Re-Writing the History of Media Art: From Personal Cinema to Artistic Collaboration

Abstract

The author reinterprets the artistic phenomena that composed historical avant-garde art. His method of interpretation is an intertextual strategy that approaches the historical artifacts through recent phenomena. The first case study is of structural film; its most important attributes appear to be artistic strategies questioning the structural/material integrity, durability and permanence of the film work. The second case study is of the avant-garde strategy of collective work, reinterpreted through the open-source work and interactive art of today. The author identifies three steps in the development of the 20th-century concept of joint creative work: avant-garde general strategies of artistic collaboration; avant-garde film works oriented toward creative collectivism; and collaborative artistic practices that manifest themselves in non-hierarchical strategies of contemporary interactive art.