Art ‘In-Formation’

Internationale Tagung vom 30.11 bis 1.12.2007

Leitung: Ursula Frohne

With the emergence of new communication media, a wide variety of conceptual art practices pursued the proliferation of their works via channels of mainstream media. Since the late 1960ies artists have strategically explored the possibilities of inserting critical information into communication systems as impulses of empowerment to establish a critical counter public. Based on old and new communication channels, including print media (newspapers, journals, artists' books, art editions, copy art, billboards), postal services (Mail Art), television or fax transmission and computer technology (Net Art) as tools for critical and political engagement, artworks in fusion with communication media bear witness to the rapid transformation of interaction modes in the 20th and 21st centuries. 'Art In-Formation' explores the alternative dimensions of established technological facilities in terms of their creative potential and as platforms for the formation of internationally networked artist initiatives, particularly in Eastern Europe, and Latin America whose dissident group structures anticipated new forms of international collaborations. In distinction to artist group formations of the classical avant-garde, strategic media usage since the 1960ies has clearly contributed to rather inclusive than exclusive new forms of collaboration. 
The symposium intends to confront the most current developments in communication and information based artworks with pioneering historical works, which will allow for a better examination and contextualization of key debates on conceptual developments and collaborative systems in late 20th and early 21st century culture.

Die Tagung wird vom Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen / ASPC im Zusammenhang des Forschungsverbunds Künstlerpublikationen veranstaltet. Der Forschungsverbund wird getragen von der Universität Bremen, der Jacobs University Bremen, der Hochschule für Künste, der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa und der Weserburg – Museum für moderne Kunst Bremen / Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen.