Monoskop/Prague 2007 talk
I will give very short introduction into a collaborative project i've been involved in and maybe if you have any points or topics to discuss, we can focus on these.
Basically the question behind Monoskop was: what has actually happened in art and technology field before we arrived here? It was 3 years ago and i was a member of Burundi media lab in Bratislava. Educational structures in Slovakia don't really offer very much from the history of this field, and there is neither a lot of literature covering eastern and central european region.
So the wiki was set up and started to be filled with information from oral histories, internet research and personal experiences. I have to say that from the beginning the focus was put especially on social history of media art, including groups, collectives, communities, events, and institutions. So far there has not been put much effort to cover theoretical discourse, neither technical or technological issues. The backbone of the structure is therefore list of cities.
From the start it was a project with open participation, so far circa 40-50 people edited it - from SK, CZ, BG, NL, BE and other places. It offers a resource for educational purposes and research, and also serves as a contact list.
When talking about globalisation, and media art memory we should not forget the story, the media cultures that give birth to art. We should not forget the production situations, contexts, networks, strategic alliances, platforms forming dicussions, access, creative space and production facilities where art is created. Artists very rarely work outside social and institutional networks.
