You are more likely to have heard of the Fotomuseum Winterthur than the one you visited. Located in the Swiss countryside outside Zurich, it is – like the Photographer’s Gallery in London – a museum of contemporary photography that has the slow and often painful discussions that define digital art as it rubs badly against comfortable with more institutional mediums.
When I visited last fall to discuss how my Thirst glitch gifs series is for the digital curator The developing exhibition of Marco De Mutiis The attractiveness of the imagewe also visited a nearby goat farm.
The Tommie Hotel, on the other hand, is located in the heart of Hollywood and features a chic Palm Springs-designed rooftop pool where SuperRare curator Paloma Rodriguez created an exhibit that also included the Thirst glitch gifs.
Unlike London, I have found that many artists in Los Angeles identify deeply with NFT and crypto art as a central medium and scene.
These same works were also exhibited recently at The NFT Gallery, a commercial art space located in New York and Mayfair in London. The exhibition, curated by Micol Ap of Vertical Crypto Art, celebrated International Women’s Day by opening in two countries at once. The opening celebration in London brought over a hundred people into the gallery for a panel; while the shutdown took place in New York, which had much the same.
The almost simultaneous exposure of artworks in different countries, cultures, communities and scenes is unique to the digital art period we find ourselves in and has the side effect of exposing the structural differences that have historically underpinned -stretched the way digital art is supported and understood in these desperate places.
One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed is the extent to which curators, exhibition spaces, and digital artists themselves identify with the NFT. I have hypothesized that a strong identification with NFT, which enables a commercial market for digital art, correlates with the lack of public funding for art.
Everyone I spoke to disagreed.
Digital art in New York
Christiane Paul, curator of new media arts at the Whitney, will argue significantly that it is incorrect to think of digital art scenes as separated by geographic and national boundaries. In a recent conversation with Paul, the term “porous borders” was frequently used to describe both digital art communities and Paul’s exhibition. Refigured. The Whitney was the first major museum to have its own digital art acquisition committee, officially created in 2017. While half of the artists in Refigured claim New York as your home, the New York Museum is home to all the artwork on display. Many museums exhibit digital art, few invest in a permanent collection. The Whitney’s permanent collection of digital art is a triumph that Paul has long strived to establish. This had a cascading impact on how digital art was collected with bitform gallery often acting as a bridge between artists, city institutions and private collectors.
Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman I’m here to learn so :))))))2017 in The Whitneys Refigured exposure Whitney Museum of American Art
Highlight of the exhibition
Refigured
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
March 3—July 3, 2023
Digital art in London
The first time the British Arts Council gave me money, facilitated by the digital performance gallery Arebyte, I was honestly confused. I grew up in the United States where the military band budget is almost twice as much as the entire National Endowment for the Arts . Although there are serious concerns about its future, the British Arts Council uses public funds and the National Lottery to award £407million a year to 828 arts organisations, museums and libraries.
In London, I particularly notice how many of us are using the NFT mechanism to support the collection of practices that already had favorable revenue and display outlets. Long promoted and supported by programs like Arebyte and Gazelli Art House’s Gazell.io,, Those of us who work in London have NFT versions of our work but do not identify deeply with the scene as a movement culturally separate from our established practices. You can collect Jake Elwes’ deep faux drag performances (The Zizi show) as NFTs, but their exposure and curation concerns do not focus on crypto art or its movement. At least not yet. Critical NFT publication by Alex Estorick Right click Save lives in the city although currently only 12% of the site’s traffic comes from the UK (UK traffic to this publication is around 20%).
Libby Heaney, ENTER THE GARDEN OF PATHWAYSGazelli Art House London instagram.com/libby_heaney_
Highlight of the exhibition
Libby Heaney: ENTER THE GARDEN OF PATHWAYS
Gazelli Art House, Gazell.io
March 30—May 13, 2023
Digital art in Los Angeles
Katie Payton, who recently hosted REALISTIC at Vellum, echoes many others I’ve spoken to in LA when she explains that “contemporary LA media art and the NFT scene stems not just from a story, but from a convergence of stories”. One of the unique convergences is the impact of business as a source of finance and tension simultaneously. When LACMA’s Art and Technology Lab opened in 1967, it acted as a middleman between artists and corporations, placing artists inside the walls of corporations like Disney and The RAND. Corporation. If funding artists through the companies they often criticize makes you uncomfortable, Joel Ferree, LACMA Art + Technology Lab program director, reminds us that it’s part of the value. Since the program placed John Chamberlain within the RAND Corporation, there has been a history of dialogue between society and artist that is not without productive tension.
Unlike London, I have found that many artists in Los Angeles identify deeply with NFT and crypto art as a central medium and scene. Many digital artists who have worked for decades outside of the international attention of the pre-crypto art world have found sources of income, community, and support through grassroots efforts like Cody Edison’s. NFTuesday and Tezos-based collectors like Daniel Kantor. Vellum, located on Melrose, is quickly becoming one of the premier NFT galleries in the world. It features swanky screens and a robust curatorial team that feels as rooted in the local NFT community as it is known internally.
Highlight of the exhibition
Enrique Agudo, IPSEITE,
Vellum LA
April 6—May 14, 2023
Digital art in Dubai
The Dubai Art Fair, with its growing digital section, is resurfacing as a mainstay of the art world.
Newly opened in 2022, Gallory brought the most talked about digital artists to the city, including a major exhibition by Madrid/LA-based practitioner Daniel Canogar, who was also included in a bitforms gallery presentation during the February opening of the Santa Monica Art Museum. Although I do not claim to understand the systems or mechanisms, UAE government funding for arts and culture is increasingly attracting the attention of Western artists. The UAE also has no income or capital gains tax, which means profits from the sale of crypto, NFT, or artwork are not taxed.
Galloire Gallery’s stand at Art Dubai 2023 featured ‘phygital’ works such as prints made from generative AI works by Jean-Jacques Duclaux (back left), 3D-printed vases by Addie Wagenknecht (front left) and sculptural works based on data by Daniel Canogar. LED screen Wave (2022, right). Photo: Aimee Dawson
Highlight of the exhibition
Daniel Canogar: Loose threads.
Gallory
Digital art in Europe
Launched in 1979, Ars Electronica is a digital and media art festival that has always operated outside the traditional art world. and, many of us whose work deals with the darker implications of technology have found a home in its funky, crazy world of savants. I have found that, compared to its burgeoning reception in the United States, my work thrives in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, where popular concerns about technology and privacy, the issues my work addresses, are more developed. Ars Electronica curator Christl Baur describes this as a “cultural tradition of critical concern where success is valued in different terms, as are the costs of technology”. Ars Electronica adds “society” as an important third pillar to the convergence of art and technology.
The intention to consider the responsibility of artists and technologists to society leads to different responses as to which work is celebrated and funded. Nearly 45 years of operations give Ars Electronica serenity when it comes to thinking about the impact of NFTs on digital art; it has witnessed and survived so many changes and trends. Ars Electronica is funded by the City of Linz, the Province of Upper Austria and the Republic of Austria, with support from world-renowned academic institutions and a very small number of corporate sponsors.
Hannah and Lea Neckel promote their Beyond the Waterfall, Linz, 2023 instagram.com/cybervoid69
Highlight of the exhibition
Hannah & Lea Neckel: Beyond the Waterfall Lost in the Stream of Consciousness
Francisco Carolinum, Linz, Austria
March 29—May 21, 2023
Digital art beyond borders…
There are, of course, other important digital art cities that are not mentioned in this article. Notably, this article makes no mention of Asian cities while unceremoniously lumping all of Europe together in a single paragraph. And then there are the goats, the Swiss countryside, the non-cities, the places where digital art is located for other reasons, personal reasons. The world of digital art may be porous, but our lives are often congested with visas and personal preferences.
Does digital art really have to be anywhere? Not technically, no. But where it is created, exhibited, and funded, it has an indelible impact on how the work is done, by whom, and how we come to experience it. No funding structure is without complexity and it is worth celebrating the diversity of motivations and models that enables the overall quality we know.
