Platform for (un)Solicited Research and Advice

• Why use and explore media platforms as an artist or curator?

• What is the relationship between (mass) media and art in the past and present, and what are the possible future scenarios?

• Can media platforms renegotiate a relationship between art and the locality in a Biennale model?

Through operating as a roving biennial Manifesta must each time address and negotiate a different context with specific geographical, historical and political structures. In this way, Manifesta offers its curators the opportunity, and the challenge, to engage with local, global and networked communities using a variety of platforms and approaches.

CPS’s approach to curation encompasses (mass) media platforms such as television, radio and newspapers, alongside more traditional exhibition formats. In the context of Manifesta 8 we ask what is the media’s relationship to the construction of a local reality, how does it relate to ideas of truth, fact and history, and what are its possibilities for engaging with new audiences and existing local/global structures?

One of the theoretical bases that informs CPS’s approach to art and the media is the notion of ‘aesthetic journalism’: LINK. This is a huge body of research undertaken between 2004 and 2009. We (Alfredo as writer/curator and Fay as artist) have recently collaborated to ‘unpack’ this concept using a practical approach; Fay developed an ‘ABC of aesthetic journalism’ which is published as a blog: LINK. We would like to involve DAI students in this process of progression from a (theoretical) notion of aesthetic journalism to a practical implementation of this concept (as could manifest itself in biennial models such as M8).

We invite you to engage in the ABC blog by responding to a post/s or by creating your own. You can add to, comment on, critique, extend, oppose or digress from the current content. Responses can take the form of text, image, video, audio or web link. Directly or indirectly consider our opening bullet points in relation to this invitation. Your approach can be academic, artistic, communicative, reflexive, objective or personal. The only rules are that you cannot delete existing content and that responses are indexed in their respective alphabetical category. You will be given the username and password to the blog for the duration of the project.