Inter / media /art

Nice weather - signcasting - intermedia model - media (village) museum - collecting the future

Curated by Miklós Peternák, Zsuzsa Megyesi The Intermedia Department of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Art has existed since 1990/91. This year marks the graduation of its first generation of students accepted in 1993/94. The concept "intermedia" may seem obscure and not exclusively for the layman. For this reason it seems appropriate to both present the department as a five-year art school that focuses on the various artistic applications of new media, as well as an attitude, whose ambition is to create a homogenous view of theory/practice, science, technology and art. The department´s purpose is to expand artistic education towards both mediums and methods that have appeared for the first time in this century (e.g. photo-kinetics, electronic arts, multimedia, installation, environment and action art, new communication theory, interdisciplinary forms, artistic borders). Besides raising an awareness about a functional shift within art, it aims at preparing artists for an active and creative presence in the cultural spheres of information society, and moreover to research and support a cognitive artistic attitude. Intermedia as concept is the exploration and researching of borders and the continuous definition and characterization of the new and the up-to-date. The present exhibition is the first comprehensive public show that allows each artist who has ever been involved with the department either as a student or a teacher the opportunity to present their work together. Although the almost fifty artists included in the exhibition have not necessarily exhibited their work together most of them are permanent figures of shows abroad as well as in Hungary. The exhibition also intends to be a brief report on intermedia´s history and thus any foreign artist or theoretician who has contributed to the department will also be included. The novelty of the exhibition comes from the fact that - devoid of any stylistic or medial prejudice - it presents young artists (who despite their age have already had several exhibitions) in a context which is simultaneously "past and present" and "formal and open" (as referential material I would like to recall two earlier smaller exhibitions, "Spectrum", Újlak Gallery and "Collecting the Future", Liget Gallery). Parallel with the exhibition a bilingual catalogue and a documentary CD-ROM will be published. http://www.intermedia.c3.hu