Is media art interesting?

MDD: Why do you think a lot of large companies, government funds and large Museums seem drawn to commissioning and housing work made with new technology at the moment?

H: Such agencies buy into art as a decorative accessory that ritualises taste and legitimises their position. For them, art constructs a fortress that states: "If you don't like what we like you're stupid". It reminds the population and themselves that they have a visibly natural right to wealth and privilege.

MDD: If you are going to deal with them at all - and that effectively means to show work in any publicly promoted space - how can you do it without compromise?

H: Don't work with company commissions or governmental bodies or museums if the work does not engage with the social and political context that surrounds the commissions. It makes for boring art and promotes elitism.

MDD: How does this situation work in the narrow area of electronic art?

H: To work within corporations at any level - if you're going to have fun - must be an act of insurgence and especially in the privileged arena of art or of image makers. Making art from technology is in itself not interesting. It never has been and there is no use pretending it is.

MDD: What are the implications of this in the wider context of culture?

H: We are already on the eve of the next century. Hopefully we have agreed that anyone can make, add-to or append culture in an interesting way. We all do it every day. Some make, add-to or append culture close to them within groups of friends or families or other small social groups. Others choose to engage with the cultures that are the intercommunications between these groups which is often seen as media, or collective imaging. Within this area artists and the media work generating images that can often be the valuable asset of a company organisation or country.

MDD: So you think anyone involved in corporations on such an asset enhancing venture is an enemy to progress and should be undermined at every point?

H: Kick their legs from under them. Most artists think that they are rebels, or at least a teeny-weeny bit. (It's true though. Pretentiousness may help you escape from the suburbs, if it means your family no longer wants to talk to you.) The go-betweens are at work unloading the lorry of manipulation and repressive techniques and are re-purposing them for the info-age. Artists are playing their part in the servile-economy by making these repressive techniques appear creative. We saw such content re-purposing with Vinyl to CD - now we can see it with oppressive social structures being updated for the 'new' media.

MDD: So what do you think the purpose of the new technologies are?

H: I don't know. But any one with more then half a brain will realise that these technologies are used to oppress 90% of the time. They have not been invented to make life more fun and easier. A company does not buy computers to make its employees happy. Whilst saying this computers can be fun, can be a political weapon and can offer some pleasure. But this happens in the margins of confusion. That is, in the technology's newness or in the boredom of youthful soft engineers and in other odd corners.

MDD: We have an opportunity with this technology to leave behind a world which privileges the creativity of a few in order to suppress the creativity of the many. What do you think is holding this back?

H: New media art is being systematically privileged at international art events in order to export the oppressive social structures of tastefulness from the last century onto this one. Every self respecting artist will deny this activity at every turn. It's about time we exposed the hypocrisy and inherent dullness of media art. Before it's taken serious.

MDD: If this is the scenario, then what role should the new media artist occupy? What tactics work?

H: Re-purposing corporate software. Mimic other's sites. Email as your enemy. Form your own networks. Burrow into the decaying matter of the 20th Century. There's loads of stuff going on. Drive the population crazy. We need to migrate as many radical and speculative threads as possible at this time.

Maharg Dla'nor Doowrah is an environmentalist and homemaker and regular contributor to Ninth Fold, a journal of post-colonial gardening and was talking to Harwood of Mongrel.