THINGS GET OUT OF HAND
Visceral morph
The last day was declared a ‘question-free zone’. This pronouncement imme-diately made questions from the audience seem a reluctant duty exacted by the speakers as payment for their attendance. Technology, as a sexy kind of thing, promised freedom from this formal exchange. There was much on the last day that fulfilled this promise.
BARBIE CULTURE
Big daddy mainframe
Maria Fernandez was the sole link between the techno talk and the postcolonial debate of previous days. Computer technology, as part of global culture, risked casting Third World countries in the shadows. Life in these shadows was illustrated by the popularity in Mexican villages of Barbie magazines, despite an inability to purchase one, let alone find themselves in its laboratory shape. A computer in this context is something owned for status rather than use. She questioned the dependence of artists on technology which threatens to reduce artistic ambitions to the ownership of the latest upgrade — a situation that disadvantages poorer countries.
Publication Details
- Type
- Journal Article
- Title
- Art Forums: Artists’ Week
- Author
- Publication
- Broadsheet, pp. 22–24, Vol 23 No 2, Winter 1994, English
- Publisher
- Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide, SA Australia
- ISSN
- 0819 677X
Attached Files
- Art Forums: Artists’ Week, Kevin Murray. Broadsheet Vol 23 No 2 Winter 1994, pp. 22–24, magazine article [pdf 2.04MB]