But I would like even more to discuss something else, and that is the future of an art which many, too quickly I think, are already declaring finished, carried away by Internet and the Web. Let us imagine that video art in the future, only exists "on the network" : it would be as if the cinema were condemned to exist only on TV

A change of medium, of transmission, acceptance requirements, which would consequently change the very nature of the work. In the network all becomes information : useful, necessary, sometimes very cleverly presented, but information all the same. With television all becomes recreation and distraction. In both cases, and at least for the moment, the screen has remained small, located in the middle of other objects, domestic.

I have been looking with great interest at the CD-Rom's sent by "Heure Exquise !" : they represent various typologies : the essay, interactive games, an author's monograph, a story told in images. A new and stimulating future is openning up, which should tickle our curiosity and provide us, on a light support, with an extraordinary quantity of data. But when looking at them and "leafing through them", my finger on the mouse, I felt more in the position of someone who is updating and obtaining documents and getting information. And I never sank into realms of pleasure, with the emotions of full participation as happens when in a comfortable room in the dark, perhaps together with others sharing the pleasure of a new discovery... Interactivity is not only a question of pressing keys, it is a far more subtle and enigmatic situation of dialogue... In conclusion, art in the network becomes an articulation of the network, it is converted into information. And the spectator puts himself in the situation of a middleman faced with this information, he activates a "functional" device faced with games or views. Is this not so ? Or is it simply a new phase of exploration which will lead to new and varied ways of presentation and use ? I am afflicted by the "archaeological" limits, and is it not simply that I am unable to fully understand these new ways while preferring other more difficult paths which provide amazement and the unexpected ? It is also on all this that I would like to begin some reflexion, leading to some conclusions : where and how can it be possible to see works of video creation ? How can we work towards new spaces - physical and mental - (for production, viewing, and theoretical reflexion) ?

I return to consult my Petit Robert dictionnary; "Exquis": extraordinary, refined, rare, delicious, tasty, soft, ravishing. I can still see that banner in the wind, the exclamation mark, above that crowd, so many years ago. I think about that crowd, and all those slogans. I do not know how, nor why, but that banner (and not only that one...) still seems so essential to me in the midst of all this progressive degradation, this vulgarity and these lies from the media in the obliteration of history, the precipitated collapse of the totalitarianism of the market (of some elements to the detriment of the majority, as everyone knows). There is so much work to do, in dramatic urgency, and how can it be done without the extraordinary visions of an art of all times ?

At the beginning of this month of December 99, TV and newspapers have been afflicting us with the stupid question "what would you like to take with you into the new century ?", while outside in the streets already astutely decked out for Christmas festivities, the crowd simply seems to be in a hurry to carry home the parcels they have bought. I feel like saying: lucidity, pessimism, and "an Heure Exquise". If it is possible to have a different view (a thought) on the world, then perhaps a different world is also possible...

And let us not forget the exclamation mark (nor the question mark).

Sandra Lischi, Pisa, December 1999, (Traduit de l'italien par Dominique Smersu et Sandra Lischi)

Biography

Do not forget the exclamation mark ! A few words on Catalogue 2000

Think video

Surrealism, garden, work, madness...

Archaeology and neology of the video

A Work of art and the network