“Aesthetic Journalism” by Alfredo Cramerotti
Aesthetic Journalism: How to Inform Without Informing by Alfredo Cramerotti: Addressing a growing area of focus in contemporary art, Aesthetic Journalism investigates why contemporary art exhibitions often consist of interviews, documentaries, and reportage. Art theorist and critic Alfredo Cramerotti traces the shift in the production of truth from the domain of the news media to that of art and aestheticism – a change that questions the very foundations of journalism and the nature of art. This volume challenges the way we understand art and journalism in contemporary culture and suggests future developments of this new relationship.
Writer, curator, artist and consultant for the creative sector, Alfredo Cramerotti works with a variety of media such as TV, radio, publishing, art exhibitions, festivals and curation. In recent years, he co-curated the itinerant project “AGM-Annual General Meeting,” the festival of citizen journalism “Made in Video,” Copenhagen, the television formats LAPTALK and CPS for tv-tv Copenhagen, and he is currently Curator at QUAD, Derby’s new £11million centre for Art and Film - one of the fastest growing centres for art and film in Europe.
Cramerotti’s job concerns generating ideas, providing opportunities for dialogue and exchange for artists, producers and audience alike, delivering artistic and media projects, and supporting the professional development of creative practitioners. His interest lies in the relationship between reality and its representation, tackled across exhibitions, conferences and seminars, books, public projects, artist’s talks and performances, residency programme and new media.
As an artist, Cramerottti works with narratives by means of photography, installation, video, performance and writing. He keeps the following blogs: Coach Update, Media Geographies, and Fahre’n'heit.
helen
jo
![[meme.garden] (2006)](http://turbulence.org/index_files/meme.jpg)
One Response
Dear Jo-Anne,
thanks for the post. I do think that aesthetic journalism is worth a discussion precisely in relation to ‘networked performance’ - for instance, I’m part of a collective called CPS (Chamber of Public Secrets) which is one of the curatorial teams of next Manifesta 8, the european biennial of contemporary art, and one of the theoretical bases that informs CPS’s approach to art and the media is precisely the notion of aesthetic journalism. CPS’s approach to curation encompasses (mass) media platforms such as television, radio and newspapers, alongside more traditional exhibition formats. In the context of Manifesta 8 we ask what is the media’s relationship to the construction of a local reality, how does it relate to ideas of truth, fact and history, and what are its possibilities for engaging with new audiences and existing local/global structures?
Through operating as a roving biennial Manifesta must each time address and negotiate a different context with specific geographical, historical and political structures. In this way, its curators are offered the opportunity, and the challenge, to engage with local, global and networked communities using a variety of platforms and approaches. We are looking into a process of progression from a (theoretical) notion of aesthetic journalism to a practical implementation of this concept, as could manifest itself in biennial models such as M8; some of the questions (indirectly) raised in the book are those concerned with the use of media platforms:
• Why use and explore media platforms as an artist or curator?
• What is the relationship between (mass) media and art in the past and present, and what are the possible future scenarios?
• Can media platforms renegotiate a relationship between art and the locality in a biennial model?
In reference to this latter, recently I collaborated with artist Fay Nicolson in order to ‘unpack’ this is huge body of research (undertaken between 2004 and 2009) using a practical approach: Fay developed an ‘ABC of aesthetic journalism’ which is published as a blog: http://fayinc.wordpress.com.
We will present this to students at DAI - Dutch Art Institute (Enschede, Holland) for the “platform for (un)solicited research and advice” on 13 and 14th january 2010. I think it would be interesting if students also engage in the discussion posting/commenting on NP blog…
best
alfredo :)