Supplement
No. 6 - Unsitely Aesthetics
Maria Miranda
ISBN: 978-0-9827439-8-0
In the last 10 years
we have experienced a seismic shift in media culture, as the social
media revolution of the noughties has brought vastly expanded networking,
mobility and connection. This shift has significantly altered the making
of art as well as the ways that audiences engage with art. Unsitely
Aesthetics seeks to describe and understand these changes in art production
and its accompanying new aesthetics, coining the term “unsitely”
to point to the dispersed way that many artists are now making work
across the networks both online and offline.
A departure point for the book is the idea that the traditional art
historical term of site and site-specificity offers a new and strategic
way to understand the shifting and troubled relationship of artwork
and audience in network culture. This is a counterintuitive move against
the sense of network culture as immaterial flows in a placeless world,
thus underlining the situatedness of the making and experiencing of
art that is still significant. The book suggests that with the unsitely
aesthetics of today’s contemporary artists there is the possibility
of a more democratic art with the internet acting as a public space
for artists to encounter and even call forth new publics.
The book includes interviews and conversations with leading international
artists and writers. Contributors: Barbara Campbell, Linda Carroli,
Hugh Davies, Bec Dean, Renate Ferro, John Craig Freeman, Jo-anne Green,
Teri Hoskin, Lucas Ihlein, Yao Jui-Chung, kanarinka (a.k.a. Catherine
D’Ignazio), Scott Kildall, Deborah Kelly, Natalie Loveless, Michael
Takeo Magruder, Timothy Conway Murray, Norie Neumark, Victoria Scott,
Brooke Singer, Igor Stromajer, Helen Thorington, Darren Tofts.
Maria Miranda is an art-maker and art-researcher. She has maintained
a collaborative art practice, Out-of-Sync, with Norie Neumark for over
15 years – making work that engages with questions of culture,
place and memory. Currently she is Artistic Director of Gallery Ellipsis,
the online gallery of the Centre for Creative Arts La Trobe University.
From 2010 to 2012 Maria was a post-doctoral fellow at La Trobe University,
Melbourne. Maria lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.
