The Work of Art in the Post Age

Dr. Charlie Gere

Lancaster University

Lancaster Institute for The Contemporary Arts

Thursday, February 28, 2013, at Noon

ATEC Conference Room, ATC 1.606

Abstract:

In this paper I look at the effect on art of transformations and developments in media and telecommunications, from the 17th century to the 21st, with special reference to the postal system as a figure for these developments, and through Deconstruction as a means of understanding them. I propose an alternative history of art in terms of a move away from the privacy of the early modern era, to one of openness that is allegorized in Derrida's figure of the post card in the book of that name. I look at this history from the late nineteenth century through to the early twentieth century, with reference to artists such as van Gogh, Duchamp, the Futurists, Cage, Fluxus and onto Net.Art and beyond.

Biography:

Charlie Gere is Professor of Media Theory and History in the Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University. He is the author of Digital Culture (2002), Art, Time and Technology (2006), Non-relational Aesthetics, with Michael Corris (2009), and Community without Community in Digital Culture (2012)as well as co-editor of White Heat Cold Technology (2009), and Art Practice in a Digital Culture (2010), and many papers on questions of technology, media and art. In 2007 he co-curated Feedback, a major exhibition on art responsive to instructions, input, or its environment, in Gijon, Northern Spain, and was co-curator of FutureEverybody, the 2012 FutureEverything exhibition, in Manchester.

The ATEC/EMAC Colloquium Committee welcomes suggestions for speakers visiting the metroplex or from the metroplex. Please send your suggestions to one of the Colloquium Committee Members: Professors Roger Malina and Mihai Nadin; co-chairs: Andrew Famiglieti, Paul Fishwick, Mona Kasra and Bonnie Pitman.