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Film still from Picnic in Space (1967) by Marshall McLuhan. Directed by Bruce Bacon.
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Messages on the Moderna Museet [sic]
Art today has entered a post-medium condition. Various media merge with each other and works of art are hardly ever pure. This is true of photography, painting and all other disciplines. The weekend 3-4 December, Moderna Museet will host the international symposium Media and its Messages, where today’s post-medium condition will be discussed. Speakers include Thierry de Duve, who will talk about the consequences of the fact that anything can be art, Gabriel Guerico, who
claims that it is Picasso, not his art, that is the message, and Douglas Coupland, speaking on how his world view has been inspired by Marshall McLuhan.
The symposium Media and its Messages, clarifies the relationship between painting and photography, and the legacy of Marshall McLuhan in art and society. Seven speakers have been invited to scrutinise how artistic media influence the contents of the message, and how the media theories and practices of contemporary information technology have developed since the 1960s.
In the 19th century, the position of painting was pitted against photography. This issue is given new urgency by Moderna Museet’s new presentation of its collection, Another Story, which focuses exclusively on photography, in juxtaposition with the exhibition of paintings by Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings. The conflict between photography and painting was the first fundamental crisis for the artistic system, and it was followed by countless others, throughout the
history of modernism. It is often claimed today, that the traditional media no longer exist in our contemporary digitalised visual world, where everything can be broken down into the same signals: sound, images, film.
More than 50 years ago, Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) coined the famous phrase “the medium is the message” and claimed that the world had evolved into a “global village”. His theories on the media are as controversial as they are famous, and form the obvious core of most contemporary attempts to formulate general theories about the media. A new reading of his work against the backdrop of recent developments sheds new light on current affairs and opens the door to new
exchanges between art and the digital media landscape. We are living today in Marshall McLuhan’s future. Perhaps society has even reached a post-medium condition?
Speakers:
Richard Cavell, Beatriz Colomina, Douglas Coupland, Thierry de Duve, Gabriele Guercio, Branden W. Joseph and Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer.
In connection with the symposium, the film Picnic in Space by Marshall McLuhan will be shown for the first time in Sweden. Directed by Bruce Bacon, 1967 (28 min).
Media and its Messages, 3-4 December, beginning at 11 am both days.
Admission free, no registration required. Please note: Limited seating. Venue: The Auditorium. Language: English.
Seminar schedule:
SCHEDULE
Speaker biographies:
BIOGRAPHIES
To book press seating and for further information, please contact:
pressavdelningen@modernamuseet.se
The symposium is co-organised with Södertörn University.
Extra:
Book release for Another Story. Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection, on 3 December at 4.30 pm.
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