This panel invites curators from Vancouver and interna- tionally to share working practices around collecting con- temporary art, including media and new media art. The collections of museums, galleries, online art organisations and private individuals are increasingly broadening to in- clude more new media art.
New media art has both disrupted existing collecting sys- tems and offered now opportunities for rethinking who collects and how. Because new media art is sometimes non-material, process-based or involving audience partici- pation, how might these kind of practices be collected? What is actually collected (objects, beta software, instruc- tions?), where (online, offline, nomadic?) and how (com- missioned for collection, bought from art fairs, versioned from production labs?) Does new media art challenge, or become embedded in, the globalised nature of art markets?
Because new media is used as a means of documenting, archiving and distributing art, and because new media art might be interactive with its audiences, this highlights the new kinds of relationships that might occur between audi- ences as viewers, participants, co-producers, selectors, tag- gers or taxonomisers. Examples of current collecting prac- tice are given by all of the speakers.
