Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 15:02:54 EDT
Subject: Is there an avant-garde.


This argument about whether or not there is an avant-garde or not has been
going on since at least the sixties and it is really getting us nowhere.  If
we are to view an avant-garde as those who are leading the way, or an advance
attack force, then there must be such an artistic movement arising from time-
to-time.  otherwise we would see the same art being produced over and over.

I believe that one of the easiest ways to find evidence of an avant-garde that
has not been co-opted by the machine or institutionalized (at least not yet)
is to look to new artistic forms.  Where are the new mediums and how are they
being used?  What artistic forms are rejected by the academies (at least most
of the time--excluding a few bold critics).  My expertise lies in the field of
literature and i have been exploring the ways that artists are exploring the
possibilities of interactive hypertexts and using web-sites to expand their
artistic possibilities.  Many of the writers that i have been talking to and
studying are fighting to get rid of the long chain of middle-persons.  As the
writer Mark Amerika has diagrammed it: 

writer--agent--publisher--distributor--bookstore--reader

and are trying to change the dynamics of the writer/reader relationship to:

      Writer<<>>Reader

this is especially possible in the usage of interactive hypertexts where the
reader becomes an active participant in the creation process.  If you would
like to know more about this i would suggest checking  out Mark Amerika's Alt-
X website--where various writers and multimedia artists discuss the
possibilities of these new mediums.

I would be very interested in what the members of this list think of these
possibilities and feel free to tell me I'm nuts if that's what you think.

Thivai


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