PUBLIC 44: Experimental Media, edited by Peggy Gale:

In “Cultural Engineering 1982–2010″ Tom Sherman challenges the institutionalizing and mythologizing of experimental media through economic support and academic research. Konrad Becker uses slogan, picture and text from his “Strategic Reality Dictionary” to reveal power mechanisms and newspeak from the past half-century. The irreplaceable nature of individual media is a recurring theme, as Michael Snow and Nicky Hamlyn consider works created necessarily in a chosen medium. Christopher Eamon considers media installations new prominence in the museum. Teacher and curator Peter Ride investigates the place of the viewer and systems to evaluate audience response.

Christina Battle builds a skyline of stacked words — gesture and judgment — where film and video are joined by computer, digital, image, internet, installation, media, new-media, performance, recording, signal tape, transmission and technology. What is left unsaid? Elle Flanders writes a film script for Yvonne Rainer and John Greyson with dance, sexuality, history and the body. Rainer herself appears on DVD included with the issue, an elaborated-lecture on performer and audience at Tramway in Glasgow. In “Notes on Attention, Projection, Foreplay and the Second Encounter” Mike Hoolboom riffs on movies and audiences, distractions and certainties.

Jean Gagnon addresses archiving for audiovisual and media-based works. More consciously political, Shai Heredia discusses film histories at Experimenta in Mumbai and Bangalore. David Teh shows how street actions and public festival in Southeast Asia make an accessible performance-archive today. Steven Loft notes First Nations’ use of new media arts for self-definition and exploration, ideally compatible with oral tradition and exchange in Aboriginal identity. Dont Rhine, with members of Ultra-red, reflect on “the space of listening,” where sound has its own politics for presentation and exchange. Vera Frenkel returns us to the archive, with her own history of research and performance, narrative and technological invention.

Artists’ Portfolios: Christine Davis, David Rokeby, Michael Snow, Shai Heredia and Shumona Goel.

Reviews of exhibitions and books, and a column by Ian Balfour — “Chris Marker’s Only Music Video (Almost, Still)” — complete the issue.

ABOUT

PUBLIC is a bi-annual interdisciplinary art journal based in Toronto founded in 1988 by the Public Access Collective. It is committed to existing as an intellectual and creative forum, providing a space for in depth perspectives on the theoretical and critical issues that intersect with art and visual culture.

PUBLIC gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and York University.