Otimo artigo

Eu sei que ler Artforum é coisa de artista wannabe, mas, fora os intermináveis anúncios das galerias, os artigos são excelentes. Este artigo do David Joselit é simplesmente uma obra-prima. Navigating the Territory: Art, Avatars and the Contemporary Mediascape é fenomenal.

"It's the electric whisper bleeding from earphones in subway cars, and it's the disarming experience of believing for a minute that the well-dressed guy talking to himself on the street is crazy—until you see his headset. Or it's the zombie dance, visible through the glass enclosure of a video arcade, of two adolescent boys whose virtual adventure is being conducted through their actual movements on a platform in front of a screen. These are the symptoms of a new spatial order: a space in which the virtual and the physical are absolutely coextensive, allowing a person to travel in one direction through sound or image while proceeding elsewhere physically. Imaginative projection is as old as the histories of art, theater, and literature—in other words, as old as humanity itself—but virtuality suggests the sensation of inhabiting such projections bodily. What makes our present moment distinctive is the degree to which devices such as the iPod, the cell phone, and the personal computer allow our bodies to occupy two places at once while, conversely, our physical environments function more and more as mediascapes composed not only of surfaces of print and electronic signage but also of the inhabitable three-dimensional signs of architectural branding.

This experience of straddling two or more locations simultaneously has caused the negotiation of both physical and virtual worlds to become increasingly disembodied, and, as with any cultural shift, this transformation has produced new opportunities for art. "Navigation" now describes how we move, and the term, given its dual associations with sea voyages and Internet surfing, perfectly captures the elision of physicality and virtuality. Beyond generating novel aesthetic responses, the experience of navigable space has led to a reconsideration, both among artists and art historians, of more literally territorial ecologies, particularly those of Land art. What is distinctive in "navigational" art, which encompasses not only Internet art but also much recent painting and sculpture, is not simply the association of virtuality with presence—which is implicit in any site-specific practice—but their confusion. "

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