Open access
MEDIA ART IN THE FACE OF POLITICAL, IDENTITY AND TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS. REDEFINING UPPER SILESIA BY MEANS OF VIDEO AND DIGITAL MEDIA
Anna MAJ1
Frameworks for integrating interdisciplinary research
Publication language: English
Journal article
Transformations No. 2 (117) 2023, Publication date: 30 June 2023
Keywords: media art, video art, pioneers of media art, Laboratory of Presentation Techniques (Laboratorium Technik Prezentacyjnych – LTP), Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, BWA in Katowice, Upper Silesia, identity, political transformations, digital breakthrough, emigration
Abstract The first decades of digital media art in Poland and Central Europe were associated not only with breaking the technological barrier and creating new means of expression, as was the case in the West, but also with social and mental transformations, economic and identity problems of the period of political transformation. Media art (including computer art and video art) is a creative area strongly dependent on the access to new technologies, the cost of this access and the technology itself, as well as on problems resulting from its use and the need to cross the boundaries of the language of the medium. Creators experimenting with video and computer in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s had to face not only economic difficulties, but also the reluctance of the institutions to a new means of expression and the resistance of artistic circles to expanding artistic instrumentation. This article will describe a particular case of the first decades of the development of media art in Upper Silesia and the cultural contexts of the process of paving the way for social recognition and regular functioning in the art gallery circulation. The case of media art shows strong links between political, identity and technological changes that influenced local consciousness and its redefinition, and the fate of creators and creative institutions in the region.
Institute of Cultural Studies of the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland
ORCID: 0000-0003-3958-267X
E-mail: anna.maj@us.edu.pl