Computer Art: Developing a Critical Perspective

Computer Art: Developing a Critical Perspective
April 16, 2014, 6 – 8pm
Atrium Gallery & Curator’s Lounge

RSVP for this free event HERE!

In collaboration with EZTV’s current exhibition, Hacking the Timeline v3.0: Digilantism and the LA Digital Art Movement (1985-2005), Independent scholar, Andrea Foenander, will give a talk on EZTV and the history of digital art.

Computer Art is the elephant in the ‘art history’ room. Opening conversation within proximity of contemporary artworks often necessitates tiptoeing past a material fetishism in order to gain access to a revered ‘deeper meaning’. Technology and in particular computers, are not part of the art world vocabulary despite their obvious prominence within art practices across the world. We are a tool-centric society, so why do discussions of technology remain undervalued?

Andrea Foenander is a writer and artist working in London. She holds a B.A. in Fine Art Sculpture from University of the Arts, London and a M.A. in Critical Writing in Art and Design from the Royal College of Art. Her studio practice addresses concerns towards mass media and ‘information overload’. She has written critically for exhibitions at CAMP and TAF in Athens, historically for Guest House in Kettles Yard Gallery, Cambridge and prose for “As is the Sea: An Anthology”.

Her writing practice is concerned with technology and visual media, currently assembling an Anthology on Computer Art History. In 2013, she conducted research to produce an extended essay on the seminal art exhibition LA Art 1990, an exhibition at EZTV. This research was based initially on materials housed at the Patric Prince Computer Art Archive at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Patric Prince curated the EZTV’s LA Art 1990 exhibition and along with Michael J. Masucci, co-founded EZTV’s CyberSpace Gallery, one of the world’s first galleries with a focus on digital art.

EZTV, a pioneering video space founded in West Hollywood in 1979, has been part of the resident artist community at 18th Street Arts Center since 2002. The exhibition in the Atrium Gallery is a complement to the retrospective EZTV: Video Transfer on view at USC’s ONE Archives Gallery and Museum through June 1, 2014.