while at the same time gaining attention towards the underlying issue of the undocumented disappearance of digital culture that is in the heart of its fleeting nature.8 He re-invents the ‘old’ technology by displaying the screensavers on large screens within a hallway where people were asked to take selfies. These selfies, which can be considered as a modern form of
8 https://www.newrafael.com/sleepmode-the-art-of-the-screensaver/ visited last on 12-06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis communication, would generate ‘new life to the forgotten screensaver’: an interaction of the audience that influenced the meaning of the works of art.9 Later on, these selfies could be shared with people around the world, which demonstrates its connectivity. This raises another question within the definition of new media art: could the word ‘new’ not only refer to the newness of technologies, but also to the creation of new meanings of artworks by the interference of active audiences?
Image 1: Sleep Mode by Rafaël Rozendaal, Photo by Steve Turner, found on http://steveturner.la/16790/news/rafael-rozendaal-35
Image 2: Sleep Mode by Rafaël Rozendaal, Photo by Marian Genet, found on https://sleepmode.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/
9 https://sleepmode.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/ visited last 07-12-2017
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis When discussing new media art, one cannot overlook the importance of the internet. For instance, Rafaël Rozendaal (1980) refers to himself as an ‘internet artist’ (Rozendaal 2010:32), websites like currentsnewmedia.com and Li-Ma exhibit art online and museums offer online tours in a way the audience does not have to go to an offline museum anymore. 10 This raises another question quite relevant to this research: how has the meaning of art changed as a result of internet technology? Art cannot be defined as ‘art’ simply because it is in a museum. Of course, this simplistic idea about art had been critiqued before, especially by Dadaists (1916- 1920). Online art offers a new dimension to this ongoing discussion within the art world. Online art can be art as well, and this potentially creates a thin line between professional and non- professional artists within forms of new media art, since the internet is easily accessible for artists whose works might not be exhibited in a gallery or museum. Besides that, the viewing of online works can come directly from the interests of the audience, without the interference of a curator. A nicely edited clip posted by a vlogger on YouTube can potentially generate more views and public discussion than a clip by a professional and famous artist shown offline in a museum or theater. What differentiates one from the other? Should they even be perceived differently? Are YouTube and similar websites some kind of a contemporary counterpart of a museum? These kinds of questions make new media art an interesting research subject within the field of anthropology where the current research on this topic is marginal.
2.4 Active Art Audiences and Produsage As said, new media art cannot be examined without an emphasis on the audience as well. According to Livingstone (2003) in many theories about development of the influence of media, the role of the audience is perceived as static. She argues that we should no longer distinguish the audience as such, since the role of the audience is becoming more and more active. I tend to agree with her, as do many other scholars, including Bruns (2011) and Bird (2011) who prefer using the concept of produsers. Produsers are described as “representing the merging of the producer and consumer in an interactive environment” (Bruns in Bird 2011:502). The term produser consists of the words ‘producer’ and ‘user’ and its use highlights that an audience on the internet is no longer simply passive, but can act as an active user/producer that is able to add their own content or manipulate existing ones. It emphasizes the coinciding of, in my case, audiences and artists or practitioners. This idea of active audiences is also already cited by Jenkins (1992 and 2006) who uses an example of Star Trek fans. These fans actively demanded
10 http://mentalfloss.com/article/75809/12-world-class-museums-you-can-visit-online visited last 07-12-2017
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis their show to be broadcasted and offered alterations that made it into the show’s content. Nikunen (2007) highlights this even more by focusing on the user created content (UCC) within the gaming industry. The online gaming community does more than just use the games: they can participate by creating mods and skins, for instance in Counter Strike or The Sims, that become available for other online users as well (Darley 2000). One could say that the audience – the viewers or the gamers – have become actively involved in the creation of the very content they are viewing or playing with. Within the world of arts, Graham (2014) argues this is also true for visitors of new media art exhibitions: the art has changed their role as audiences. The audience needs to be actively involved to give meaning to the artworks within the exhibition (Graham 2014:6). A telling example of this is is Balam Soto’s Body Sound Suit (2011). In this art project he instructs audiences on how they can influence the music they hear with their movements by wearing a digitally wired suit he invented. Without people using the suit he made, one would simply see a hanging suit, surrounded by music, with no clear goal or meaning.11 An important side note to this, given by Bird, Jenkins and Nikunen, is that we should not overstate the power of these produsers: if we focus too much on fan produsage and local agency, we might forget to realize how much power the media industry still has over its audiences. All three argue that an interactive audience is not autonomous; it operates alongside powerful media industries (Jenkins 2006:135). This is something to keep in mind while doing research of course, but within my research, I will focus on what produsers do contribute themselves and what their power over artworks by other artists is. This will add an extra dimension to the question of produsage: if produsers are aware of their role, could they engage so actively in this role that the ‘producer’ part of the concept starts to take the upper hand in a way that the ‘user’ part might be overlooked? How do people labeled within the field under study as produsers define themselves, and does this change how anthropologists should perceive them as well? It is important to think of questions like these because not only technologies and, therefore, the site of research keeps changing with every new (online) invention that becomes embedded in our social worlds; the people within this world do as well. One cannot argue that the next generation will react on and with new technologies in the same way previous generations did. With a dynamic (online) world in which people connect and interact, we – as anthropologists – should keep questioning our methods and our knowledge, because the context
11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqXeVUiuJqU&list=PL2bsLE8RtaPi072t0L4cnrjMax5ggG9SY&index=4 visited last on 17-05-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis in which we work changes continuously. Livingstone (2003) keeps reminding us of that in her article about the changing nature of audiences. She argues that the role of the audience changes over time and researchers should take this into account and must not see the contemporary audiences as a given. I like to contribute to this argument by also stating we should look critically at what we call the ‘audience’ as to prevent seeing it as a given. It is not a given, because the audience can take on the role of the produser, and maybe new roles in the future, and anthropologists should focus on the self-determination of the people involved.
3. METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS
31. Introduction “Ethnographers have all too rarely made explicit the methods by which the information reported in their descriptive and analytical works was derived.”
(Berreman 1972:153)
According to the anthropologist Gerald Berreman, colleagues in the field of ethnography often do not systematically describe their used and failed methodology as a result of practical problems they encounter in the field. This is unfortunate, since the clarification of methods tells us not only about scientific considerations of the anthropologist, but also about the nature of the field he or she operated in (Berreman 1972:153). Of course, there are also many examples of ethnographers who do focus on their methodology, for instance James Ferguson in his book on the Zambian Copperbelt (1999). Works like this inspire me as a starting anthropologist to emphasize not only on my data but also on the human attributes of the experience that is anthropological fieldwork. Hence, I dedicated this chapter to making explicit my main methodology, how these methods changed in the field and how I feel this has had an impact on my final findings. Before entering the field, I had worked out my methodological approach in detail, feeling confident of the diversity and depth of information these methods would gather me. I had worked out a solid survey for the students from The Hague’s Royal Academy of Visual Arts: KABK.12 I had read about the practice of doing online research and took ideas from Hine (2015) about e-mail interviews and online research groups. I already had ideas about gaining rapport by using photographs as suggested by Berreman (1972:158) and thought about how
12 In Dutch: Koninklijke Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis reciprocity (could be created by helping out on new media art events. But, having done fieldwork in the past, I also knew in the back of my mind: everything might turn out different in reality. This appeared to be true on several occasions, but reflecting on my methods, I feel these ‘changes of plan’ should not be seen as failure. Moreover, changing plans according to what is needed in reality is inherent to ethnographic research. Considering my methodology has shaped my information, these changes in the field can be seen as possibilities to learn about my informants, myself, and how to change my methodology for further research. In order to illustrate this, and to explain the scientific base of this research, this chapter goes into detail on several methods I used, and I reflect on the information these did and did not reveal to me. Before considering these methods, it is vital to generate an image of the field that helped shape this methodology. I endeavour to generate an image of my research field and its participants. It is often the assumption that ‘a field’ is a geographical location in which the anthropologist is temporarily present and gathers data. Unchallengeable, there is more to it, especially in within the field of new media art, as an art scene that also depicts itself predominantly online, as this chapter will demonstrate.
3.2 The Hague and its art scene at first glance The Hague is a city located in the province of South Holland in The Netherlands. It houses the Dutch government, but it is not the capital of the country. With a population of more than half a million,13 it is the third largest city of The Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam. When entering the city from The Hague Central Station, it breathes modernity, with large contemporary buildings containing lots of glass. The city center has a more ‘classical Dutch’ appearance, with many famous buildings dating back to the V.O.C. era. The city is divided in eight districts, called stadsdelen, all having their own webpage and section on the website of The Hague municipality.14 It was on this website I also started my initial research on new media art in The Hague. I did so because of the policy-oriented focus of my master’s programme which inevitably led me towards the municipality. Besides that, googling on cultural activities in The Hague also led me to this website, making it probably a starting point for other people searching for ‘arts and culture’ in The Hague as well. When searching for organizations promoting arts and culture within The
13 https://www.stadindex.nl/den-haag visited last on 16-05-2018 14 The eight stadsdelen are: Laak, Escamp, Segbroek, Leidschenveen-Ypenburg, Centrum, Loosduinen, Haagse Hout and Scheveningen.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis Hague, the website of the municipality suggests one to start at the so-called cultuurankers.15 These are places, such as libraries, theaters or museums, where the cultural activities for a specific district of The Hague are concentrated. Each stadsdeel has its own cultuuranker and the website states these are the best places to start when one wants to be involved within ‘cultural activities’. A big part of the agenda of these cultuurankers is cultural education, just as it is for CultuurSchakel. CultuurSchakel and the cultuurankers work closely together. All of the staff members of the Cultural Participation department of CultuurSchakel were assigned to a specific cultuuranker. These staff member have meetings with the staff members of the cultuurankers and together organize activities promoting cultural participation and cultural education. Although this cultural education covers a large range of topics, such as theater, flamenco dance and classical music, I have found no cultuuranker specifically focusing on new media or new media art. This is interesting since The Hague municipality has indeed put ‘e- culture’ on their policy agenda, on which I will elaborate more in chapter six.16 We can question how they intend to focus on this while their cultuurankers seem to be mostly involved in more ‘classical forms’ of art. Another major player in the city’s art scene is Stroom.17 As I will further describe in section 4.2, Stroom is interwoven in all facets concerning art and artists within The Hague. Both online and offline, they offer possibilities to learn about the city’s artists and their works. One can browse through their online list of artists by art specialization, including a category called ‘media artists’.18 Stroom presents itself on its website as an organization that is responsible for the city’s ‘non-museal art policy’, which is demonstrated in their policy on ‘art in public spaces’.19 Next to this, they focus on funding artists, for instance by offering grants and by being an intermediary concerning the housing and providing of studios for artists. Last but not least, Stroom has their own exhibition space at Hogewal in stadsdeel centrum. Of course, The Hague has many more organizations that focus on art and artists. The image on the next page is the so-called ‘cultural map of The Hague’. The map paints a picture of the concentration of ‘cultural organizations’ within The Hague. The numbers in the yellow
15 https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/vrije-tijd-en-recreatie/kunst-en-cultuur/kunst-en-cultuur-naast-de- deur.htm visited last on 21-05-2018 16 https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/vrije-tijd-en-recreatie/kunst-en-cultuur/meerjarenbeleidsplan-kunst- en-cultuur-2017-2020.htm visited last on 29-05-2018 17 https://www.stroom.nl visited last on 15-06-2018 18 https://www.haagsekunstenaars.nl/zoeken.php visited last on 15-06-2018 19 https://www.stroom.nl/paginas/pagina.php?pa_id=6355919 visited last on 15-06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis dots refer to the number of ‘cultural organizations’ in a specific area. When you zoom in on the actual website, you can see the exact location of all of these institutes.
Image 3: found on http://www.culturelekaartdenhaag.nl 20
The organizations mapped on this image are involved in many different forms of arts and culture, such as ballet, theater and urban art. When taking a deeper look, one can see that ‘media art’ is not present within most of these organizations. The organizations focusing on ‘media’ – defined by this website – are involved in photography and film. Although one could argue that digital photography is a form of new media art – an argument I already discussed in chapter two – I dare to say the organizations related to creating new media art and supporting (amateur) artists within this field are not frequented on this list.21 Within the city’s library and tourist office, I also noticed the cultural calendar for 2018. Again, I found no obvious mentioning of new media art events, beyond TodaysArt festival. This leading festival is also the first google hit when searching for new media art in The Hague. However, this does not mean there are no other expressions of new media art in The Hague! During my research, I have found several organizations and individuals occupied with forms of new media art. The point I make here is that I did not find these participants when I searched for them in the same way I would look for cultural activities in my daily life. I had to become actively involved with people who were part of the field of new media art, in order to grasp
20 http://www.culturelekaartdenhaag.nl/ visited last on 12-06-2018 21 http://www.culturelekaartdenhaag.nl/culturele-lijst/: a list based on the ‘cultural map’, ordered by theme. Visited last on 10-12-2017
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis what the city has to offer considering this field. Consequently, I state the focus on new media art as an artform in itself, is promoted less in The Hague than for instance Amsterdam, with institutions like Upstream Gallery22 and Li-Ma23 whose art collections consist mainly of new media and internet art and can easily be found while searching online for ‘new media art in The Netherlands’.
3.3 RESEARCH POPULATION
This section focusses on the choice I had to make concerning my research population based on the focus of CultuurSchakel on ‘amateur artists’. As said, the organization only operates with practitioners in a non-professional context. Their emphasis on this target group was made especially clear when Stephanie went with me to a meeting with Stef Katwijk from The Hague municipality. During the interview, she made several remarks on the role of ‘amateurs’ within subjects Stef and I were discussing as she felt we might overlook them. This focus makes sense, since CultuurSchakel cannot fund or help professional artists, and is thus not interested in gaining more information about practitioners in a professional context. At the start of my fieldwork, I was therefore focussed on these ‘amateurs’ as well. Subsequently, I encountered problems right away, even before the start of my official research, at the Impakt gathering in Utrecht. This issue became even more problematic when I went to the open day of KABK, the Royal Academy of Visual Arts I mentioned before. My idea of an amateur artist consists of a person who does not make a living out of his or her art. At KABK I would meet students, who I thought of as amateurs since they were learning and not yet professionally practicing the trait. I could not have been more wrong. Not only did CultuurSchakel consider students as ‘upcoming professionals’ and therefore not as real amateurs, more importantly the students certainly did not perceive themselves as amateurs. Amateurs, all of the students I spoke with made clear, are people who do not really know what they are doing, people who create something in their free time. Surely, the students at the prestigious KABK were not amateurs in that respect! During the remainder of my research, I continuously tried to gather information on non- professionals, but similar issues concerning the idea of an ‘amateur’ or ‘non-professional’ kept reoccurring. Even when we agreed on terminology – that ‘non-professional’ should have nothing to do with the quality of one’s work, but simply if one got paid for it – the people I met did not know other practitioners they would call non-professional.
22 http://www.upstreamgallery.nl visited last on 09-12-2017 23 http://www.li-ma.nl/site/ visited last on 09-12-2017
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis Of course, as anthropologists, we gather data from our field and these empirical findings are our main source of information. This is a strength, since it gives in-depth knowledge to those who have no means of doing such investigations themselves, like policy makers, but it can also be difficult once this information is not coherent with the practical goals of these organizations who postulate and search for common interests within populations, and between the populations and themselves (since both their decision making and their execution of decisions need consensus) (Olivier de Sardan 2005:200). Consequently, my research ought to be based on the information gathered from professionals, as they appeared to be the dominant practitioners in the new media art scene. Since one of my sub-questions revolves around who are ‘all involved’ within new media art in The Hague, I also included audience members/produsers, festival organizers, staff members of museums, galleries and exposition spaces in order to get a comprehensive image of the new media art scene in The Hague.
3.4 METHODS OF RESEARCH
3.4.1 PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION Since I am anthropologist, it makes sense to start with participant observation as most imperative method of research. After all, participant observation is seen as a method which distinguishes anthropologists from other social researchers. The emergence in a ‘foreign’ society, becoming ‘one’ with the people you study trough participant observation can be described as “both an art and a science” (Powdermaker 1966:9 in Sluka and Robben 2012:1). It seems one cannot speak of ethnographic research, without including findings gathered trough participant observation. So how does one participate with artists? This was a question I asked myself before entering the field. I decided on two options: first, I would create something myself. I am not an artist, but I did have the possibility to produce a weekly online blog about my research. This way, I participated in the online world, creating something that people could comment on. As Efimova (2008) and Jenkins (2006) state, blogging is a form of produsage itself, which therefore made me produser. This way I felt more connected with artists on a certain level. I realized soon that my blog was not really well read. This could have to do with my promotion of the blog, which was mainly by sharing it on Facebook and mentioning it to participants. This did not gain me a large amount of attention for my blog, but this did not alter its effects on me personally, as a result. The practice of creating something and putting ‘a part of me’ out in the open, gained me experience in the vulnerability and pressure that come with expressing your personal creativity for an unknown
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis (online) audience in a unique way, and made me understand my research participants better when they described their creative processes. In my blog, I wanted to write something my readers would like, which made it more difficult every week. I reflected on this with some of my participants, asking if they felt pressured in their creativity as well. I would not have come up with questions like this, if I had not tried writing that blog, which made it valuable to my research despite the low reading numbers. Besides reflecting on this experience with my participants, writing this blog was of course a personal activity. Participant observation should also gain one a deeper level of insight in the ‘back stage’ of their informants by participating with them. My second way of participant observation would therefore include a number of activities in which I was present. I went to CultuurSchakel’s weekly staff meetings, to get more insight in their activities. This taught me a lot about all the different fields of expertise of the staff members, but also expanded my knowledge on how an organization like CultuurSchakel can perceive their work field. The city, as said above, is divided in so-called stadsdelen, and all staff members are assigned to a certain stadsdeel. All staff members have their own cultural expertise (i.e. dance or theatre) as well, but the focus seems to be geographically oriented. These meetings also showed the hierarchy and the atmosphere on the work floor, on which I will elaborate a little bit more in the ethical reflections towards the end of this chapter.
Image 4: Map of The Hague hanging in the office of the Cultural Participation department. Pictures of staff members are put within their assigned stadsdelen. Photo taken by me on 22-02-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis I did not participate in any other of CultuurSchakel’s activities, since the main events they help organize, such as People Stage at Parkpop and Laakfestival 2018, were to take place after my field work. The smaller events conflicted with my interview schedule, which I prioritized since CultuurSchakel wanted me to find out more about new media art, not about their own organization. Nevertheless, I still feel I have got a distinct image of the organization and its routines by means of attending their staff meetings, new year’s network event and following their online activities. Next to CultuurSchakel, I intended to participate with my other informants as well. I went with a Youtuber (as he calls himself) on a day of shooting clips, to a lecture of a choreographer on the inspirations for his new show, to drinks with artists, to a meeting of the creators of the BorderSessions festival, I had tours in multiple studios and broedplaatsen, went to three museums to see works ‘in action’ and went to a debate for politicians on cultural policy – all of which I will elaborate on later. All of these activities though, consisted mainly of observation. Participating seemed arduous since I did not play a role in any of these events. It felt like I could not gain that role, which reminded me of a statement made by Schwegel and Powell:
“Additionally, policy places anthropologists in contact with members of a different sort of subject community, composed mainly of professionals and experts who do not necessarily live close to one another and may or may not even socialise with one another. Rather, these flexible and sometimes itinerant communities of professionals and experts associate and identify for very specific purposes.”
(Schwegel and Powell 2008:4)
This is precisely what occurred within my policy-oriented fieldwork. My goal was to map new media art expressions and activities in The Hague and therefore I went all over the place to meet and interview as many practitioners and experts as I could. Although this has gained me enough information to answer my research questions, I felt I sometimes lacked in-depth knowledge of The Hague’s art scene and had to rely only on what I heard and read, instead of relying on my own experiences, which made the capacity of my interviews greatly important.
3.4.2 SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS I held my interviews mostly one-on-one with practitioners, art students, festival organisers a policy maker, and staff members of museums, art galleries and presentation rooms. I also conducted one of these interviews in the setting of a focus group. This group consisted of four
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis students from the fine arts department of KABK: Daan, Daniele, Dimitri and Yulong. It was held in one of their studios. I actually conducted most of my interviews in studios or workplaces, to get a glimpse of the environment in which my informants created art or worked on a regular basis. Since interviews are my main sources of information, I utter it deeply important to generate what Hiller and DiLuzio (2004) refer to as ‘reflexive progression’: “the complex discursive activity whereby the respondent, on the encouragement of the interviewer, refines thoughts and observations as the interview unfolds.” (Hiller and DiLuzio 2004:16). The information (co-)produced this way exceeds that of the ‘front stage’ and offers knowledge from an angle that might also be unthought of by the participants themselves:
“[…] because of the unfolding nature of the interview, respondents were able to reflect more deeply about what they wanted to say, often coming to a new understanding of their own behaviour, as they clarified and articulated their positions more precisely than their initial statements would suggest.”
Hiller and DiLuzio 2004:16 This happed in most of the interviews I conducted, especially when we arrived at creating definitions of art together. Using an open interview-style, like the semi-structured interview, often turned the interview into a conversation in which we could exchange ideas. In various cases, this resulted in reflexive progression, where both parties ended up with more insights on the topic of new media art than before the interview. We showed genuine interest in each other’s ideas and opinions, which brought about an open ethos in which I felt people were sincere and felt they could speak their hearts. On a critical note, in some cases, I feel this open approach might not have been the right one. In one case, I felt I insulted someone, since he ended the interview by mentioning I could find more serious interviews with him online. In another case, I felt that the suggestions I posed in my questions made me sound biased, since my interviewee suddenly became wary of her words as if she was worried about being misquoted towards other people. These experiences made me rethink my own influence on the information I received. I am a very open and honest person, and I realized I should sometimes hold this personality trait down more, in order to let my participants feel more at ease with their own words.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis
3.4.3 ONLINE RESEARCH One aspect vital to new media art, is that it can also be created for an online audience. As a result, some of my research had to be done online. This proved more difficult than I anticipated. This applies in particular for connecting with online practitioners and audiences. Although I send many e-mails and Facebook messages, only three artists responded to my requests. I also noticed this lack of response when I sent out surveys. Despite many reminders and even an e-mail sent to students by their professor on my behalf, only one student responded. I induce it is problematic to gain rapport, or even attention, from people who never met me in real life. It is more difficult to explain what I am doing in a message, which has to be short to be read at all, than on the phone or face-to-face. Christine Hine, who has done elaborate online fieldwork, already noticed this difficulty during her own research on the online Freecycle network. She states in her experience it was easier to find participants on forums that already exist, instead of approaching people from e-mail lists, one person at a time (Hine 2015:101). Inspired by her findings, I went to two art forums as well: The Vice Creators Community and the IMGUR community. These online communities are not initiated by people from The Hague, but with their large worldwide network, might have provided me with useful information regarding new media art and its artists. Unfortunately, the data I met on these forums had to do with other art forms. Since my goal was to connect with ‘online artists who are based in The Hague’, as CultuurSchakel requested, I decided to use Instagram pages especially designed for the purpose of promoting art from The Hague, such as #070Talent.24 Here, I met with the same problem: the pages offered many expressions of art, but none of it being new media art. I realized ‘the online’ in these cases is mostly used to attract attention to ‘offline’ art. This is a different strategy than having the online technologies as an inherent part of the art expression in itself, as is the case in online forms of new media art. In the end, the online part of my research ended up consisting mostly of viewing clips and reading comments. This was useful, since I got a better idea this way of online art and audience responses. The issue here is that I could only interpret what I saw, and not discuss this with most of the creators or commentators since they did not response. Exceptions to this claim are the tree online practitioners I did meet in real life: Bradley, Farouk and Minerva, who will be introduced in chapter five. Here, the background information I gathered by viewing online
24 This Instagram account is focussed on promoting all sorts of talent from The Hague. It mostly contains excerpts from music video´s and promotion material for events. Although #070talent’s goal is to promote all kinds of talent, musicians are most represented by far.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis art expressions gave more profundity to the interviews I conducted with them. They did indeed like to talk about the clips and comments I had seen, which created more reliance towards me and added depth in our interviews.
3.5 Data Analysis While I laid out the received data in front of me on my iPhone, my laptop and even the table, I realized that – before I could start analysing all of this – I had to rethink how I obtained this information. More specifically, what was my role in how this data was constructed? During my self-reflection, I realized that there was one thing that influenced my entire fieldwork: I was an outsider. I was not an artist, nor a policy maker, but most importantly: I was not from The Hague. This means that I might not have started my data gathering at the most straight forward location, or with the people that are considered to be experts ‘in the scene’ since I was not part of this very scene. In order to make this feeling palpable, I added an excerpt from one of my blogs:
It was almost pitch black. The only sounds were sirens in the background, the only light was a flickering one in an abandoned truck parked next to the graffiti covered warehouse on my right. On my left, there were containers and theatre props that were - hopefully - no longer in use. The was no-one around. Was this really a meeting place for e-culture artists? It felt more like a place to get murdered or at least kidnapped, and I found myself reaching in my pocket for my phone to share my location...
The first days of field work are always a bit unpleasant; leaving your well-known articles and books for 'the real world' full of unfamiliar people and - in my case - robots, but never have I felt so unheimisch (ironically translated as 'non-native' in English) during a first day as I did last week, in my own country […]. I have to say, being afraid of rape and murder made entering a warehouse full of new people to whom I had to introduce myself seem less scary than it did before. Still, I felt odd and exposed amongst all these artists who I felt glancing at me. I decided to perceive this awkwardness as part of my anthropological experience as well, and allowed myself to completely absorb the lights and the people as the outsider that I was.
[…]
before I knew it, I was talking to several people who all seemed to know the meaning of anthropology and were happy to share all of their insights. When I left for the darkness again,
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis I was no longer a complete stranger: "Goodbye lady anthropologist" I heard behind me. "Yes", I thought "that is who I am now: the anthropologist, on her way to meet you!"25
This experience is actually exemplary for the bigger picture of my research experience. At first, my unfamiliarity was kind of overwhelming to me, since I sometimes felt like a novice. At the same time, this lack of back-ground made me unbiased and open to all suggestions, which has led me to unravel connections and patterns that were unfamiliar and often pleasantly received by my informants that were already acquainted with The Hague’s art scene, as most of them are. This has created an exceptional level of openness within my interviews on the side of my informants, that was the base of the reflexive progression I described previously. My genuine interest and honesty about not being conversant of The Hague also led to the receiving of a lot of reading material from my participants. I received the policy plan from the municipality, a book and a USB-stick full of sounds created by iii, a book about ‘The Impact City’ from BorderSessions, four booklets about TodaysArt, the 2018 ‘art gift’ from West and many flyers and pamphlets from other organizations.26 I will go into further detail about all of these helpful organizations and people in chapter four and five, but I mention these examples here to show the variety of information they were willing to give me, next to our interviews. Since I had to travel an hour every day from my home to The Hague (and back) by train, I browsed these information sources whenever I got them, highlighting the parts that were of interest for my research. I have profoundly used the policy plan directly for this thesis. The other sources have primarily manifested a background of knowledge for me, creating more certainty for me personally to move around in a scene I was getting more and more acquainted with. My main source of information were my interviews. For my data analysis, I transcribed all the nine interviews that I taped on my iPhone. I held eight other interviews that I already transcribed during the interview and on my way home. I color-coded all the information in these seventeen interviews according to the sub-questions they contributed to. I also had more informal conversations at the Impakt gathering in Utrecht where I met new media artists who discussed their work with me over a beer, at CultuurSchakel’s new year’s networking event, at BorderSession’s meeting in which they introduced their plans for their next ‘TechCulture festival’ in The Hague, at Another Kind of Blue’s Curious Sunday where their founder showed the crowd his inspiration for their next show by means of a film and a presentation, at the open
25 http://thetinyanthropologist.blogspot.com/ 26 A picture of these gifts is added in the appendix pp. 95 – Image 5
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis day of KABK, with audience members at the museums I visited and with staff members of CultuurSchakel on multiple occasions. Since I always brought a notebook, I wrote down interesting quotes and perceptions about these conversations afterwards. Some of these have made it into my thesis, but most serve as personal reminders of my activities in the field whenever I read them. My last source of information are of course the works of art themselves. I have included some pictures in the appendix and throughout this thesis, but since most works use sound and moving images and only gain their meaning when the audience interacts with them, these pictures will be of marginal substance to the reader compared to audiences (including me) who have experienced these art works in real life.
3.6 Ethical reflections “Anthropologists have a duty to be informed about ethical codes relating to their work, and ought periodically to receive training on current research activities and ethical issues.”27
I have decided to dedicate this paragraph of my thesis to my ethical concerns because, as the above statement suggests, it is vital that social researchers do not take these concerns lightly and are obliged to inform their readers of these considerations if their fieldwork is to be taken seriously. Although “The ethics of anthropological research are too complicated and important to be reduced to unambiguous absolutes or even perhaps to be clearly defined” (Bourgeois 2012:318), there are of course guidelines that help with the ethical considerations during one’s fieldwork, the AAA being the most renowned. In my own research, I found the NAPA ethical guidelines most helpful. The NAPA code of ethics was created especially for policy-oriented anthropology, since anthropologists meet with other (or extra) ethical considerations within the context of organizations and societal partners. Hence, this suited my needs while working within the framework of the master’s programme of Policy in Practice and conducting research in collaboration with CultuurSchakel. I lived by these guidelines in order to not unjustly compromise their [the organisation’s] ability to carry out professional work 28 and at the same time stay true to my role as independent researcher as I will illustrate below. Both Mosse (2006) and Olivier de Sardan (2006) have written about the ethical troubles within policy research. The expectations of policy makers can interfere with the researcher’s
27 From the AAA code of ethics on: http://s3.amazonaws.com/rdcms- aaa/files/production/public/FileDownloads/pdfs/issues/policy-advocacy/upload/AAA-Ethics-Code-2009.pdf 28 From the NAPA code of ethics on: http://practicinganthropology.org/about/ethical-guidelines/
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis goal of generating objective scientific knowledge. As Olivier de Sardan so profoundly states: “Knowledge doubts, while action needs to believe” (Olivier de Sardan 2006:199). Policy makers pose a (research) question on a certain topic in order to take action, often rapidly. Antithetic, social research takes time since data is doubted and often leads to more questions instead of directly to practical answers. I was asked more than a few times by staff members of CultuurSchakel in our weekly meetings at het Koorenhuis what I had found out that week and what this information made me conclude. But my data only became concludable after my research, during the data analysis. Weekly updates on my ‘results’ when my research was not finished, show the discrepancy between the relatively fast working organization and the slow process of scientific research. These expectations of CultuurSchakel that often contrasted with my research schedule, created other ethical concerns as well, as can be seen in the excerpt from another one of my blogs:
“[…] But even when the organization’s influence is not that obvious, a researcher can still feel limited by the organisation he or she works for, impacting the research that should be independent. Especially people who work really hard and put their trust in you, can be really disappointed in the research outcome. And you do not want to hurt these people. […] It makes me wonder: is independent research in such a context ever possible?”29
I had trouble combining the realities of CultuurSchakel with the data I collected, and often felt I had to actively find something they would be looking for, in order to satisfy their wishes. This became most obvious in the trouble with their focus on amateur artists. Another problem I encountered in my research for CultuurSchakel, was their fear of being misrepresented as an organisation. This manifested itself in their demands to bring someone from the organisation with me to all my appointments, especially those with other organisations and the municipality. After reading Deloria (2012) and Greenberg (2012), I had taken into account the risk of misinterpreting information once it was printed, but I had not realized I was now seen – by CultuurSchakel – as their representative to the outside world. I felt it as my duty as a researcher to strive towards independent fieldwork as much as possible which I felt to be less so once I would not be able to conduct my interviews alone. Subsequently, I had a meeting with my contact at CultuurSchakel, team leader Stephanie, to discuss this problem. It appeared the organisation had troubles with being misinterpreted in the past, so I
29 http://thetinyanthropologist.blogspot.nl/
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis felt that I needed to show to her I would not harm CultuurSchakel in any way. I did this by updating them weekly on my whereabouts and by not introducing myself to my respondents as an employee of CultuurSchakel. Towards these respondents, I emphasized I did my research for myself, and CultuurSchakel merely provided me with the concept of new media art as the topic of my research. In addition, I let Stephanie and her colleague Hans – who works as a Cultural Advisor in Stephanie’s team – join me on two interviews, to show the way I worked. This gained me enough rapport within the organisation to substantively continue my research. Obviously, I had to take ethical concerns toward my other informants in mind as well. All of my informants gave their permission to use their real names, although I have decided sometimes not to use names when quoting them. I decided on this since our interviews were informal collaborations, in which people occasionally used strong language or negative remarks towards the municipality. Considering I decided this thesis will be made public, I concluded to leave these quotes anonymous to prevent impeachment of my informants, since “in conducting and publishing their research, or otherwise disseminating their research results, anthropological researchers must ensure that they do not harm the safety, dignity, or privacy of the people with whom they work […]”.30
4. ´THERE ARE NO AMATEURS IN HERE´
WHO ARE THOSE INVOLVED IN NEW MEDIA ART?
4.1 Introduction Both CultuurSchakel and The Hague municipality expressed their interest in new media art in our conversations. Stef Katwijk, staff member of the Cultural Policy Department of The Hague municipality, described he felt something was happing for some time now, “a renewal within the art world, by means of modern technologies”.31 Both he and Stephanie from CultuurSchakel indicated they were interested in facilitating the practitioners that are part of this renewal, but encountered difficulties in consulting who these practitioners were. This is not surprising since the recognitions of ‘notions of a renewal’ do not necessarily lead to familiarization with those
30 From the AAA code of ethics on: http://s3.amazonaws.com/rdcms- aaa/files/production/public/FileDownloads/pdfs/issues/policy-advocacy/upload/AAA-Ethics-Code-2009.pdf
31 Stef Katwijk 15-02-2018, Original quote in appendix pp.94 – Quote 3
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis involved. Getting acquainted with art expressions and practitioners within art forms both organisations acknowledge to have – as of yet – no expertise in, requires time. Both institutes conceded a lack of time to do research on these art forms was indeed a problem. A telling moment that describes the present difficulty for organizations trying to grasp this broad art field, while at the same time focussing on many other fields of art as well, occurred when I asked Stef to name some examples of what he considered to be new media art in The Hague. He suggested one practitioner and four art institutes that were paragons in his opinion. After looking into them later, I found out two of these institutes no longer existed. In no way, I mean this example to implicate Stef and his knowledge of developments in this field. It is a mere illustration of how unknown this field is, even to policy makers who are sincerely interested in the topic. Realizing this, I decided that it was essential for me to first map involved institutes and practitioners in The Hague, if I were to help CultuurSchakel and – in addition – The Hague municipality. By thus serving not only CultuurSchakel but also The Hague municipality, I felt more artists could benefit from my inventory too. Since CultuurSchakel only focusses on non-professional practitioners, and I allowed for the possibility of meeting some professional artists as well, involvement of the municipality – who already uttered their interest in the topic – could be a welcome addition for those practitioners who fell outside CultuurSchakel’s scope but were also interested in becoming (better) facilitated by organisations or institutes in distributing, creating or promoting their art works. The decision to also include practitioners that fell outside CultuurSchakel’s field of interest, was deliberate. I feel research on new media art is incomplete and even nugatory if I only focus on amateur artists. New media art is a trembling, lively and expanding field of arts, as this thesis will evince. By narrowing my focus through only looking for amateurs, I would not do justice to this field. This decision was made even before the official start of my fieldwork. On February the 22nd, I went to the Impakt gathering in Utrecht. Impakt is one of the biggest new media art events in The Netherlands, and I could not skip the opportunity of ‘drinks and art viewings’ with artists involved in this festival. It was no real surprise to me that all of the artists I talked to there were professionals that made money by means of their art works. For instance, their art was displayed on the festival and many of the people I spoke with were known in the new media art world. Indeed, three of the people I met there were amongst the first google hits I got while searching for new media artists in general. What did surprise – and even worry – me, was that all of them said they did not know any amateur artists. Even though this could have been a crowd of professionals that were not necessarily interested in non-professionals and could therefore not think of any, it made me realize I might unnecessarily limit myself and
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis my research if I ignored their suggestion that new media arts was a field populated mostly by professional artists. It was in that moment that I decided to include professional practitioners as well: I would not spend my time only looking for something that might not be there, while I could comprise artists that might be interesting for CultuurSchakel in other ways than previously considered. My first encounter with new media artists in The Hague (at the KABK open day) proved this choice to be accurate. There is another addition to CultuurSchakel’s question during my research that is important to note here. Although CultuurSchakel’s main interest is in practitioners, I already explained the importance of the audience within new media art. As indispensable part of these art expressions, I tend not to lose focus on the audience whilst construing an image of the people involved to CultuurSchakel and The Hague municipality. In the remainder of this chapter, I will therefore focus on all involved in ‘the making of new media art’: practitioners, audiences, institutes, museums and festivals. I will describe how they interact with art and its surroundings: the city, the spaces and places in which the art works gain their meaning.
4.2 Mapping new media art in The Hague 4.2.1 PROBLEMATIZING THE FIELD “CultuurSchakel is an organization that focusses on amateur artists within The Hague, so this should be your focus as well.”
This statement has been made several times by CultuurSchakel, for instance when I went to the Impakt gathering in Utrecht in order to meet informants for my research. Combined with the question they posed: ‘What forms of new media art are visible within The Hague, and how can we play a role in that field of art?’, this spatial assumption (Gupta&Ferguson 2012:382) of The Hague as a city and society, became a part of my research on its own. For CultuurSchakel, as well as for some other informants, the focus on The Hague was a matter of course, since they felt The Hague has his own culture, the ‘Haagse makerscultuur’,32 which would make its art scene different from other places in The Netherlands and the world. It is interesting that policymakers in particular presented this ‘Haagse makerscultuur’ as something distinct and to be proud of. During my research (between January and April), elections for the new local council were held. I went to the ‘debate on culture’ where spokesmen and -women of all partaking political parties issued their ideas for cultural policies during the next council period. I went there to see how the different political parties thought about The Hague as a ‘cultural
32 ‘Maker culture’. Putting ‘Haags’ in front of it, means something is assumed to be typical for The Hague.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis city’. Almost all of the party representatives mentioned the makerscultuur as something unique about The Hague, adding to the statement that was already made twice by Stef Katwijk and several times by staff members of CultuurSchakel. From other informants, who were not policy makers, I never heard this statement. One of them even responded to my remark on this matter with the words: “City of makers? It is a city of civil servants: all waffling and blathering and playing safe!”. The only artist that referred to himself and his co-workers as ‘makers’ instead of performers, practitioners or artists, was someone in the running to become a counsellor himself. This idea of a ‘city of makers’ might therefore be mainly political jargon, but the result of this idea has led to several policies that impact the artists in the city, like the creation of so-called ‘broedplaatsen’. These are ‘artist-run spaces’ in which ‘makers’ have the possibility to live and work at relatively low costs because of municipal subsidies.33 By means of these broedplaatsen artists gain the possibility to occupy themselves less with making money to pay rent, and are therefore able to spend more time on the creation of their art works. This stimulation of the makers would consequently benefit the quality of these art works. The broedplaatsen can be found all over The Hague, often at places that are meant to become (or already are becoming) ‘new cultural hubs’ – like Binckhaven and DCR– or in large buildings that are no longer in use and offer enough room for art studios – like De Gheijnstraat and Willem Dreespark. Throughout my research, I visited several of these broedplaatsen since many of the artists I met occupied studios or rooms within these spaces. The idea of – mostly – policymakers of The Hague as being both a geographically and – in some ways – culturally different space which achieved a distinct identity as a place (Gupta&Ferguson 2012:756), can be problematized in the field of new media art, where there is also a great online art world. CultuurSchakel acknowledges this online world as well, but needed me to focus on ‘online artists with The Hague as a home base’. An emphasis on space as a central organizing principle (Gupta&Ferguson 2012:375) by CultuurSchakel (as is also illustrated by the fact that they divided their employees by means of stadsdelen instead of art genres as I demonstrated in chapter three) does not necessarily conflict with also using the internet as a research site. As Miller and Slater (2000) suggest, the internet is connected to the everyday lives of people, and therefore does not only influence its users, but is itself influenced by its users as well. The content and use of the internet is affected by the ‘existing culture’, making it no longer ‘disembodied’ and separated from social spaces, but rather penetrated by and intertwined with these offline social spaces (Miller and Slater 2000).
33 https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/subsidies/subsidies-cultuur/subsidie-broedplaatsen-aanvragen.htm visited last on 17-05-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis The short-sighted tendency within Western social sciences to perceive online spaces as sealed off from the offline is also described by Baym (2010) as ‘the myth of cyberspace’, and is again emphasized in a later article that states: “In fact, offline contexts permeate online activities, and online activities bleed endlessly back to reshape what happens offline” (Baym and Boyd 2012:327). The problem with the internet as a research site in this particular case, lies therefore not in a notion of the internet as an ‘allocated space’, which is profoundly criticized by Miller and Slater (2000), but in the local character and interests of CultuurSchakel alongside the international focus of new media artists who are active online. Although the internet is not disembodied from local practices, it frequently appeared to be troublesome to discover whether an online practitioner was based in The Hague. This difficulty occurred since most online artists I encountered, let themselves be defined by their art and not by their location, which made it hard to track back their offline site of work or residence. The issue of mapping the Haagse online art scene will be delineated in paragraph 4.5. The remainder of this chapter will first focus on new media art in The Hague. As I mentioned previously, I started my data collection within The Hague at KABK, where I was interested in the bachelors’ and masters’ programmes in ArtScience and in interactive/media/design. Here I encountered my first issues with demarcating ‘The Hague’ as a field: the school consists of students from all over the world. Of course, this is not a unique characteristic for new media art, as this applies to all departments of KABK. Nevertheless, this sheds light on the matter of working with a societal partner whose emphasis is solely on ‘art in The Hague’ and recognizing that artists within this city might not all be bound to this place. These students work and study there, and some stay after their graduation to live in one of the city’s broedplaatsen to continue creating art within The Hague. At the same time, new media artists from both the academy and the rest of The Hague, feel limited by the size of the city and, as a result, the possibilities to distribute their art in The Hague. So, they tour around The Netherlands or even the rest of the world with their art works, but their home base is (their broedplaats in) The Hague. Hence, ‘cultural lines’ are blurred as artists intermingle to get the most out of their work. Again, this is a trait that can be generalised towards other art genres as well, but it illustrates the fluid character inherent to art forms thriving within a globally interconnected world, such as new media art. As interesting as this is for anthropologists, in order to make our work useful for policy makers who are less interested in these nuances and more in data that can be used for practical implications, we sometimes have to ‘thin’ our descriptions (van der Geest 2010). I therefore inferred to continue mapping who I spoke with
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis and what institutions and festivals I encountered, without emphasizing – but not forgetting – these blurred cultural lines they represent as well.
4.2.2 AMATEURS AND GATEKEEPERS In my acknowledgements, I already mentioned everyone I collaborated with. I will not mention all these names and institutes again in this paragraph since it would not be efficient to provide elaborate list of all of my participants here. This section is instead meant to demonstrate the informants I reckon essential for my research and deem as interesting starting points for further research on the topic of new media art within The Hague. First, I address the problem with amateurs, as it was evident that my findings did not correspond to CultuurSchakel’s target audience, and I deem it important to make clear why new media art forms are perceived to be art forms for professional practitioners. Several of my informants suggested the reason for the scarcity of non-professionals within this field, is that new media art is expensive to create. It often consists of large installations and costly technology like smart-lights, drones or high-end computers. In addition, working with these forms of technology – be it the creation of sounds, the controlling of drones or the construction of software and lights in an installation – are forms of expertise that cost a great deal of time and money. Most of my informants could not imagine this to be done by someone ‘as a hobby’, since the investment seemed too excessive. Three artists I met on the Impakt event added to that notion by stating: “You become a professional almost instantly when working in this field, since your expertise is sought after. It is a niche art scene that is becoming more and more popular, so if you are skilled, you will get paid”. Indeed, I had already experienced an indication of this myself when I visited KABK, where the students I met that specialized themselves in art and technology could already sell their school projects. An important argument to make here, is that all of the people who informed me about this, were talking about new media art that was displayed offline. As I have stated before, another part of this field exists online. The costs of online art are considerably lower, although there is a need for hardware and software sufficient enough for the goals of the artists. I have not had the pleasure to meet online new media artists, so I cannot generalize this statement about the professional character of these art forms towards the online art expressions as well. The most prominent organisation that focuses on professional artists within the Hague is Stroom. One cannot surpass Stroom, when researching art in The Hague in general. In many of my interviews they were mentioned as a great mediator for artists and their potential clients, but also for artists and The Hague municipality, as they play a role in assigning workspaces in
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis the broedplaatsen. It is important to not here that – in order to qualify for a studio in such a broedplaats – one first has to apply on Stroom’s website to register as an artist. This application will then be evaluated by Stroom.34 Stroom, in this regard, has a say in who is an ‘artist’ and who is not. An artist, then, is always a professional – a person who can make a living out of their art – since Stroom does not facilitate amateur artists. When I spoke with an employee of Stroom, she also confirmed their central role within the art world of The Hague, being a place where artists can ask all their questions concerning the city’s art scene. Next to being a mediator and consultant for artists, Stroom also has their own funding programme that is focussed on stimulating research, binding graduates from KABK to The Hague and increasing the visibility of the city’s art scene.35 To stimulate this last goal, they do not just offer funding but also manage a large exhibition room and an online list of artists from The Hague, including a list of (new) media artists. Through this list, Stroom can put people in touch with artists they’re interested in. 36 The exhibition space offers room for all kinds of artists, including new media artists. As an example of new media art that has been presented in this room, one of the staff members mentioned video art installations created by one of KABK’s graduates. It is safe to state Stroom is an authority when it comes to art in The Hague. Perhaps seemingly contradictory, this is precisely the reason they do not get a prominent role within this thesis. Starting with Stroom and refer to all the artists from their online list might sound as a straightforward way of working, but I felt this might undermine the reasons CultuurSchakel asked me to conduct this research in the first place: to unravel connections and connect people and dots as an anthropologist and to add to knowledge that is already right there for the taking. Stroom has a list of media artists, so if one is interested in such a list, he or she can find it on their website. The goal of this research is to see what I could find myself, and that way I also came into contact with artists who are not connected to Stroom, as of yet. Nevertheless, within The Hague, Stroom remains a gatekeeper for the art scene and for further research on new media art.
34 https://www.stroom.nl/nl/haagsekunstenaars/ateliers.php visited last on 27-06-2018 35 https://www.stroom.nl/paginas/pagina.php?pa_id=8080329 visited last on 13-06-2018 36 https://www.haagsekunstenaars.nl/ by https://www.stroom.nl/paginas/pagina.php?pa_id=3023452 visited last on 17-05-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis As mentioned above, I started my research at another large art institute in The Hague: KABK. KABK can be considered of major importance for The Hague’s art scene as well, harbouring ‘the next generation of art students’, in which the municipality is also interested.37 I went to the open day of the institute at January 27th, where I was welcomed by loud music from a van outside the building. 38 It was crowded with a large variety of people, most of them navigating through the building in small groups, holding a floor plan. The building had a smell that reminded me of the art rooms in high school; some dense combination of clay, wood and paint. It was a large building with an industrial look, and I felt I could get lost in there easily. Fortunately, there was the floor plan, which I followed up several stairs in the hope of meeting students and staff from the two departments I was interested in: ArtScience and interactive/media/design.39 As stated in the interactive/media/design information flyer, their programme is “for students who aim to influence society by designing meaningful interactivity between people, machines, systems […].”40 The overlap with new media art seemed obvious, and at the open day, I met with two students an two staff members who indeed recognized this resemblance. These students seemed to confirm the statement made at the Impakt event: media art was a field not occupied by amateurs. These students were already selling the art they made during their education. Anna Pelgrim for instance, designed a so-called ‘Healing Pod’, “where people are able to sit in a natural environment that aims to reduce stress.”41 These healing pods were now already getting bought by airports and hospitals, resulting in the creation of her own business, while still studying at KABK. Another student I spoke with, Sophia Bulgakova – who studies ArtScience, referred to more than a few festivals, like art or music festivals, she had been invited to show her interactive audio-visual installations.42 These festivals gave her a pay check for presenting her installations to their audience. She was demonstrating one of these installations at the open day as well, and let me interact with it:
I stood in a small dark chamber with white letters projected all around the room. They did not form a readable text. In the door opening, I saw other people staring in, trying to understand what was happening. Sophia gave me a large, flexible, blank piece of shiny plastic that I
37 I will elaborate on this is chapter 6 38 The exact date was 27-01-2018 39 ArtScience is an interdisciplinary programme between KABK and the Royal Conservatoire in which several of the informants I met later were involved: see https://www.kabk.nl/opleidingen/master/master-art-science. 40 Photograph of this flyer is attached in the appendix pp:94 – Image 5 41 https://www.architectureofcure.com/healingpod visited last on 17-05-2018. 42 https://www.mediamatic.net/en/page/369937/sophia-bulgakova visited last on 13-06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis could move around. Using this, the letters started to form words in front of me. I walked around the room while moving the plastic piece and where I went, all the letters came together and started to make sense. From the doorway, I now heard enthusiastic voices and people taking photographs. I looked over at Sophia and saw her smile: “Yeah, I get this response all the time.”
Image 6: art work by Sophia Bulgakova at the KABK open day.
Photo by me
CultuurSchakel already made clear to me that students from KABK fell outside their scope since they were ‘upcoming professionals’ and not amateurs. Deciding on the right way to still include these interesting people in my thesis nevertheless, I wandered around some more in the building. I sat down in a quiet room, close to the building’s entrance. “Hey, do you wanna play my game?” a friendly looking guy with a lot of curls asked me, while handing me a controller. “If you fill out my survey” I responded witty, whilst passing him my iPad. In the short video game he made, I played the role of a shaman. While the student, who introduced himself as Dimitri, was giving me instructions on how to apply potions in the game, I suddenly realized something:
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis Tanah: “So…you’re an art student, who uses technology to tell your story, with an interactive game?”
Dimitri: “Yes, you can definitely say so”
Tanah: “But you are not in the interactive/media/design track?”
Dimitri: “No, I am with fine arts, but at KABK we can experiment with anything.”
I did not think twice to make an appointment for my first interview. This interview turned into a focus group since Dimitri brought four other students from the fine arts department as well. They all confirmed Dimitri’s statement on the intermingling of different forms of art within the academy. For instance, some of them had worked with modern technologies like drones in their art, albeit not as their main focus initially. I realized if one wants to document students working on new media art projects in The Hague, one should not only include the obvious departments since the lines between these departments are not definite. The third party that is involved in new media arts and can be considered a gatekeeper – in this case because their prominent role in the field of media related art forms – is TodaysArt. TodaysArt is especially known in The Hague for their annual festival. Festivals in general are eminently for showcasing new media art, since often these art projects are too transient or too large to fit in museums and transcend the possibilities of museums and art galleries in more than one way:
“We sell experiences, not art works.”
Roland Smeenk, artist
TodaysArt festival is undeniably the most important media art festival in The Hague, an annual festival that is held in the city since 2005. TodaysArt is “a network organization specialized in the presentation and development of contemporary visual and performing arts and emerging culture”. 43 The organization has an international character with events all over the world and an international board, but is based in The Hague, where their first media art festival was held. Since 2014, the festival has set foot in Tokyo as well. The curating of the festival in The Hague and Tokyo are not entirely the same, since the board of TodaysArt always strives to include ‘local artists and elements’ as well, according to director and curator Olof van Winden. Olof van Winden himself is the only board member that lives in The Hague (and even The
43 http://todaysart.org/about/ visited last on 10-06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis Netherlands) and is an expert in the field of media arts. He has been the artistic director of the Dutch Institute for Media Art in Amsterdam, was a curator for Seoul Biennale (2012), 44 and has judged the Witteveen en Bos Competition for Arts and Technology several times.45 The audience of the festival in The Hague is diverse, he told me, not only in their roots (with around half of the people being from abroad) but also in age. The general audience is around 18 to 35 years of age, but many ‘regular guests have aged with the festival’, which has now resulted in a notable part of the audience being over 40. This solid fan base has grown over the years, and both TodaysArt and its director have gained a reputation of leading contributors in the field of (new) media arts, in The Netherlands and abroad. Olof also acknowledged he understood my struggle with mapping new media art in The Hague, as he has met challenges himself in curating his festival while including local artists. He stated: “media art, to me, is a cross-over of things: visuals, audience, performance…”,46 amplifying – again – the diverse character of these art expressions.
4.2.3 OTHER INTERESTING PLAYERS The Hague has more fascinating festivals where new media art can be found. Not as famous within this genre, but also interesting is BorderSessions festival. This is not just an art festival, but a ‘TechCulture festival’, a four-day festival to explore how technology can be a powerful instrument for positive change.47 Like many other informants I spoke with, Michel Behre, organizer of the BorderSessions festival, told me their organisation had no direct link to new media art, but was definitely interested in the subject. He told me BorderSessions festival offers labs in which contributes co-create solutions to all kinds of problems, using technology ‘for good’. Often, artists join these labs and offer creative ideas concerning implication and practice. Since – in these cases – the focus is on technology combined with art, it is informative to check with BorderSessions with whom they are collaborating at the moment if one wants to further investigate new media art in The Hague. I also already mentioned Rewire Festival. This is a music festival, which often makes use of installations of new media artists. Nevertheless, the emphasis here is on the music, and art is mainly used to enhance the musical experience. Although festivals seem most suitable for harbouring new media art, there are exposition locations in The Hague that include new media art works as well. I already mentioned Stroom,
44 Seoul Biennale (Seoul Media City) is a biennale with the purpose of profiling Seoul as capital of technological developments. The renowned exhibition is recognized as one of the few international shows with a focus on media art. More info on http://seoulbiennale.org/ last visited on 21-06-2018 45 https://www.kunsttechniekprijs.nl/nl/home/ last visited 21-06-2018 46 Original quote in appendix pp. 94 – Quote 4 47 https://www.bordersessions.org/ visited last 18-05-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis but two other locations are important players in this field as well: Nest and West. These two were most mentioned by my informants when I asked where I could find new media art in The Hague, so I visited both. West is a museum divided over two buildings, one in the city centre and one in stadsdeel Haagse Hout. The small building at Het Groenewegje (city centre) is actually the main museum, in which they started exhibiting around ten years ago. The large building in Haagse Hout is rented from the municipality in cooperation with ‘Anna Vastgoed en Cultuur’, an organisation that offers short term renting possibilities for (cultural) organisations in large empty buildings in The Hague.48 The lease on this building is temporary – for around three years – so next year, the museum will presumably occupy another building in the city. At the moment of my research, West had an exposition by Gary Hill, a famous multi- media artist whose works I went to see. I will elaborate more on these works in the next paragraph, but for now, it is important to note West prides itself on their interest in contemporary art that includes different forms of media art. The enthusiastic employee I spoke with, also invited me to see their next exhibition ‘Radical Software’ that is dedicated to this topic again. Nest is not a museum, but an exhibition space in broedplaats DCR.49 It promotes itself as a platform where people can meet and see art. Ensuring people that a place packed with art and artists is indeed a location to hang out, took some effort. This effort did not only come from Nest itself, but from the DCR broedplaats in general. DCR intends to engage the people from the neighbourhood in which it lies (Het Haagse Energie Kwartier). When I conducted my interview, head of production Brechtje Burger told me Nest and DCR mean to be easily accessible for the people in this neighbourhood and people in general. Considering this, DCR had a small festival in the summer of 2017 in and around the broedplaats to promote the people and organisations occupying this broedplaats. Since then, visitors tend to walk in more freely than before. Nest now has around 300 visitors each weekend, which made Brechtje smile since this is almost two times more than before. In order to show their accessibility and at the same time offer ‘new players in the field’ room for exhibiting their art, Nest organises so-called ‘one night stands’ with KABK. This is an initiative in which students from KABK can display their art for one night in Nest, which possibly gains them attention from other curators who are present. These nights are social events that are always crowded – mainly, but not only, with students and people they know – since the art is there only for one night: everyone who is
48 http://www.annavastgoedencultuur.nl/ visited last 20-06-2018 49 https://dedcr.nl/home visited last on 14-06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis interested has to go at the same time. These ‘one night stands’ are also the main reason the KABK students I met all mentioned nest as a place to find art I would not find anywhere else. Nest has no permanent collection, but has several expositions a year, next to the ‘one night stands’. The exhibition space specializes in contemporary art, and sometimes new media art is part of their exhibitions. Brechtje acknowledged the media art installations and presentation rooms are a difficult match, since the installations are vulnerable, hard to erect and the software that is often part of them could easily crash; something they had experienced before. Nevertheless, when I was there, she showed me a work by Gabey Tjon a Tham; an installation artist who is referred to as a media artist as well.50 Nest is not as occupied with media arts as West, but both of them exhibit works and installations from new media artists more than once a year. Further, it is important to note that KABK is not the only art academy in The Hague. The city also hosts the Royal Conservatoire. The link with new media art might not seem apparent here. I made this connection myself after a ride on the tram. Here, I laid eyes on a guy who was carrying flyers for the Rewire Festival. I knew this festival in The Hague also worked with new media artists, so I decided to see who he was and if he was involved in the festival as well. He introduced himself as Casper and told me he studied at the Sonology department of the Royal Conservatoire. He was not actively involved in the Rewire Festival, but his department was, so he did them a favour. Since he said he was interested in combining technology and arts, we decided to meet again for coffee the next week. At the coffee bar, he explained the Sonology department encourages students to think differently about sound and space. In that light, he was creating a glove that could control sound. It creates music and sound based on the movements of the person wearing it. Right now, he was the only one who could wear it, but we wandered off in thinking about how this glove could be used by several people at the same time, creating an integral art work.51 This idea reminded me of Balam Soto’s digitally wired Body Sound Suit (2011), mentioned in paragraph 2.4, who does indeed refer to himself as a (new) media artist.52 Although the discipline of Sonology does not specialize in new media art per se, it does host students with knowledge of modern technologies, who can use and apply these in their creations, and should therefore not be discarded in this research.
50 http://www.gabeytjonatham.com/news/ visited last on 26-06-2018 51 As I am writing this thesis, something similar to Casper’s glove is becoming mainstream with music artists from all over the world. They are called Mimugloves. More information is to be found at https://mimugloves.com. Visited last on 17-05-2018. 52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqXeVUiuJqU&list=PL2bsLE8RtaPi072t0L4cnrjMax5ggG9SY&index=4 visited last on 17-05-2018.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis So far, I already connected new media art with fine arts and with music. This last amalgamation goes even further when considering Another Kind of Blue.53 This dance group from The Hague gained international fame in both America’s and Britain’s got talent, but are still situated in their studio in the broedplaats called de Gheijnstraat. I went to their studio there, where I saw the ideas for their new performance, in which a dancer would dance together with another dancer, that would completely consist of drones. The choreographer, David Middendorp, told me he already used drones in his previous show (see image below) but that drone technology was changing rapidly, giving him new possibilities for his next show.
Image 7 and 8: Dancing with technology in Another kind of Blue’s Blue Technology (2016). Pictures from http://www.anotherkindofblue.nl/blue-technology-nl/
However, drones are not the only examples of modern technology that would gain a role in his next show. I was amazed when David handed me virtual reality glasses, which he used to create a stage that his dancers could interact with. The dance would be about a person who stepped into a painting. This painting was created by means of virtual reality techniques. The person – in this case: me – was given a joystick, which this person and the audience would see as if it were a paintbrush. I moved the joystick around, while wearing these virtual reality glasses, and this way I could see myself ‘painting’ the world around me. When I took off the glasses, I saw that my ‘painting’ was now visible on David’s computer screen: this way the audience would see the same things happening as the ‘creator of the painting’. Both these incorporations of modern technology with art are unique in The Netherlands – and even in the world – as Dave acknowledged. What is unique, is that they go beyond video art – in which dance and technology can also be combined in order to create a clip – and take these techniques into theatres. Another Kind of Blue does make videos as well. Because of their expertise with ‘new’ technologies and their fame gained from America’s and Britain’s got
53 http://www.anotherkindofblue.nl/ visited last on 13-06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis Talent,54 they now have clients all over the world, asking them to create videos for them. But, as David made clear: these kind of videos by request are mainly to make money for their expensive equipment. Their foremost interest is in theatre performances where the artists can really see and interact with the audience. Since I could include even a dance group within my scholarly definition of new media art, the blurred lines between different art genres again became apparent. The impact of this on the artists and art policy will be made clear in the next two chapters. For now, it is important to also introduce places where art is not made but demonstrated, since the curators of these places are also involved in new media art forms. The first type of locations to consider here, are festivals.
4.3 Involvement of active audiences When I entered West to see Gary Hill´s exposition, I was welcomed by a young woman who gave me a map of the eight rooms of the museum and suggested the route most visitors took. I told her I was interested in these visitors, since I studied the interaction of the audience with new media art. She smiled and said it was a sunny day, so the number of visitors was scarce. “I believe there is one other person in now” she said. “But it is interesting that you want to know more about this topic. This year’s ‘art gift’ is called ‘Please Touch’ and is an essay on how art becomes more powerful when people interact with it”.55 She handed me a copy of the essay to read on my way home. Since I would probably not see too many visitors today, I asked her if the audience here interacted with Gary Hill’s works and if there was a trend in who this audience consisted of. She said most visitors were ‘involved in the arts’, especially media arts. They were art students, artists and people from the municipality that invested in the museum. I had noticed before that audiences of new media art forms are often people that are already involved in new media arts. Combining this with the ‘niche’ character of these art forms, as was often proclaimed to be the case by my informants, one could – in a way – speak of the existence of a media art ‘scene’. The employee continued by telling me that there were rarely families with children that visited and this last group of people ‘does not really understand how to appreciate or
54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riohO4dcy08 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auzGQjApzYA visited last on 14-06-2018 55 During the annual ‘museum week’, museum visitors get an art gift, which is different each year. In 2018 it was called “Do not touch”. For more information see: http://www.westdenhaag.nl/exhibitions/18_04_Kunstgeschenk visited last on 14-06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis understand these kind of art works. Children start playing with the installations or get scared’. Later, I read in the art gift she gave me:
“WORK OF ART – DO NOT TOUCH. I found this text last summer on a field of grass next to the entrance of a holiday resort in Drenthe. Behind it, I saw a creation of planks, beams and slats that indeed could easily be mistaken for a play set. The fact that they had to tell us it was in fact art, finished it off for me.”
(Weijts, 2018:11)
It was interesting to me how this idea of art as something detached from ‘the real world’, something that is not to be touched, seemed present in prevailing conceptions of art, as the museum employee actually demonstrated herself when she mentioned the playing children. As I proposed in the theoretical foundation of this thesis, new media art is an example of art forms that disrupt with this notion by means of an active audience who are essential to give meaning to the works of art. One of my informants felt the same way, and described how he breaks with what he calls ‘the romantic idea of the solitary artist’:
“There is a romantic idea about an artist as a solitary creature that creates just for himself. I do not agree with that. I really don’t like that. Art is a way for me to bridge my loneliness. […] For me art is a way to play with people. So basically, I propose a game, and people are invited to play with that”.
Matteo, artist at iii
Matteo Marangoni has thought about this connection between the artists, the art and his audience a lot. Coming to The Hague from Florence to study Art Science at KABK, he has always been interested in relationships between people and materiality. At the faculty of Art Science, this is a field of interest for many students. It was this shared interest, combined with the possibilities of the broedplaatsen in The Hague that led him and a few fellow graduates in 2013 to start the instrument investors: iii.56 This platform for research, production and presentation of art still operates in the Westerpark broedplaats, where I met Matteo for our interview. His Italian roots influenced his way of perceiving art a lot, as he states himself, in the way that he has had a ‘classical’ education in ‘classical forms of art’. Later, he started questioning all of these ‘ground rules for art’ which were proclaimed throughout his upbringing in Florence. In his search towards the meaning of arts, KABK offered a possibility to ‘create
56 http://instrumentinventors.org/ last visited on 14-06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis art trough the research of art’, a way of working iii still stands for. His perception of art includes the audience as part of his ‘game’, his creation. For instance, he created a room, a scene, an experience, filled with sounds he manufactured as well. People were challenged to go through this room, that was located in a munition depot in Den Bosch, following sounds and lights – but there were objects on the floor, just like in an obstacle course.57 If the audience would just sit and stare, there would be no interaction and the room would lose its meaning, its cause:
“Without the audience it has no meaning. Of course it is my game, I make the rules. The idea is that I propose my game and we play together and afterwards you propose your game and we play together”.
Matteo, artist at iii
Image 8 and 9: Part of Quiet before the Storm (2013-2015) by Matteo Marangoni. Pictures from https://www.haagsekunstenaars.nl/cv/76009/Matteo++Marangoni
57 ‘Quiet before the storm’ by Matteo Marangoni: Experience the sounds on https://vimeo.com/98804657.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis This idea of art as a game is also used by Sytze Schalk, a theatre maker from The Hague who created a long-term project named ‘De werelden van Schalk’. 58 This work is a so-called ‘trans medial arts project’ in which he experiments with different forms of (media) art in order to create his own universe. These art expression for instance include theatre, books, paintings and a video game that he (co-)created. Sytze Schalk and his works were brought to my attention by Stef Katwijk from the municipality as examples of new media art. Stef suggested I should talk to Sytze because of his ‘theatre games’. Sytze explained to me these ‘theatre games’ are offline games that take place in the theatre, during a play. Part of the performance is the possibility for the audience in the theatre to influence the outcome of the play they are seeing. They can do this for example by using technology (smartphones) to ‘vote’ between different outcomes of the scenes, during the performance. The actors are then influenced by these votes and play their parts depending on suggestions made by the audience. The role of the audience in the works of Matteo and Sytze is apparent, but the settings they used for their installations are different from a museum. In West, I tried to experience for myself if interaction would also arise in the clean setting of a museum that was not initially designed for ‘interacting’.
The first room I entered was pitch-black. I carefully shambled forward until I busted into something I figured was intended to sit on. I sat down and tried to let my eyes get used to the darkness. Suddenly a fierce light flashed through the room, completely disorienting me, and a voice started to speak. The words were of someone pondering life and existence, but the combination with the intense flashes that happened every few seconds confused my brain so much I had to get out of the room.
This ‘experience’ was meant to last half an hour, but – according to the museum hostess – most people only lasted a few minutes in that room, and I was no exception.59 All the other artworks were intense as well. Most of them used sound and images that were alienating, like one consisting of a projection of hands moving around colourful backgrounds which looked kind of soothing. However, once I put on the nearby headphones, I heard voices that made the experience uncomfortable. The noises and images simply did not fit together in my brain. I felt the audience in these works of art would not really influence the art directly, but their experience
58 ‘The worlds of Schalk’: http://dewereldenvanschalk.nl 59 A picture with a Dutch explanation of this art piece – Gary Hills Slow Torque of Bonsai – and another example of Gay Hill’s work are included in appendix pp. 96&97 – Image 10 and 11
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis by the use of multiple senses made one feel more ‘connected’ and ‘part of the art’ than a purely visual and non-moving art work would.
4.4 Conclusion New media art exposes itself in two ways: online and offline, and sometimes these two places of expressions are combined – for example in Rafaël Rozendaal’s Sleep Mode (2013), mentioned in paragraph 2.3. Offline new media art in The Hague can be found in a variety of locations, such as festivals, museums, exposition rooms and even theatres, depending on what fits the art expressions best. Despite this diversity of locations, artworks and practitioners, there are a few ‘gatekeepers’ one can refer to when trying to understand this large field of art in The Hague. Most important to mention here are Stroom, TodaysArt and KABK, institutions that harbour experts on media art and the art scene in The Hague in general. These major players have an authority when it comes to defining who falls in and outside the scope of (media) art, connecting artists with exposition facilities, answering questions about art (in The Hague) and – in the case of Stroom – even play a role in assigning artists to broedplaatsen. These gatekeepers should be inquired when new media art in The Hague is further researched by other scholars or institutes. Emphasizing further on the offline expressions of new media art, the focus stays on The Hague. Policy makers within The Hague tend to stress the existence of their ‘own culture’: the ‘maker culture’. This focus on the presumed individuality of the ‘cultural culture’ of The Hague, was not expressed by the practitioners I met, but many of them did make use of one of the policy plans that emerged from this view: broedplaatsen. Lastly, new media art is one of the art genres in which, typically, the audience should interact with the art work in order for it to become meaningful. This chapter has offered examples that demonstrate how the audience can be involved, and how this involvement results in art that offers a produser to feel connected with the artwork, instead of being an observing outsider.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis 5 ´I AM ALLERGIC TO THIS LABEL´
WHAT IS NEW MEDIA ART ACCORDING TO THOSE INVOLVED?
5.1 Introduction As I clarified throughout the previous chapters, new media art is a slippery concept, that has no unambiguous meaning. I have decided to employ this concept nevertheless, and explained to all of my participants how I defined new media art myself: as interactive forms of art that make use of modern technologies. From the beginning, the people I contacted made clear they did not feel represented by this terminology. However, from most of them I got a positive response when I asked them to construe a definition themselves. Using ‘new media art’ as a topic proved useful in this sense. Hence, people did not identify with it, a but this sentiment also provoked reactions amongst the people I wrote my e-mails to. In two cases, people responded in a dismissive manner, but most of the time people were eager to discuss their opinions with my and elucidate their work to me in a way which suited them more. This means most people do have associations with the word, and these connotations often brought about vivid discussions on self-representation, cultural policy and the art scene in general. All of the participants of this research fitted my own working definition of new media art, but this category is not emic, and my awareness of the discrepancy between this etic categorization and the emic representations of the people involved has lead me to begin this chapter with the self-reflections of my participants. How do they define themselves and what is the difference between their categorization and mine? I deem these self-categorizations vital to my research, although I am aware of the discrepancy that emerges since I include all of these categorizations within a thesis on the very topic of new media art. My goal to attain objectivity by the means of intersubjectivity, might be contradictory in itself. Using Pels’ insightful article on intersubjectivity, in which he claims that “Objectivity emerged as a social construct, and embedded intersubjectivity as part of ethnographic authority” (Pels 2014:121), we are reminded it is useful to hold a critical stance towards objectivity in anthropological research in general. Intersubjectivity in ethnographic research is inevitable, since objects of our research ‘talk back’. Within anthropology, since the late 1890’s and early 1900’s, we see a shift from mechanical objectivity in the direction of structural objectivity, which changed the focus from the research of ‘objects’ towards that of ‘relations’. This focus is apparent in ethnography until
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis nowadays, and therefore also in my research, in which I concentrate on reflexive progression within my interviews. The search away from mechanical objectivity introduced the need for native categories as a starting point for ethnographic research. Nevertheless, it did not overturn the hierarchical relationship, since anthropologists are considered by themselves as the ones able to describe categories with abstract terminology. Considering the above, I do not proclaim to be able to break entirely this hierarchical relationship, even though I tried to reach objectivity as much as possible. I will dedicate the next paragraph to emic categorizations of the people involved in the art scene I defined as new media art.
5.2 How do people involved define new media art? “The term ‘new media’ and also ‘interactive art’ are not terms that I identify with. Many people in the field of art and technology feel the same way. We work with many technologies that are not so new anymore, and what is interesting in the media that we work with is not the fact that they are new (as in gadgets), but that they are unique (as in artworks)”. Matteo, artist at iii
This statement was made to me in an e-mail. Matteo Marangoni’s reference to uniqueness reminded me of Gershon’s argument to see 'newness' in the reinvention of how people use and look at certain techniques in an artistic way. The community of artists where Matteo is part of, iii, does exactly that: creating ‘unique media’ by using different kinds of technology, which do not all have to be recent inventions. For instance, a simple megaphone is also an example of technology, and is frequented in the works of iii, for example in Matteo’s Echo Moiré – a Robotic Opera Ballet (2014).60 Matteo claims for the use of the term ‘art and technology’ instead of new media art, precisely because of the word ‘new’. ‘New’, according to him, is associated with words like ‘novel’ and ‘modern’. These words suggest a certain time frame, and even this time frame can be questioned based on where you live. As he states, ‘modernity’ is something completely different for people from Italy or people from New York. Olof van Winden also distances himself from the word ‘new’ and instead argues that TodaysArt employs ‘media art’, since technologies change so rapidly it is impossible to keep calling something ‘new’ even within a week after its creation. So in these examples, the problem with the definition lies in the reference to the word ‘new’ in ‘new media’ or ‘new technologies’. The use of technology on the other hand, remains essential for both TodaysArt festival’s
60 Image included in appendix pp.97 – Image 12
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis curation and iii. This is shown for instance in the opening of the iii artist statement of 2017, in which iii explains their ‘mission’. It reads: “Science and technology come into play here as instruments that enable the realization of fantasies, while simultaneously describing and forming the field of play”.61 Matteo further explained that he does indeed use words like modern or new when referring to art, but only to criticize them, not to maintain them. The use of the category new media art also implies that the ‘newness’ is more important than the meaning of your work itself, at least this is how it is perceived in the contemporary art world, he states. You can ask yourself where the line between ‘playing with toys’ and art is drawn in this case. He was not alone in this argument. At the KABK focus group, our discussion on how to define new media art, resulted in the expressions of mixed feelings toward this form of art:
Yulong: “Within new media art, I think it is more about the experience in itself, without meaning I guess. I am thinking for instance of a Japanese artist who makes lots of huge screens on the floor and everywhere, for instance with a digital waterfall where people can interact with, but what is the meaning?”
Daniele: “Yes that is what I mean. […] they get really technical. They learn how to program, how to use technologies. And you see it in their work, it becomes more about the effects. They create some crazy visuals, which is impressive, but maybe there is less time for ideas and concepts because you only have a certain amount of time and if you spend that time learning a technique…”
These comments from students from the fine arts department, function as exemplary for what Matteo refers to as the “discrimination from the contemporary arts towards media art”. New media art is frequently stigmatized, and often not perceived as ‘real art’, as was also indicated by a gallery owner who said he would never have media art in his gallery since “art connoisseurs do not appreciate media works”. Defining one’s art as ‘art and technology’ instead of new media art, does not entirely free the artist of this stigma, since Matteo argues the ‘discrimination’ is towards technology and art in general, but at least differentiates one from the connotation that including something ‘new’ is more important than other aspects of the artwork. Nevertheless, the influence of technology within large parts of the art scene is
61 From the iii artist statement 2017 on: http://instrumentinventors.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/iii-artist- statement-1.pdf visited last on 21-05-2018.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis undeniable. At one of the world’s biggest art fairs, Art Basel Hong Kong, virtual reality art – as it is referred to by Ann Demeester, museum director of the Frans Hals Museum – made up for a large deal of the displayed art at the event.62 One of the artists who made her debut within this dimension of virtual reality art, was Marina Abramović, who is interested in interactivity with the audience and the collaboration between arts and science.63 Her first virtual reality artwork consists of a game, in which people can rescue her from drowning by means of solving environmental problems. Her goal was to create an awareness of these problems by making positive use of something that she usually feels has a negative impact on society; gaming:
“Close to 92% of video games deal with violence and we see the effects they have on our children. Just look at America—it’s terrifying. Kids are shooting other people like it’s a video game, without understanding the consequences. I wanted to trigger a positive attitude.”
Marina Abramović , artist 64
Here we see clearly how the goal behind creating the art work comes before the creation; technology is a modus by which this goal can be achieved, rather than a goal in itself. This is a central point made for instance by Matteo Marangoni and Michel from BorderSessions. Where Matteo uses the phrase ‘art and technology’ to define the genre he works in, Michel referred to it as TechArt, which sounds catchier, but has the same features. The most important characteristic here is that technology can be part of the art, but that the meaning of the art, the awareness that comes into being with the creation of the work, is principal. This emphasis on meaning over form, on ‘the story the medium has to tell’, was subject in all of my interviews with practitioners. All of them felt this to be inherent to and a primary part of art. Often, this is manifested in art that is critical towards the very technologies it is inspired by. An example of this is Another Kind of Blue’s new show: Flirt with reality (2018), which focusses on how we let technology influence our realities.65 These insights conflict with the idea of the KABK focus group that new media art is more about technicalities and newness and less about meaning. Such a more ‘negative association’ was felt by all of my participants, and was one of the reasons they did not relate to the label ‘new media art’, even though their art fitted the scholarly description of new media
62 Ann Demeester in Buitenhof, 08-04-2018. Can be watched on: https://www.npo.nl/buitenhof/08-04- 2018/VPWON_1283474 last visited 22-05-2018 63 https://mai.art/ visited last on 22-05-2018 64 Marina Abramović on https://www.theartnewspaper.com/feature/how-artists-are-making-vr-reality visited last on 22-05-2018 65 http://www.anotherkindofblue.nl/flirt-with-reality-fall-2018/ visited last on 24-06-0218
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis art, because of their use of modern technologies and the interactive character of their works. Another reason people I met felt this label would do their art no justice, is because they ‘did more’ than new media art implies. Since people felt new media art was mostly focussing on novelty and technology over ‘art’, often they wanted to expose another side of their art; a non-technical side. Casper, who created the musical glove (see section 4.2.2), felt he was composer, that simply used modern technologies in his performances. New media art sounded limited to him. He did much more than work with technology; he was a composer of music first of all. The same goes for Another Kind of Blue. Their shows are unique in their combination of dance and virtual reality, interactive digital backgrounds and other hi-tech inventions. However, their foremost focus is transferring a story to the audience through dance. They would simply define themselves as a dance group that uses technology, not as new media artists. Next to the definitions of the practitioners involved, there are also definitions practiced by policymakers and curators. Interestingly, the policy makers and societal partners I spoke with (CultuurSchakel, The Hague municipality and members from political parties at the Haags cultural debate) did not have these same negative associations with new media art as the artists did, nor did the museum and gallery workers I spoke with – accept for the one I referred to earlier. At Nest, for instance, I was informed by one of the curators that they were interested in all forms of art, as long as the quality of the work was sufficient according to the curator of the exhibition. The only concern that was enunciated was that the room might not be appropriate to let some of the new media installations come to their own. West focusses on contemporary art, and often chooses to represent video artists, which the employees told me they see as a form of media art (without the word ‘new’!) as well. They proclaimed they refer to the art in the same way the artist concerned does, and ‘media art’ (again, without the ‘new’) is a notion that is indeed frequented in their expositions. The employees expressed no negativity towards the words I used. Of course, I did visit West in order to see works from well-known artist Gary Hill, who is mostly referred to as a media artist in articles about and interviews with him. Considering also their next exhibition (radical software),66 the museum’s interest towards the genre of media art seems undeniable. When addressing the labelling by policymakers, I will discuss the comments of CultuurSchakel in the last section of this chapter, since it differs too greatly from the other definitions addressed here. This has led to my suggestion of broadening of the concept of new media art, and it therefore merits a separate paragraph. The Hague municipality has its own
66 http://www.westdenhaag.nl/exhibitions/18_06_Radical_Software
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis label for my research subject as well, based on the terminology used in the national cultural policy plan. The municipality reckons these art forms to be part of ‘e-culture’. Interestingly, the word ‘e-culture’ does not imply that it has to do with art. Nevertheless, ‘e-culture’ is referred to as a form of art that generates artistical renewal in the city and that can be entitled for grants from the municipality.67 I will go into more detail about the choice for this label and how artists feel represented by it in the next paragraphs.
5.3 What is the importance of a label anyway? As I made clear, the label of ‘new media art’ stirred up reactions and, at times, emotions from the practitioners I interviewed. Discussing their self-determination, we often ended up asking ourselves why we were actually talking about this label: why was it important to create a working definition and compartmentalise artists and their works? For me, this motivation stemmed from the assignment I got by CultuurSchakel to find out more about new media art in The Hague. In order to inform them on this topic, I had to know what it meant, I had to include and exclude groups and individuals so as to delineate this new field in which CultuurSchakel could or could not participate. But why did they ask me to find this information, which makes it seem as if they are not just interested in ‘arts’ in general, but need practitioners to be exemplary for a specific genre? The same goes for the municipality, that determines e-culture as a separate art field, next to theatre, dance, music and ‘cross-overs’.68 In the case of the municipality, this labelling has to do with funding. Their cultural policy plan 2017-2020 has six main goals, one of them being the investment in artistic renewal. Stef Katwijk, who was the secretary of the advising committee responsible for this policy plan, proclaimed there is some kind of revolution going on in the world of visual arts, as I mentioned in the first chapter. This claim can be endorsed by Olof’s statement that media art is climbing out of its niche and an observation by Stroom that more and more artists they work with occupy themselves with some form of media related art expressions. Stef Katwijk also mentioned the national policy plan on ‘arts and culture’ addresses e-culture explicitly, which made it more evident to the municipality that contemporary art policy should involve e-culture as well. Indeed, within the Dutch national policy plan for arts and culture, renewal in the art scene is elaborated on and is deemed important. In this plan, we not only see a mentioning of ‘e-culture’
67 https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/vrije-tijd-en-recreatie/kunst-en-cultuur/meerjarenbeleidsplan-kunst- en-cultuur-2017-2020.htm visited last on 21-05-2018 68 https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/vrije-tijd-en-recreatie/kunst-en-cultuur/meerjarenbeleidsplan-kunst- en-cultuur-2017-2020.htm visited last on 21-05-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis but even several subgenres of e-culture, such as digital culture and virtual reality art are already cited.69 The national policy plan also indicates that “practitioners care less and less about the dividing lines between genres”, which raises questions on why labelling still occurs within the policy plan, since both artists and policy makers realize the dividing lines within the art world are blurred. Let us take into account the statement made in the beginning of this thesis, that technology is omnipresent in our society. Could we state that it might be inevitable that technology might become part of art in general, as it already proofs to be used not only in visual arts but also in theatre (Werelden van Schalk), dance (Another Kind of Blue) and music festivals (Rewire)? Today, art expressions all overlap in their use of technology and interactive stance towards the audience, but one can at the same time easily indicate the differences between them. In this light, Olof suggested that we should indeed rethink the concept of (new) media art, and maybe acknowledge it to be more of a cross-over genre.
If practitioners indeed care less about the dividing lines between art forms, the practical use of a label – and therewith some etic categorizations as well – should not too easily be dismissed, as it has to do with structural politics of funding, exhibiting and education. Matteo Marangoni recognised the opportunities that these blurred lines could mean for artists:
“It is really exciting, this new label [e-culture] exists, and what does it mean? Nobody knows! You can define e-culture yourself, which gives you so many opportunities…”
Matteo, artist at iii
On a practical level, this means that an artist who knows the municipality is investing in ‘e- culture’ has the opportunity to define his or her own art within this label. This does not necessarily mean this artist refers to himself as ‘e-artist’ in a different context, as a matter of fact; I have spoken no practitioner who did. However, it leaves room to redefine oneself to their own advantage, while still being true to themselves as artists, since the label of ‘e-culture’ is not specified. This would not be dishonest towards the municipality either, since their main interest within this context is the investment in art renewal, with e-culture being part of this (adding to the notion at the beginning of this thesis that such a categorization might be a hollow rhetoric (Gershon 2017)). If practitioners position themselves within this label, even if they would not initially have thought of this without the financial impulse, it means investment
69 https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/kunst-en-cultuur/documenten/rapporten/2018/03/12/cultuur- in-een-open-samenleving pp.12, visited last on 22-05-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis opportunities arise and the scope of e-culture widens itself by means of self-identification of the artists that apply for these grants. In that sense, it is a self-reifying tendency. This realization became more vivid during my interview with Sytze Schalk – who elaborated on his idea of using several art disciplines in order to create his ‘universe’, and how he received funding for it:
Sytze: “At the time, I was working with Theater aan het Spui, which is now called the National Theatre. I applied for a grant at the Bureau for Performing Arts for Young Makers. For a so- called ‘trans-medial project’. It happened to be that I was working on several things at the same time, and at a conference people told me that this was called ‘trans-medial’ and I though “Oh well, why not!””
Tanah: “Sounds good to me?”
Sytze: “Yes, it is a great label to have and to use.”
Tanah: “Well it does sound interesting!”
Sytze: “Yes, and it definitely sounds like…something.”70
His example explicates the practical use of labelling, benefiting not only himself, but also his investors, for they have the possibility to fund forms of art they are interested in because someone felt comfortable within their label. For practitioners then, investing in the research labels and – by means of that – re-inventing one’s own labels can proof to be financially beneficial. Undeniably, more than once, points were made that suggested art should never be labelled, since this would distract both the artist and the audience from what ‘it is really about’: the art itself. In summary, some informants argued that focussing on being creative with labels in order to receive grants, leads attention away from creating art, which makes for art with less meaning. The practitioner risks losing sight of the message he or she wants to send across with their art works, because one has to conform to an idea that is presented by the organization that is offering grants only for people that match their label’s classifications. This is at the cost of the quality of someone’s work and the respect for the art world in general. Besides, a label can never fully comprehend what the practitioner is doing, because art works transcend commonplace terminology and, hence, should not be marginalized by compartmentalization. Although I consider these urgings to be true for some involved, I have to notify that these
70 Original interview excerpt in appendix pp:94 – Quote 5
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis statements were mostly made within the context of my suggestion that the practitioner concerned might fall in the ‘new media art category’. Bearing in mind the concerns associated with new media art that I made clear in the previous paragraph, this could have influenced my participants in arguing strongly against labelling in general. Notwithstanding, this statement needs to be taken into account as well when addressing the subject of art genres in general. The answer to the question why CultuurSchakel was interested in 'new media arts, is congruent with this argumentation. They recognized both in the municipality’s policy plan and from statements made by several people active in the field of arts, concepts like ‘media art’ and ‘e-culture’ were frequently used. Since the organisation had not occupied themselves with art expressions that would presumably fall into such categories, they felt they were missing an important connection with amateur artists involved in these art forms. The interest of the municipality in e-culture consequently meant CultuurSchakel could possibly gain extra funding for projects concerning these art forms, by means of which they could benefit these non- professional artists that, by then, had no connection with them. Since e-culture did not sound like an explicatory categorization to CultuurSchakel, they asked me to focus on new media art, but they acknowledge to not have an unambiguous idea of what was meant by that.
5.4 Online videos as a form of new media art? 5.4.1 YOUTUBING AND VLOGGING After spending some weeks ‘in the field’, talking to my informants, I decided to evaluate the incongruity between my professional informants until that moment, and the non-professional target audience of CultuurSchakel. It appeared that there was also a discrepancy in my working definition of new media art at that point, and CultuurSchakel’s image of what new media art ought to be. CultuurSchakel declared to be mostly interested in online video art, with vlogging as primary example. This different understanding of the concept was also important for CultuurSchakel because we all felt it to be likely that there would be a lot of non-professionals on online platforms like YouTube and Instagram, so the role of CultuurSchakel would presumably make more sense in the context of vloggers and similar online practitioners. Seeing I wanted to cater to the needs of CultuurSchakel, without losing sight of the information I gathered in the field and my original research proposal, I suggested I would investigate the possibilities of vlogging as a possible addition to what is generally known to be new media art as of yet. To do so, I decided to first meet with online practitioners from The Hague, and see if they could identify with my working definition. Following, I would put their information next to my working definition and see if their work could indeed contribute to the field of new media
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis art. Considering both the online practitioner’s and my own conclusions, I would then, lastly, discuss these findings with my other informants to see if they could approve of the idea working of within the same field of arts as these online practitioners. The online practitioners I met referred to themselves as YouTubers. This does not mean they only produce content for this particular platform. One of them, Farouk,71 actually has more followers and videos on Instagram. Besides, a video that is posted online, can circulate trough other platforms and social networks as well. I therefore refer to the expressions of these practitioners not as – for instance – ‘YouTube art’ but as a more general ‘online video art’. Online video art is different from the broader concept of internet art, considering internet art can be still, while online video art always consists of moving content.72 Contrary to what I wrote in the previous indention, I will also not refer to it as vlogging. This change in categorizing the videos and their practitioners resulted from the reaction from my informants when I addressed them as vloggers. All three of the online practitioners I met, stressed that there were major differences between vlogging and what they themselves did. My informants insisted they did not identify with vloggers, and two made sure to even emphasize this. It is interesting that my participants felt the urge to contradict me when I referred to them as vloggers, while at the same time strong similarities can be found between their works and that of vloggers. Following Crystal Abidin (2017), both the YouTubers I met and vloggers alike, could be grouped under the same denominator: practitioners of a form of ‘calibrated amateurism’. Calibrated amateurism is “a practice and aesthetic in which actors in an attention economy labor specifically over crafting contrived authenticity that portrays the raw aesthetic of an amateur, whether or not they really are amateurs by status or practice, by relying on the performance ecology of appropriate platforms, affordances, tools, cultural vernacular, and social capital” (Abidin 2017:1). The performers connect with their audience by ‘letting them in’ on parts of their personal lives. They share videos on a regular basis, and the content consists of two types of material: ‘anchor material’ and ‘filler material’. Anchor material is the primary content for which the practitioners are known, and the clips made of this content are often of high quality. Examples of anchor content are comedy and tutorials (Abidin 2017). These two categories are also the specializations of my YouTube informants: Bradley, 73 Farouk 74 and
71 https://www.youtube.com/user/YesYesGwndoen 72 See https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artwork_type/internet-art for an online internet art collection. Visited last on 23-05-2018 73 https://www.youtube.com/user/BradNewDay 74 https://www.youtube.com/user/YesYesGwndoen
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis Minerva, 75 with Bradley and Farouk making online comedy and Minerva owning two beauty and lifestyle tutorial channels. Filler material is used to create a connection with the audience, showing the practitioners are not flawless or exotic. Some ways to achieve this, are by using a shaky cam, by purposely leaving verbal mishaps in the final cut or by adding bloopers. Filler content is meant to give an ‘authentic vibe’ to the clip or the performer, but is actually well thought trough (Abidin 2017). Of course, vloggers – like the Dutch vlogger Jiami76 – are known especially for this last type of material, as they often film themselves performing their ‘daily routines’. However, their channels often have a certain topic (like beauty and lifestyle in the case of Jiami) that generates anchor material as well. Filler material is also part of the videos of my informants. For instance, Bradley, founder of YouTube channel BradNewDay,77 often shows his ‘fails’ in his – further neatly edited – videos. In his video “Ik ben jarig?!”78 for example, he starts the video with a clip of him hanging garlands for his birthday. He has to do several attempts in order for them to hang properly, and these attempts are shown in the video, without being part of the ‘actual content’ – the anchor material. It is meant to show his authenticity.
Image 13 and 14: Bradley and director Yan shooting material for BradNewDay’s next video. Pictures by me.
75 https://www.youtube.com/user/mimigirljoy and https://www.youtube.com/user/minervalimon 76 https://www.youtube.com/user/Lifesplashnl visited last on 20-06-2018 77 https://www.youtube.com/user/BradNewDay 78 Translated: “It’s my birthday?!” Video on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmzYwAUCu6k visited last on 20-06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis Considering both vloggers and YouTubers in general as practitioners of a form of calibrated amateurism appears effective. The emic categorisation of my informants as YouTubers, with an emphasis on being different from vloggers then, mostly stems from the negative association with vloggers. This is especially true since at the time of my research, ‘treitervloggers’79 got a lot of attention in the media, providing an undesirable stigma for vloggers as a group of practitioners in general, as put forward by all of my online informants.
It was the second time I would meet Bradley, and this time I would see him ‘in action’. Following Google Maps, I arrived at a small residential area. I did not have to look for his house at all: there was only one place where I saw professional movie lights, camera’s and a large microphone peeping over the hedge.
I could interview Bradley between the scenes, when he and his director put the new decors into place. I was impressed by the professional look of his film equipment, since I knew the payments one could receive from YouTube are marginal (0,50 euro cents per 1000 views, according to Bradley). He explained he worked at a different job to save money for this gear, since he deemed it important that his clips looked professional. The better the quality of the video, the more interesting for the audience. The audience, of course, is a vital part of new media art, and within the world of YouTube, this influence is even more perceptible. Hence, people on the internet usually do not refer to the audience on YouTube as ‘audience’, but speak of the ‘YouTube community’. The influence of this community on the videos is undeniably evident. For instance, Bradley ends his videos with a viewer question to connect with his audience, and reads suggestions in the comments for ideas for new content. It is sometimes difficult to answer to these submissions, since he plans his video’s far ahead. In fact, his goal is to be always five weeks ahead of the scheduled moment of uploading, which can conflict with expectations of audiences who hope to see their input back in his sketches. Another informant, Farouk, also proclaimed that it is challenging to stay true to yourself and at the same time fulfil the wishes of the audience one wishes to keep, particularly when the audience asks for impetuous imagery. In her work on musicians who are active on social media, Baym (2015) states that “Connecting with audiences may be expected, but it is rarely directly compensated. Instead it is seen as an investment toward building and maintaining an audience that will sustain a career” (Baym 2015:14). Indeed, this is true for my informants as well, who expressed to me
79 Loosely translated as ‘bully vloggers’
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis not only their YouTube activities, but also those on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and (in the case of Minerva) Pinterest. They use these social media platforms as tools not only to promote their videos on different channels, but also to stay in touch with their audience and to ensure a deeper connection with them. Minerva told me she uploaded a video on YouTube about being alone at Christmas. A woman commented on the video, saying she was really dreading her first Christmas alone this year. Via a Facebook chat, Minerva later contacted her to see how she was doing on Christmas. Of course, this level on contact might be more difficult when a practitioner has enormous amounts of online fans. Still, “even Beyoncé is aware of and approves every piece of content that goes everywhere all the time” (Collins 2014 in Baym 2015:14).
5.4.2 YOUTUBING AND ONLINE VIDEO ART Both Bradley and Farouk make online comedy. Farouk does this by shooting short clips of himself, questioning things he comes across in real life. It is comparable to stand-up comedy, and he admits that stand-up comedy indeed sounds like something he would be interested in doing, were it not that he feels he is not ready: “I get a lot of views online, but I wonder if these people would really travel to see me in a theatre…” Bradley typically produces his comedy in the form of sketches, which he writes himself. He later co-creates the videos with his friend and producer: Yan. Next to himself, there are five main characters (Gerard, Opa, Anita, Sjon and Aad) presented in his videos. All these characters are played by himself, each time in a different outfit consistent with the personality of the characters. All characters are all stereotypes of ‘typical’ members of society we are familiar with. The selection of these characters is based on his target audience: children between 8 and 15, who are known by my informants to be the most dominantly present group of YouTube viewers in The Netherlands. The sketches indeed remind me of youth theatre: colourful, fast- paced, slapstick-like humour and at times a bit noisy. When I ask him if he feels his work can be seen as art, just like theatre and cabaret, he suggests it might. He is not too eager to call himself an artist, but on the other hand he feels the main goal of art is to bring a story across to your audience, to influence them into thinking differently, and use your creativity to do so. Certainly, this is what he attempts as well. His goal is to use comedy to denounce issues his audience probably has to deal with on a regular basis, “but it is still comedy, so in the end, it should make them feel better!”. Considering the fact that for online video art one uses technology, like digital video editing programs and smartphones, and one has a considerable interaction with the audience, it does match the two characteristics of new media art I presented in the beginning of this thesis.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis However, more than the question if it falls within the working definition I am trying to create, I might have to question if it is – in fact – art. Of course, what art is and what it means has been questioned throughout history, not in the least by artists themselves. In this case, I am mainly interested if those involved (the Youtubers, CultuurSchakel and the offline ‘new media’ artists I met) consider it to be art themselves. Bradley and Farouk prudently suggested it could be, since comedy in theatres is perceived as such as well. Minerva, who makes beauty and lifestyle videos, was more explicit in her insight in the matter. She does not see herself as an artist since she only ‘puts up videos sometimes’ but she does see YouTube as a platform for other artists:
“You know, it is the authenticity that makes something art or not. […] Some YouTubers truly are artists. But most of these artists are already practitioners outside of YouTube.”80
It is interesting she refers to the authenticity, just like Matteo mentioned uniqueness to be a vital asset of art. Uniqueness, authenticity, ‘telling a story’, ‘evoke reactions in your audience’, ‘make people reconsider reality’; these are all named essential in defining the essence of art by my informants, and I feel this comes together in the word awareness:
“Humans create things and get so enticed by it that they forget what it was for. Art should be a way of thinking trough making. Self-awareness is important. Everybody can be creative, but I’m not very interested in art that doesn’t have an awareness.”
Matteo, artist at iii
This notion captures precisely why all offline artists I spoke with at first reacted dismissive towards the idea of their art being part of the same category as online video art. Moreover, many disclaimed the idea these videos could even be considered to be art in the first place. The image of YouTube is one of fun, not of a place for the creation of ‘real art’. The power of YouTube, that it is a platform where everyone has a chance of ‘making it’ also causes its contributors to be taken less seriously by the common art community. This makes sense, in the way that the offline practitioners I met all dedicated their lives to their art. Sometimes they struggled to make ends meet, all for the sake of the quality of their work. To indicate a parallel between their work and that of someone who puts videos on a platform that is also known for its ‘treitervloggers’ and funny cat clips, seems incongruous. However, Matteo’s statement about awareness is still very true for someone like
80 Original quote in appendix pp. 94 – Quote 6
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis Bradley. The problem here lies within the enormous amount of YouTube’s content, and the likelihood that only a very small part of this content can really be seen as online video art. Since both the YouTubers and the offline media artists felt no connection between their individual art expressions, categorizing online video art as new media art might be too farfetched. Nevertheless, there was a practical goal guiding this paragraph, and this goal is indeed met. This section has granted CultuurSchakel with more (requested) knowledge on what they considered to be a form of new media art. CultuurSchakel is interested to consider these online expressions as art forms that fall within the scope of their organization. Even though I argue online video art practitioners initially do not determine themselves as artists, a bountiful relationship between them and CultuurSchakel can still be achieved, as I will argue in section 6.4.
5.5 Conclusion Central within this chapter is the strive to emic classifications by practitioners. This has led to problematizing ‘new media art’ as a concept, since my informants did not feel represented by this categorization. There was a general feeling new media art is ‘looked down upon’ within the contemporary art world, which is one of the reasons practitioners felt more comfortable when using another label. Moreover, new media art did not seize the core of what artists often felt they were doing, which also made them dismissive of the terminology. They made several other suggestions as to how to name their art genre, such as ‘art and technology’ and TechArt. Moreover, it was deemed a cross-over category. This last idea amplifies the realization that dividing lines between art forms become more and more blurred. This is especially true for new media art, since the omnipresence of technology within society leads to the question if technology might not become part of most contemporary art expressions in the time to come. These unclear lines between genres in which practitioners are active, are also present within the world of online video (art). The self-determination of YouTubers who stress there are differences between themselves and vloggers, is a distinction which does not seem as evident to me (and for instance CultuurSchakel) as to them. Both videos from YouTubers and vloggers could be perceived as forms of calibrated amateurism, having content consisting of anchor and filler material (Abidin 2017). Nevertheless, YouTubers still distance themselves from vloggers, which makes for an interesting comparison between emic and etic classifications. Another question raised by the acknowledgement of unclear lines between art forms and expressions, is why labels are nevertheless still used, for instance in the policy plan of The
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis Hague municipality. The Hague municipality refers to new media art forms as ‘e-culture’, which is made part of the policy plan 2017-2020. Within these plans and their implementation, we experience labelling to be important for funding. Although creativity with connecting oneself to a certain label that guarantees an artist of funding can prove beneficial, as was the case for Sytze Schalk, this still does not wholly explain the practical use of labels within policy plans. The next chapter is meant to further explain the realities that arise in both the policy plans and the art world in The Hague, in combination with the practice of labelling art forms as ‘e- culture’.
6.´AMSTERDAM OFFERS QUANTITY, WE OFFER QUALITY´
WHERE IN THE HAGUE ARE EXPRESSIONS OF NEW MEDIA ART MADE VISIBLE AND IN WHAT WAY CAN THESE EXPRESSION BE (BETTER) FACILITATED?
6.1 Introduction By now, I have explained what can potentially be seen as new media art by creating a working definition (cross-over interactive art forms that are both inspired by and created with modern technologies) and I have demonstrated which forms of new media art that fall within this working definition I have encountered in The Hague. I have not yet gone into detail on the visibility and possibly required facilitation of new media art, but merely touched upon the subject by mentioning the museum West, the broedplaatsen and the policy plan ‘Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens’. Within this chapter, I will discuss these topics more profoundly, in order to further expand the possible knowledge utilization of this thesis. Since this thesis project is part of Leiden University’s ‘Policy in Practice’ programme, which focusses on policy based ethnography, a further acquaintance with current policy plans on new media art by The Hague municipality and – more broadly – the Dutch government, is essential. I have discussed the policy on new media art and e-culture with all my research participants, in order to get a profound image on the current policy plans and how these are implemented, manifested and received by my informants that are involved in new media art and e-culture. Next to the emphasis on the current policies on e-culture, this chapter will also
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis contribute to the applied purpose of this thesis in another way, namely by focussing on where expressions of new media art are visible in The Hague as of yet. The visibility of these art expressions is important since it can demonstrate how these policy plans – which suggest a need for focus of The Hague’s institutes and actors on e-culture – are implemented. This goes further than mentioning where I have gone and with whom I spoke, as I already covered in the fourth chapter. This chapter will elaborate further on why new media art today is not omnipresent yet and was mostly called a ‘niche genre’ by my participants, while at the same time the modern technologies on which these art expressions are often based are indeed ubiquitous. Is the field of new media art – and related art forms – unknown within the society of The Hague and therefore less promoted on the street and in tourist offices in The Hague than other forms of art? Do these kind of art forms attract less visitors than ‘mundane’ art genres and is it therefore less feasible for galleries and museums to expose? Is there a desire for more expressions of new media art by the practitioners themselves? Within the next paragraph, questions like these will problematize the role of new media art within The Hague’s art sector and, coherently, The Netherlands in general. In this regard, there will also be a focus on the differences and similarities between The Hague and Amsterdam regarding new media art expressions. This comparison was often made by my informants. As soon as they intended to explain more to me about art in The Hague, they regularly focussed on the differences between The Hague and Amsterdam, since Amsterdam is larger and the artists I met felt this city is often presumed to represent art expressions more or better by the general public. This comparison therefore highlights how artists in The Hague observe their own city and its art policies.
6.2 Where in The Hague are new media art expressions made visible? In chapter four, I already briefly touched the practical issues of displaying new media art in a museum. It was mentioned to me by Brechtje from Nest and visitors at the Impakt gathering that new media art often consists of too large, too vulnerable and impractical installations to show in a museum. These impracticalities were endorsed by the works of art that some of my informants showed me, for instance Matteo Marangoni’s ‘Quiet before the Storm’, the interactive artwork that looked like an obstacle course and which occupied an entire munition depot in Den Bosch.81 This difficulty is not only mentioned by my informants, but also by Ann Demeester,
81 https://vimeo.com/98804657 You can find more information about this work and experience the sound here. Visited last on 15-05-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis museum director of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem when interviewed in the television programme Buitenhof:
“We do not know how to display virtual reality art. There are more and more virtual museums for tangible art. Collectors who create an online collection for famous classical artists, but physical museums for virtual art are not there yet. […] One could say that you should just buy virtual reality glasses and you’re done, but you want to see this art in a certain context. You crave an immersive experience, and museums cannot yet offer this.”82
Ann Demeester is interviewed on this occasion on virtual reality art and its rising popularity within the art world as proven by the large number of virtual reality artists on the Basel Hong Kong Art Fair. Virtual reality art expressions are similar to forms of new media art since they make use of modern technology in the form of virtual reality techniques and usually the audience interacts with these art works. Her statement on virtual reality art can therefore be generalized to forms of new media art. Discussing this issue within a renowned television show, evokes the sentiment that it is an urgent or at least broadly covered matter, an issue more people encounter and are trying to resolve. Within The Hague, there might be plans to start dealing with the issue of the lack of museums, or places and institutes dealing with these art expressions. This is not solved by showing temporary expositions of new media artists, as West sometimes does, but by creating a perpetual exhibition space that is dedicated to this specific art genre, and not to the broader ‘contemporary art’ as are West and many others in The Hague. Olof van Winden informed me TodaysArt is collaborating with other parties to create such a permanent and physical presentation space for media art, where people can present, create and experience these art expressions. The plan is to manifest this in a currently vacant building in the city centre, that made use of the first media façade in the world, which would by an iconic place to also establish the first media art museum in The Hague.83 Of course, museums or presentation spaces are tangible and common examples for exhibiting art works, but I reckon new media art could also fit different forms of demonstration.
82 https://www.npo.nl/buitenhof/08-04-2018/VPWON_1283474 visited last on 15-06-2018. Original text in appendix pp. 95 – Quote 7 83 A media façade consists of illuminated screens that are often used for advertising. Nowadays, these media facades are more commonly used, Times Square’s media façade being one of the most famous. An image of the Times Square media façade is added in the appendix pp.98 – Image 15 In The Hague, in 1928, the social cooperative De Volharding created, in cooperation with architect Jan Buijs (1889-1960), the first building with a media façade in the world. TodaysArt’s promotional video argues to make this – now vacant – building into a place focussed on media art, can be found on https://vimeo.com/264086603. A picture of the building is added in the appendix pp.98 – Image 16
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis I already mentioned that these art works are often displayed at festivals, where their largeness and impressiveness comes on its own, claiming attention of a large audience. But besides festivals, it would make sense for art that has incorporated technology as part of its expressions, to use technology not only for the creation but also for the preservation of art works. Online, this is already done by Li-Ma84 and mediakunst.net,85 both uniting (new media) art from several Dutch collections into one online gallery. Aiming to combine art and technology not only for art preservation, but also for the experience of art, The Acute Art App is developed by the Swedish art collector Gerard De Geer and his son Jacob, together with Dado Valentic, a colour scientist who has undertaken projects for Warner Bros film studio.86 This app concentrates mainly on virtual reality art, and so the users also need to buy necessary hardware. The number of users of this app is growing monthly.87 The fact that these online art experiences keep growing, combined with the argument that new media art matches well with these relatively new ways of showing art, also influences the felt lack of visible new media art within The Hague. Such art not only becomes less tangible, but also less visible for people who are not actively looking for it. These sites are not mentioned in a ‘cultural activity map’ you find at a tourist office, and you do not stumble upon them while walking through the city centre, as I experienced myself. Within forms of new media art, this might not be a problem. As I was told at West, people who went to see their exhibitions were mostly people that were already involved in the same forms of art/part of the new media art scene, so these people are indeed searching for their fields of interest, and can find these online art galleries that match these interests. It does, however, make it more difficult to find expressions of new media art in The Hague, apart from annual festivals or temporary exhibitions. Therefore, the initiative by TodaysArt and their partners – who were not further specified to me on that occasion – can be a unique way to generate a broader audience and attention for their exposition space with the light façade, apart from the audience that is now present at presentations of new media art expressions and mostly consist of people that are already familiar with the art forms. I argue this to be possible not only because of the location they are investing in, but also because of TodaysArt’s great experience with media art that emanates from years of developing and curating their festivals. How ambivalent media art forms may be, Olof van Winden has argued to me there is a clear vision and a tendency towards
84 https://www.li-ma.nl/site/ visited last on 23-06-2018 85 http://mediakunst.net/#/ visited last on 23-06-2018 86 https://www.theartnewspaper.com/feature/how-artists-are-making-vr-reality 87 https://acuteart.com/ visited last on 23-06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis renewal, which fits the everchanging nature of new media art. By now, I deem it important to note that I previously went into a profound analysis on the difficulties of categorizing new media art forms in chapter five. There, I also declared the many forms of new media art I have encountered in The Hague so far. The works of Another Kind of Blue and Sytze Schalk are both performing arts that are meant for performance in theatres. Since the new media art category is seemingly so broad, art forms like these are part of the working definition that I created, but they obviously do not encounter the same problematics as the artists I mentioned earlier. Although this might not be entirely true, since David (from Another Kind of Blue) acquainted me with the problems he had with finding theatres fit for his shows. The theatres have to have a perfect height, otherwise the projector cannot be hanged properly in order to show the virtual backgrounds and props the dancers interact with. It has to be dark enough so as to make the images sharply visible. The height of the stage should be sufficient pertaining to the audience, to show what happens on the floor as well, since many of the performances he has created are partly consisting of dancers laying on the floor, interacting with the images that move around there. All these requirements are essential, and no concessions can be made, since the properly functioning technique is crucial for the entire show. Luckily, many theatres within The Netherlands measure up to these demands, David explained, so he has several options throughout the country where he is able to display his art, including for instance in Het Zuiderstrandtheater in The Hague.88
6.3 Policy on ‘e-culture’ “The municipality wants to offer varied and high quality visual arts within the city in which all disciplines and angles of incidence are represented. This way, art can appeal to a broad audience. Considering the international character of the city, the municipality values a connection with (inter)national developments and room for innovation, experimenting and renewal.”
In: Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens pp. 111
Browsing through this policy plan, that is shaped like a puzzle, to invite the readers already into ‘playing’ (see picture on the next page), the demand for renewal in order to remain attached to the fast-changing world, seems ubiquitous. It is a challenge for all organizations, but especially policy making organizations that are often bound by bureaucratic rules that slow processes
88 https://www.zuiderstrandtheater.nl/programma/4480/Another_Kind_of_Blue/Flirt_with_Reality/
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis down – like government institutes – to keep up with the pace of change and technology. The Hague municipality suggests several methods by means of which they aim to achieve their goal to be a progressive city, which attracts internationals, both as visitors and as new inhabitants. The Hague municipality considers ‘arts and culture’ as essential parts of society that can contribute to influence the city’s identity. ‘Arts and culture’ connect people, and contribute to critical reflections on identity, as is proclaimed in Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens. This attribute is essential to art, as is also stated by all of my informants. Because of these contributions to society, The Hague municipality proclaims the indispensability of art in order to attract new ‘contributors’ to the city, a goal found throughout the policy plan. One of the investments that should ensure this attraction of contributors, is the investment in art forms the municipality refers to as ‘multidisciplinary’ or ‘hybrid’. The municipality acknowledges lines between disciplines in the art world become blurred, and states that “canonical forms of art lose terrain: the audience for those genres are ageing, the Facebook generation demands something different. We become cultural omnivores.”89 Of course, the merging of art forms is crystal clear within new media art forms, in which modern technologies are becoming part of art forms that would usually not fall under the same denominator, like theatre and visual arts.
Image 17: The print policy plan is shaped like a puzzle in a box. Picture by me
Despite the fact that the municipality acknowledges these blurred lines, their policy plan is still composed in reference to the ‘classical’ art forms: music, theatre, dance, visual arts and
89 Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens, Inleiding pp. 11
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis film. There is no mentioning of e-culture within the print version of their policy plan. This differs from how they represent the art forms on the front page of their website of this very same policy plan, since there, e-culture is added to the list.90 According to Stef Katwijk, there is a tendency by several policy makers to make a separate category for e-culture, but this is not the case as of yet. I suggest this could be a reason for the discrepancy: the website might be more up-to-date than the print policy plan. Nevertheless, the print version also draws attention to the role of internet within the art scene, and the changes this involves. It states internet influences the needs of the audience, especially of young audience members. It is claimed these younger visitors are more interested in becoming part of the process of creating the art works. They become more fascinated if they are more involved. This tendency towards produsage in young audience members, is coherent with the familiarity of young people and used for UCC in the gaming industry, as was described by Darley (2000), Livingstone (2003) and Nikunen (2007). In addition, my informants Bradley and Minerva both indicated that their YouTube audience mainly consists of youth (under 25) as well. From a young age onwards, children are confronted with the feeling of influencing the material they see and play with, and this could explain similar demands within the world of arts as well. Since The Hague municipality acknowledges the changing needs of the audience, their policy plan suggests to invest more in ‘niche programming’91 that experiments with these demands. Obviously, new media art is exemplary for the involvement of active audiences in their art works, which might also explain why iii has been granted funding for 2018.92 While the municipality wants to encourage young artists to experiment with hybrid art forms and interdisciplinarity, as Sytze Schalk’s story already seemed to suggest when he gained subsidy because of his ‘trans medial’ art works, they also acknowledge these interdisciplinary artists might have more trouble finding a job or funding because these artists do not fall into one of the ‘classical’ categories. Within the print version there are no solutions mentioned in order to realize the plan, but the website now mentions not only e-culture but also ‘cross-over’ as additional art categories. This means interdisciplinary artists can now make use of this categorization and its funding possibilities, minimizing the problem of them falling between two stools. Stef Katwijk also exemplified that because of the changing audience and the tendency towards loosening the classic categorizations, some of the broedplaatsen consist of a
90 https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/vrije-tijd-en-recreatie/kunst-en-cultuur/meerjarenbeleidsplan-kunst- en-cultuur-2017-2020.htm visited last on 29-05-2018 91 Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens, Inleiding pp. 57 92 https://www.denhaag.nl/nl/in-de-stad/nieuws/toekenningen-subsidie-culturele-broedplaatsen-2018-ii.htm visited last on 29-05-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis mixture of studios for all kinds of artists. Just like the policy plan, he mentions the DCR as a good example, harbouring – amongst others – art exhibitions in Nest, dance studio’s and research facilities from CLOUD/Danslab, theatre in Zaal 3, the offices for the organizers of Rewire festival and a café where all of these people and their audiences can meet while enjoying a locally brewed beer. The stimulation of these hybrid art forms, of which new media art could be seen as an example, is not only to be seen in new categorizations for grant applications, but also in the remaining focus on broedplaatsen. By focussing more on broedplaatsen, niche programming and festivals, The Hague feels it presents itself as an appealing place to live and to visit for both Dutch nationals and foreigners.93 The municipality promotes that the exhibiting of these ‘new forms of art’ should be considered different from the ‘classical’ museums. Since festivals have great appeal to a (young and international) audience, art festivals would be one of the ways to attract more visitors. TodaysArt Festival is an example of such a festival that has gained international prestige and is also mentioned as an example throughout the policy plan. As mentioned above, The Hague is not only concerned with attracting visitors, but also with enticing new ‘contributors’ or ‘makers’ to live and work in the city. I already described the emphasis of policy makers on the ‘makers climate’ of The Hague. The prominence of this, is visible all over the policy plan. Hence, ‘a good makers climate, room for talent improvement’ is one of the six policy goals.94 This should be achieved in particular by means of The Hague’s internationally renowned art schools (KABK and the Royal Conservatoire) and investments in broedplaatsen – the latter gaining an investment of 2 million dollars in the current policy plan. The main goal of stimulating these broedplaatsen is to create room for experimenting with hybrid forms of art by providing makers with inspiring and low budget studios that harbour artists who are specialized in different artforms, creating room for the exchange of skills and practices.95 Investments like these do indeed attract makers, even if they do not apply for funding, like Another Kind of Blue, whose studio is located in a broedplaats. Brechtje from Nest – which is located in the DCR broedplaats – also suggested that the many presentation institutes in the city, like Nest, provide room for young makers to experiment and show their art works. She claims that they work with renowned artists, but if young artists want to become established artists themselves, they need to start somewhere. Nest gives them this possibility, provided that their art is of sufficient quality for this institute.
93 Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens, Inleiding pp. 57 94 Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens, Inleiding pp. 30 95 Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens, Inleiding pp. 37
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis This emphasis on quality has been a returning subject during my research. It was proclaimed by the policymakers I met as well as by some other informants – like Brechtje from Nest – that the uniqueness of The Hague’s art scene is to be found in its quality. More than once, a comparison was made between Amsterdam and The Hague, and it was stated that Amsterdam has much more to offer in quantity, while The Hague’s art stands for quality. As the municipality states, cultural supply demonstrates the identity of the city 96 and in this case, the identity of The Hague would be that of an innovative city of makers who create high quality art. Within the policy plan, it is even stated that only if the quality is leading, cultural organisations can contribute to society.97 This statement was not put so bluntly by Stef Katwijk, but he also emphasized the level of excellence of The Hague’s art scene. He suggested that the broedplaatsen that offer financial latitude for artists who can therefore concentrate more on creating high level art works, combined with the presence of KABK and the Royal Conservatoire lift the quality of the city’s art scene to a higher level. Because many of the teachers who have a network in The Hague, he also feels that they can connect students with the art scene of The Hague, so they have an extra reason to stay there, next to the financial incentive created by the broedplaatsen. There are three points to be made considering the information I gathered from the artists I interviewed, regarding these policy statements. First, all of my informants had noticed the quantity difference between The Hague and Amsterdam concerning their art specialization. This is not only the case for new media art but, in the case of Sytze Schalk, also applied to theatre. He states that there are more makers in Amsterdam which, on the one hand, makes it easier to establish a foothold in The Hague because of the lack of competition, but on the other hand, also generates lower audience numbers. He suggests – just like the policy plan – the audience is aging, but the ‘new generation’ is not used to go to theatres for leisure, where in Amsterdam – due to the wide range of options – this is a far more common leisure activity. The combination of fewer makers, therefore less art supply and consequently lower audience numbers, were also recognized by Brechtje and Matteo Marangoni. However, these statements were not meant to criticize the cultural playing field of The Hague. Hence, it could be exactly this lack of audience that engenders the high quality The Hague proclaims to have, according to Olof van Winden:
96 Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens, Inleiding pp. 35 97 Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens, Inleiding pp. 31
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis “The [media art scene] might be bigger [in Amsterdam], but not better. I do not think they offer higher quality. They have a lot to offer, but at the same time it takes no effort to pack the joint. In The Hague you have to put in a lot of effort to reach an audience.”
Olof van Winden, TodaysArt98
Second, all of the offline new media artists I spoke with acknowledge the value of broedplaatsen in The Hague. The Hague is cheaper for accommodation and facilities than Amsterdam, which indeed keeps artists in the city. However, this does not mean that these artists only demonstrate their art there. Especially since new media art has an international – and often online – character, they see the world as their playground and are not necessarily bonded with The Hague. This is also true for the students from KABK I spoke with. Two of them even suggested that the financial stimulus was not enough to keep them there since the city seemed ‘too dull and too small’ after four years of studying there. Of course, I do not presume The Hague municipality intends to keep all foreign students from KABK in The Hague, so I do not consider this to be a problem. Hence, iii is an example of students from KABK that formed a collective because they did not want to leave The Hague and its art climate. According to Matteo, the fact that The Hague is a bit ‘marginal’ also means there are less distractions, which possibly enhances the quality of one’s work. Lastly, the emphasis on broedplaatsen is comprehensible, since all of my informants expressed their enthusiasm and most of them made use of them. Nevertheless, this does not make The Hague unique. Keeping up the comparison with Amsterdam, I found this city offers broedplaatsen as well.99 As a matter of fact, Amsterdam offers many more of them than The Hague does. However, this does not diminish the utility of the broedplaatsen in The Hague. The Hague is still considered cheaper to work and live and therefore their broedplaatsen might even serve their purpose more. I merely observe this to indicate the uniqueness is not particular for the broedplaatsen an sich, but it can be found in how the financial incentives of this city can be considered more attractive than those of Amsterdam. Certainly, there could also be differences considering for instance the location of these broedplaatsen within their city or the quality of the buildings, but I am not familiar enough with those in Amsterdam to be able to take this into consideration.
98 Original quote in appendix pp. 95 – Quote 8 99 https://www.amsterdam.nl/kunst-cultuur/ateliers/ visited last on 30-05-2018.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis 6.4 CultuurSchakel and e-culture I met COMM’s Manager of Museum Affairs Sarah-Jane Earle in the lobby of the COMM museum. COMM is the museum for communication in The Hague. It focusses on the influence of media on society, for instance by having a room full of digital ‘impulses’ programmed around you all at once, to raise awareness of our daily exposure to these digital impulses. Hence, the museum concentrates on a critical stance towards technology. Next to that, it is also interactive and offers virtual tours. I figured they probably made use of new media art as well, since their fascination by – and awareness of – modern technology, would fit in with new media art’s characteristics. This turned out not to be the case. Sarah-Jane explained they were indeed interested in these art forms, but – as of yet – had no ‘real art made by real artists’, as she referred to it, in the museum. Nevertheless, I did learn something else that was evident for my research: they were collaborating with CultuurSchakel, concentrating on educational programmes on e-culture. It felt peculiar, almost uncomfortable, that I had to hear that from her while I was already involved with CultuurSchakel for weeks and I had not yet heard of it. Although people in the Cultural Participation department of CultuurSchakel – the department I was co-operating with – had suggested several ideas on whom to talk to about new media art, the fact that there was another department within the organization that focussed, amongst other things, on education on e-culture had not been discussed. Since this could potentially mean a fruitful collaboration in the transferring of knowledge within the same organisation, I decided to contact one of CultuurSchakel’s ‘Culture Coaches’, Ingeborg Dennesen, who focussed on education in the city centre area. Within the first minutes, it was clear to me that the educational program, at that point, did not include new media art or artists. Although an important part of their programme is ‘Artists in the Classroom’, in which professional artists learn children in elementary school about their traits, there are no new media artists among them. Considering new media art is a field of professional artists, Ingeborg and I exchanged ideas in how these artists could be accommodated in the future. The idea of this potential came to our minds after first discussing the programme on e-culture, or ‘media culture’ as it is referred to on the website of CultuurSchakel.100 The media culture education track is popular amongst the children, but not so much amongst teachers who have to educate on e-culture topics. Ingeborg explained the shortage of technological knowledge makes the teachers reluctant to select this topic instead of
100 https://www.cultuurschakel.nl/wat-is-cultuuronderwijs-op-zijn-haags/disciplines/ visited last on 30-05-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis other options like music or literature. Seeing Sarah-Jane also emphasized the interest of youth (not just children from elementary school, but also high school students) within their museum on the programs on fake news, social media risks and other ‘technological awareness-creating’ topics, there might be a gap between the needs of the children who are interested in such topics and the possibilities of their teachers who – according to Ingeborg – often seem to doubt their technological skills. Using new media art expressions as examples to demonstrate and create awareness of technological jeopardies, and at the same time make use of the knowledge of artists that are involved with art and technology, could benefit the programmes created by CultuurSchakel. For example, there is a project on creating robots, that is not frequented by teachers. I have met several new media artists that already develop robots as part of their art projects. 101 Here lies a possibility for a potentially interesting link to be made between artists ‘in the field’ and the educational programme. Although we shared more ideas on hypothetical partnerships between CultuurSchakel and new media artists (online video artists included) the department that had posed the question in the first place, is not involved in this very process. Their request originates from the idea that new media art is a field that is present in The Hague, but not yet connected to the Cultural Participation department of CultuurSchakel. As of yet, the Cultural Participation department is not active within this field. In the next chapter I will make several suggestions on how their wish to become part of this field can be achieved in a fashion that is productive for the organization and their target group of non-professional artists. These suggestions will all propose to let go of ‘new media art’ as a field of interest, and instead focus on ‘e-culture’.
6.5 Conclusion Within the current policy plan of The Hague municipality – Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens – there is not yet a distinct policy on e-culture, but there is a notable interest amongst several staff members of the municipality who want to adapt the national policy plan on e-culture into their own policy plan. On the website of the municipality, e-culture is therefore mentioned as a sperate art form, next to the ‘classical art forms’ such as dance and theatre. E-culture is also seen as a form of hybrid or multidisciplinary art forms, which the municipality intends to stimulate since these art forms seem to cater the needs of the new generation of audiences. The Hague has less ‘cultural audience’ compared to Amsterdam. According to several of my informants, this induces a need for artists to put in more effort in order to attract audiences
101 https://www.cultuurschakel.nl/coh-projecten-128-leerlijnen/project-robots-en-machines/ visited last on 26- 06-2018
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis nevertheless, which enhances the quality of the art works created by artists within The Hague. The presumed high quality of the art works is also the hobbyhorse of the municipality of The Hague. They stimulate this quality by providing relatively cheap accommodations for artists by means of broedplaatsen throughout the city. This financial impulse is deemed to challenge artists to live in The Hague and try to engage the audience by way of creating high quality art works, which dissociates The Hague’s art scene from that of Amsterdam. Within the city, expressions of new media art can be found, but typically when people actively look for them. This is characteristic for new media art, since I have encountered that the people interested in new media art expressions are often already part of this art scene. Besides several locations such as West and festivals like TodaysArt festival where new media art is most evidently exposed, these art forms can also – increasingly – be found online, even by means of an interactive virtual reality app. These kind of expressions are not bound to a location, but are shared globally.
7. PASSIONATE PEOPLE IN A ‘PIXELATED’ FRAMEWORK
7.1 Introduction This research has demonstrated the interconnectedness between organisations, institutes, artists, audiences and the (un)usefulness of labelling within the world of arts, especially that of new media art forms in The Hague. The conclusion which this research and forthcoming thesis have brought about, consists of the answering of my sub-questions, and combining these answers into an answer for my main research question. This answer will consist of both an incomprehensive conclusion on the visibility and perception of new media art in The Hague, as well as of policy suggestions towards CultuurSchakel and The Hague municipality, considering their goal to facilitate new media art and its practitioners (better).
7.2 Who are those involved in new media art? It has become clear throughout this thesis that new media art as a defined category has no clear boundaries, and its defining characteristics can be found overlapping and in a combination with many different kinds of art forms, such as fine arts, music, dance and theatre. Mapping who are involved is thus not a straight forward mission and, moreover, should better not be a goal in itself. The statement to be made in this regard, is that there is an involvement of a large diversity
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis of institutes and people – artists, audiences and policy makers, in The Hague alone. Since both CultuurSchakel and The Hague municipality have stressed their interest in the facilitation of new media artists, it is useful to highlight the gatekeepers in this field of arts, since they will give an ongoing impression of what is ‘happening’, as the field of new media art is everchanging and constantly reinventing itself. In the case of The Hague, these gatekeepers are KABK, Stroom and TodaysArt. The importance of KABK lies in their knowledge of arts, the competent professors who have ties to The Hague (often as professional artists) and foremost in their harbouring of students. These students – from all over the world – have the freedom to combine different art forms during their education, which often results in the use of modern technologies within other fields of art. These students offer a view on what ‘the new generation of artists’ is interested in, which results in insights of the possibilities of combining art and technology. Stroom brings together all forms of art but also different players within The Hague. With its online list of artists – including media artists – and their direct connection with KABK and other large institutes, they showcase their dominant position within the field of arts. Stroom’s possibility to grant funding and accommodate artists within broedplaatsen generates the organization a label of importance for artists as well. All the artists I spoke with who were involved with Stroom spoke highly of the institute, and remarked their accessibility despite – or maybe because of – their comprehensive place in The Hague’s art scene. Important to note here, is that Stroom has a say in who is an artist and who is not, which is one of the criteriums for them to decide on who is permitted a studio in a broedplaats. An artist in this context, is always a professional, someone who makes a living by means of his or her art. This is also the reason CultuurSchakel seldomly cooperates with them. TodaysArt, lastly, proves its position as a gatekeeper by its status in the media art scene. The organisation’s annual festival exists since 2005 and has since then gained them a reputation of a paragon of media art expressions. Director and curator Olof van Winden predicated: “Are they [CultuurSchakel] looking for the media art scene in The Hague? Well they should come here; this IS The Hague’s media art scene! We know how its ecosystem works”. With his experience with media art all over the world, and his focus on the locale of The Hague, he can be seen as an expert concerning the field. Such a renowned festival curator’s presence in the city, is also attentive for (new) artists focussing on new media art expressions, since the festival is interested in including artists from The Hague. Because of the high reputation of the festival, Olof values ‘qualitatively outstanding’ art. This makes him a definer of what is perceived as ‘high quality media art’ in The Hague, since being exhibited on this famous festival that is also
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis the largest media art festival in The Hague, is perceived as both honourable and feasible, because of the recognition an artists can gain by this. Two other remarks concerning those involved in new media art have to be made. First, it has been made known to me on several occasions that new media art is an art field that is predominantly occupied by professional artists, and the amount of amateur new media artists in this field was deemed scarce or barely existent. Of course, what is perceived as an ‘amateur’ is debatable, but this does not implicate these statements made by my informants, reporting on the lack of amateur new media artists. Stating new media art is both costly and requires a certain level of expertise because of the technologies and equipment it often requires, the practitioners I spoke deemed it not likely for amateurs to enter this field of arts. However, these claims were made by offline artists. Since new media art also has an online dimension – and the creation of online art is less expensive – I opt the possibility for amateurs to be active within the online field of new media arts, even when online video art is not seen as a form of new media art. Second, there is a defining role for audiences within forms of new media art, who do not only influence the art works and artists, but also the policy on ‘arts and culture’ by the municipality. Concluding, the answer to the question Who are those involved in new media art in The Hague? reads as follows: There are three gatekeepers who occupy themselves with new media art expressions, and could be a starting point for further research on new media art in The Hague: KABK, Stroom and TodaysArt. Next to gatekeepers, there are many more people and institutes occupied with new media art forms in The Hague. Of course there are the artists and artists collectives, like iii, who create art and search for places to demonstrate their art works. These demonstrations can be done in cooperation with museums, exhibition spaces, galleries, festivals, theatres and curators who offer room for artists to show their art and, coherently, decide on which art is exposed. The audience also should not be forgotten, first of all because their interaction is essential for the new media art works to gain meaning. Next to this, the attraction of audiences is vital to exposition facilities, giving them an influence on what the curator decides to add to the exhibition or festival collection, which influences the amount of new media art works in these collections. I have experienced both curators who felt the audience wished for more ‘new and interactive art’ and curators who sensed the opposite to be true, but the influence of the audience was noticeable either way. Lastly, of course the municipality is a major player in the field, even though they acknowledged a lack of acquaintance with new media art forms. Their policies on funding and accommodation nevertheless influence all art forms and expressions.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis 7.3 What is new media art according to those involved? By now, the fact that new media art has no unambiguous meaning, has been stressed many times and needs no further explanation. More important is to explain why people that fall inside this etic classification do not feel represented by this category and how this does or does not affect art policies and the artists stance towards these policies. The main issue with the concept of new media art is that artists within these art forms feel there is a tendency by other contemporary artists who do not use ‘modern’ technologies, to state new media art is more focussed on the use of technology than on the meaning of the art itself. All involved stressed this was not true, since they would not consider themselves artists if meaning and awareness would be downplayed by an emphasis on technological experiments. Technology nevertheless has a dominant role within new media art, as is also implied by alternatively used terminologies used by my informants like TechArt and ‘art and technology’. The artworks are both created with and inspired by technologies, often resulting in artworks that advocate a critical stance towards technology, creating awareness amongst the audience. The used technologies however, do not necessarily need to be ‘new’, which brings us to the other complication with new media art’s terminology: the use of the word ‘new’. ‘Newness’ is problematized throughout this thesis as a social construct, of which the meaning lies ‘in the eye of the beholder’. Not only within the scholarly discourse (for instance in the works of Coleman (2010), Gershon (2017), Gross (2009), Jaffe (2009), Silvio (2009), Spitulnik (1993) and Sterne (2003)) but also by my informants, a critical stance is taken towards the use of this adjective, since it implies relevance of a time frame rather than that of the re- inventing or creating capacities of artists. What is perceived as a ‘new’ technology, depends on the context in which the technology gains its meaning. Within art, Matteo Marangoni has for instance shown the re-invention of the megaphone technology in his art piece Echo Moiré – a Robotic Opera Ballet (2014).102 The artists involved in my research sensed this emphasis on ‘newness’ in new media art, contributed to the more negative connotations felt by contemporary artists and audiences that are active in other art genres, as described above. This outsider’s negativity towards the genre was not shared by most of the institutes I connected with, and certainly not by The Hague municipality, which actually stressed their interest in ‘e-culture’ and related art forms. This attention from the municipality opens up possibilities for grants for artists who find a way to define themselves and their art within this label of ‘e-culture’. The terminology here is just as ambiguous as new media art, which makes
102 Image of this art piece is included in appendix pp.97 – Image 12
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis it conceivable for artists to reconsider their works within this currently used framework of the municipality in order to be granted funding. Within the art world in general, suggestions for (new) labelling are sometimes ill-received by practitioners, since these occupations could turn artists away from the true meaning of their art. However, as Sytze Schalk demonstrated by his acceptance and use if the etic category of ‘trans medial art’ for his art works, there is a practical financial benefit for artists in employing labels concerning art forms Concluding, the sub-question what is new media art according to those involved can be answered as follows: new media art consists of art forms that are interactive and make use of technologies that can be perceived as modern within the current time frame. Technology is not only part of the art work in its form – like the use of virtual reality techniques to create an art work – but is also often a source of inspiration. New media art regularly has a critical stance towards technology, even though technology is essential in the creation of the art works. New media art can be considered as cross-over art forms, since its two main features can be accommodated in different art forms such as theatre, visual arts and dance. New media art is an etic classification by which the artists I met did not feel represented. There are different other categories that contain the same characteristics as new media art, one of them being the broader ‘e-culture’, which is employed by The Hague municipality and in the national cultural policy plan of The Netherlands. The use of a label such as new media art/e-culture by artists can be financially beneficial when this labelling is associated with grants.
7.4 Where in The Hague are expressions of new media art made visible and in what ways can these expressions presumably be (better) facilitated? Although new media art expressions are often not coherent with the possibilities offered by museums similar exposition facilities, The Hague has several locations in which new media art works are frequented. West, Nest and Stroom all regularly occupy themselves with new media art expressions, although they refer to these art works as ‘media art’. Next to this, TodaysArt is cooperating with other organisations to turn a unique vacant building that was created in 1928 by De Volharding and occupied the first media façade in the world, into a place for creating and experiencing new media art. The notion that new media art should indeed be experienced, rather than just be looked at, makes these art expressions well suited for festivals. In The Hague, TodaysArt Festival is the only media art festival, but both BorderSessions and Rewire Festival also regularly make use of new media artists and art works. Next to festivals, new media art is also suitable for
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis online exposing, as is done for instance by LiMa and the Accute Art App. These experiences are not founded in The Hague, but can be accessed from there as well. These online expressions make the art less tangible and less for those not actively searching for it: the people that are presumably involved in the new visible media art scene. The notion of a possible new media art scene is an idea that is amplified for instance by the statement from West that their new media art exhibitions are mostly visited by people who are already involved in new media art forms. The initiative of TodaysArt mentioned above could alter this perspective by making new media art more visible and therefore more accessible to the general public as well. In The Hague, the policy plan concerning ‘arts and culture’ is called Ruimte voor de Spelende Mens. This policy plan focusses on ‘the demand for renewal’ in their policy plans concerning ‘arts and culture’ in order to keep op with the pace of the fast changing ‘cultural environment’. The Hague wants to make a name for itself as a progressive city, by means of which it can attract both Dutch nationals and people from abroad to visit and stay in the city. ‘Arts and culture’ are deemed essential for the city’s identity and therefore investments are made in order to let the city’s ‘arts and culture’ convey this message of progressiveness. Policy made in this regard, should also ensure new ‘makers’ to establish themselves in the city. These new makers should – in part – focus on more hybrid or multidisciplinary art forms. This is a focus from the municipality since these kind of art expressions are linked to the desired renewal of the city’s ‘cultural environment’. In this regard, there is a focus on the influence of the internet on the new generation of art audiences, which makes these audiences eager to have an influence on and interact with the art they are in contact with, generating a form of produsage. Clearly, new media art forms fall into place here, with their interactive character and important role for technology. The most important policy plans that should ensure both the attraction of new makers and – sometimes consequently – more focus on hybrid art expressions are the city’s broedplaatsen and the addition of ‘e-culture’ and ‘cross-over genres’ to the ‘classical’ genres. By means of these new categories, The Hague municipality makers room for extra funding for artists in the art forms the municipality refers to as ‘niche’ – like (in their opinion) new media art. These broedplaatsen are indeed a reason for new media artists I spoke with, to live in the city, even though they also explore other locations to expose their art as well. The question In what way can these expressions presumably be (better) facilitated? can therefore partly be answered by the demand for the keeping of and maybe further development of broedplaatsen where artists of different art fields can influence each other. A further development of the broedplaatsen could, for instance, be in the form an
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis exposition room within all of them, in which all of the artists from the broedplaats can exhibit their art at certain moments – somewhat similar to what Nest is already doing. This can presumably involve new audiences towards new media art, besides those already involved in the new media art scene, as they become familiar with these art forms whilst initially visiting the building’s exhibition space to view other art forms. Another extra dimension to these broedplaatsen can be achieved when the locations – like DCR is already doing – are (more) connected to their neighbourhoods, which could engage a new audience as well. Investments in more exhibition places – like the propositioned exhibition space at De Volharding – can also enhance the visibility of media art expressions. Lastly, the facilitation of new media artists is improved by means of the policy plan already, since the options for grants become greater because of the addition of the new labels ‘e-culture’ and ‘cross-over’ art forms.
7.5 Conclusion 7.5.1 CONCLUDING: HOW ARE EXPRESSIONS OF NEW MEDIA ART WITHIN THE HAGUE PERCEIVED AND PRESUMABLY (BETTER) FACILITATED BY THOSE INVOLVED?? By the municipality and CultuurSchakel, The Hague is presumed to be both a geographically and culturally distinct field in perceived which art ‘makers’ operate in a different manner compared to other cities, for instance in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, the emphasis on e-culture that is starting to grow amongst staff members of The Hague municipality, is – in part – motivated by the national policy plan on ‘arts and culture’. Since this focus should cater to the needs of ‘the new audience’ that requests more interactive art in order for these audience members to feel more connected to works of art, new media art forms could presumably benefit from this emphasis and the policy plans resulting from this focus – like new funding possibilities for ‘e-culture’ and ‘cross-over’ art forms. Throughout this research, an area of tension between etic and emic classifications has been present. Artists felt misrepresented by the ‘new media art’ categorization, by jargon like ‘e-culture’, and often by the use of labels at all. In the end, however, labelling could profit both the practitioners and other people involved in new media art forms, because the financial stimulus that possibly comes with it, makes for more (monetary) possibilities within the creation of new media art works. In the eyes of The Hague municipality and several other informants, these financial incentives contribute to the high quality of art works in The Hague. The practitioners I met, all operate with a tangible passion for their art – which is expressed in their inventive art works – in a setting with uncertain boundaries between art
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis forms, the online/offline and even between the artist and the audience. This blurry or ‘pixelated’ context is based on policy plans that shape the climate in which these practitioners are active, and practitioners involved in new media art are challenged to find ways to combine their passion with the policy plans to make their new media art works blossom (better). Since there is already a focus on financial inducements for practitioners by the municipality, which are indeed welcomed by new media artists, another suggestion to (better) facilitate new media art forms and its expressions, would be a plea for a greater emphasis on the visibility of new media art in the city. I already suggested broedplaatsen could be (even more) involved with their neighbourhoods and in that way attract a new audience towards the broedplaats and its occupants. Another suggestion is to update the ‘cultural map of The Hague’ I presented in chapter three. Broedplaatsen are not mentioned on this map, nor are iii, Another Kind of Blue or de Werelden van Schalk, while they all have studios and presentation rooms in which they are able to welcome interested audiences. In chapter three I also introduced the Cultuurankers, all of which have little acquaintance with new media art forms. Since the municipality intends to focus more on e-culture and ‘cross-over’ art forms, it would be advisable that these institutes (that are deemed important by the municipality on their website) have the possibility to become more associated with new media art practitioners.
7.5.2 SUGGESTIONS FOR CULTUURSCHAKEL As this thesis originated from a question posed by CultuurSchakel, I will end here with some advice for them and their question on how they can play a part in facilitating new media art practitioners in The Hague. Within the Cultural Participation department of CultuurSchakel, there is an interest in new media art, but their definition of new media art has made clear their interest was actually on other – sometimes similar – art expressions, like online video art. This makes sense, since CultuurSchakel is occupied with amateurs and the practitioners involved in new media art are typically professionals. However, new media art professionals can help CultuurSchakel in several ways. Within the Cultural Participation department, professional new media artists can give workshops or lectures to share their expertise. Olof van Winden and Dave Middendorp (Another Kind of Blue) already said they were willing to discuss these – and similar – possibilities with CultuurSchakel, even though they know CultuurSchakel only focusses on amateurs. The amateur online video artists I met, already stated their interest in joining such workshops or lectures, since it would be a unique opportunity for them to learn more about how art and technology can be combined. These workshop could also presumably be frequented by a young audience in general, as the inspiration and expressions of new media
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis art forms often shows similarities to – for instance – the most visited workshops at COMM. Such a cooperation with professional new media artists could also benefit other departments that focus on education, for instance within the Artist in the Classroom-project. Next to this, the online video art practitioners I met, also indicated they – as amateurs – were interested in cooperating with CultuurSchakel. Ideas that were suggested included lectures or workshops on video editing given by them to children, the possibility of using Het koorenhuis as a place where those interested in online video art could potentially regularly meet and help from the experts of CultuurSchakel on how these amateur artists can apply for grants in order to be (better) facilitated in the creation of their art works. If CultuurSchakel enhances its (online) visibility towards online practitioners from The Hague, they all felt a larger group of ‘similar practitioners’ would be interested in such possibilities as well. Minerva even suggested she could help with the improvement of the online visibility of CultuurSchakel, enhancing its possibilities of connecting to a new target audience.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis 9. APPENDIX
9.1 Original quotes Quote 1: Olof van winden: “Het is gewoon kunst. Kunst in een context van digitale creativiteit of digitale cultuur, want onze wereld is digitaal, we zijn connected 24 uur per dag, 7 dagen in de week vanaf dat we geboren zijn”.
Quote 2: Olof van Winden: “Dus vandaar dat ik die discipline, laten we hem even mediakunst noemen, kunstenaars die reflecteren op goed en kwaad in technologie, kijken naar wat je ermee kan, die het hacken om het naar eigen hand te zetten om er iets anders mee te doen; dat is heel belangrijk, en sinds computers er zijn, zijn kunstenaars daar ook mee bezig om daarop te reflecteren. Wat is google, wat is facebook?”
Quote 3: Stef Katwijk: “Het gaat om een vernieuwing binnen de kunst, door middel van moderne technologieën”.
Quote 4: Olof van Winden: “voor mij is media art de cross over van dingen: beeld, geluid, performance…”.
Quote 5: Sytze: “Ik heb destijds met theater aan het spui – wat nu het nationaal theater is – een aanvraag gedaan bij het bureau van podiumkunsten voor de jonge makers voor een transmediaal project. Op een gegeven moment merkte ik dat ik verschillende dingen aan het doen was, en bij een conferentie zeiden mensen ‘wat jij doet is transmediaal’ en toen dacht ik ‘oke het zal wel’”.
Tanah : “Dat is prima, toch?”
Sytze : “Het is ook en fijn label om te hebben en mooi om te gebruiken”.
Tanah: “Klinkt in ieder geval interessant”.
Sytze: “Klinkt idd als…iets”.
Quote 6: Minerva: “Het is die authenticiteit. Er zijn mensen die ik volg op YouTube…ik kan zeggen, er zij mensen en die maken het op YouTube gewoon omdat ze supermooi zijn. Maar er zijn sommige YouTubers waar ik naar kijk en denk wow, dat zijn gewoon artiesten”.
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis Quote 7: Ann DeMeester: “We weten niet hoe we VR kunst moeten tonen. Er zijn al steds meer virtuele musea voor tastbare kunst. Verzamelaars die een online vollectie maken voor oude meesters, maar fysieke musea voor virtuele kunst zijn er eigenlijk nog niet. […] je zou kunnen zeggen je koopt zon bril en je bent klaar, maar je wil het zien in een bepaalde context, je wilt een emersive experience, en die kunnen musea momenteel nog niet bieden”.
Quote 8: Olof van Winden: “Misschien groter, maar niet beter. Ik denk dat de kwaliteit hier hoger is. Er is in Amsterdam veel maar, maar je hoeft er ook maar met je vingers te knippen en het zit vol. Hier moet je echt hard je best doen als jee publiek in Den Haag wilt bereiken.”
9.2 Images
Image 5: All kinds of reading (ad listening) material I received
Picture by me
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Image 10: Gary Hill -The Slow Torque of Bonsai (2017). In West
Picture by me
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Tanah Meijers Pixels and Passion 27/06/2018 Master Thesis
Image 11: Gary Hill – Self Series (2016). In West.
Picture by me
Image 12: Matteo Marangoni – Echo Moiré – a Robotic Opera Ballet (2014)
picture from https://www.haagsekunstenaars.nl/werk.php?prsn_id=76009&bldmtrl_id=32210
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Image 15: Media façade at Times Square
Picture by Lin S. Kayser
Found on http://www.iridasmagazine.com/2008/03/01/timessquare/
Image 16: De Volharding’s media façade.
Picture found on https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/423901383665998478/
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