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Themesicon: navigation pathOverview of Media Articon: navigation pathMuseum
 
 
 
 
 

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technologies–like for example the DVD standard and the almost universal use of large-screen video projection–are taken for granted now. Today, artists who work exclusively with video are not seen as ‹video artists,› who were always suspected of finding a form that was ‹merely› a media form rather than a genuine form of artistic expression.[6] The museum as well as the auratic artwork seem on the one hand to have been discredited and deprived of their force by discourses of art theory. Douglas Crimp thus concludes that the museum is no longer the predestined location for contemporary art per se: «We needed, it seemed to me, an archeology of the museum on the model of Foucault's analysis of the asylum, the clinic, and the prison. For the museum seemed to be equally a space of exclusions and confinements.»[7] But the concrete catalyst for these reflections is the current completely unquestioning acceptance of video technology, at least in the exhibition and museum sphere. This led to a whole series of video-based exhibitions[8] and made young artists like Doug Aitken, Jordan Crandall, Douglas Gordon, Steve McQueen, Paul Pfeiffer, or Marijke van Warmerdam the shooting stars of the art scene. After a

 

long period of resistance, the museums have also finally assimilated technological art. What changed conditions might explain this development? What paradigm shift took place here? In the following, central elements and exhibitions of media art will be explored, and the first three sections sketch out the formats and ‹attitudes› that have for their part lastingly influenced the way the electronic media are perceived.[9] The «open form,» not typical of the museum, the «closed format» of alternative distribution, and finally the «museum format» will be interrogated for their specific tense relation to the media. The conclusion is then devoted to the opening of the museum form towards the platform and hybrid, «soft» forms of contemporary media spaces.

Open form

The crisis of museum representation can be seen in the strategies that interrogate the social and material conditions of the museum: an example here would be Hans Haacke's complex and conflictual actions that expose museum structures and financing.The crisis also makes itself evident in the attempt to completely do

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