Vašulka Mediascape

“The role of the gallery has come under revision in my mind”

“At least one aspect of thinking about the new space and the role of the gallery has come under revision in my mind. It is becoming clear that the real world has become hostile to any notion of utopian experimentation. The dream of the moderns, to abolish the shrines of art and finally art itself, has moved closer to an absurd reality, though for an entirely different set of reasons. One may say the current state far exceeds the dangers of the bourgeois envisioned by the moderns. But even now, when I contemplate my allegiance with the gallery, am I able to utter my sincere apology? My social code is hopelessly arrested, without evolution or the constant vigor of revisions and contemplation. Somehow I have trusted the dynamics of time, and have believed in the adventure of technology as an automatic and purifying process in itself.”

Woody Vašulka, “Notes on Installations: From Printed Matter to Noncentric Space,” in Machine Media, Robert Riley & Marita Sturken, curators, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (1996); link: https://www.vasulka.org/Catalogues/PDFs/Cat_MachineMedia.pdf.