CHArt Eighteenth Annual Conference

Michael Hammel, University of Aarhus, Denmark,
Welcome to the Pleasure Dome! or Will there be art in the Global Village?

In the Network Society the concept of art faces considerable challenges. First, art in the Network Society is less about contemplation than about entertainment. Second, the definition of art is challenged by the cultural diversity transmitted across the networks. A look at Web-based artworks reveals that contemporary art is engaging its viewer in many different ways, and has become an ingredient in the entertainment culture of today. In many ways, the history of entertainment is the cultural history of our society. Art has always been a part of the culture of entertainment. So, when art is about pleasure, the pleasure conveyed by contemporary art is not about viewing, but about being and acting within an artistic culture. In the Network Society the question of art very clearly is a question of culture. The art historian must face the fact that art, as a bourgeois cultural concept, limits the culture of art to a very narrow context that is not natural in any way, and only shared by a few percent of the citizens of the world. Concepts of ethnographic artefacts apply to all cultural products, and not only to the foreign ones.

In order to follow developments in the society the art historian must face these challenges, or stick to the classical history of art. What I argue is that in order to understand the cultural diversity in the Network Society, it is necessary to develop a radically enhanced understanding of visual culture, with a deeper sensitivity towards cultural mechanisms and cultural differences.

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