"Networked Art" Participants

ABSTRACT
POLITICS AND DYNAMICS OF WEB ART IN INDIA IN THE POST 90S The central concern of my paper is to explore the politics and dynamics of web art in its specific context of evolution, production, circulation, consumption in India. Despite the unprecedented proliferation of new media and internet in India in the post 90s, there are only a handful of artists who have ventured into the domain of web art through interactive interface for a new aesthetics for a wider public. Hence, it will be pertinent to investigate this field by asking: what were the different socio-historical, ideological and institutional dynamics which propelled these artists to embark upon the medium of web art in India? What kind of technological and linguistic discourses had emerged by negotiating the idea of aesthetic, activism, objecthood and ephemerality of the web art? How do the Indian art world, gallery and other communities relate to this practice and economy of this art form? The other crucial focus will be to understand the interrelationship of aesthetics of web art and the participation and reception of the public. How to perceive the aesthetic of a short durational commission based web art project which no more exists in the cyberspace? What are the different strategies adopted by these artists to reach out to the new on-line and off-line communities across cultures and interest beyond the art milieu? To what extent digital literacy is important in compressibility of this language? And what are the various challenges and constraints towards the proliferation of this art form in India? Key Words: Politics, web art, aesthetics, activism, objecthood, ephemerality, cyber-ethnography, online and off-line community, participation, reception, digital literacy RAJASHREE BISWAL Ph. D. Research Scholar (Visual Studies) School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi-67, India [email protected], [email protected], mob: 09899289066

BIO
Rajashree Biswal, a Ph. D. Research Scholar from the reputed School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and had completed her MVA (Art History and Aesthetics) from the well known institution of Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Vadodara in India. She has been widely involved in the field of contemporary Indian art since last ten years as a young and emerging art historian. She has participated and presented papers in various national and international conferences held in India. She has published her writings in art magazines and journals like Art and Deal, Art Etc, Flash Art International, Art Fair, Angaraga and many web based magazines and edited the much appreciated magazine of contemporary visual culture Art Fair, published from New Delhi-Bhubaneswar. She has curated a number of exhibitions like “Towards A New Viewership/Audience”, “Vortex” etc. addressing the question of viewership and audience of contemporary art in India. She received the Junior Fellowship from Forum on Contemporary Theory, Vadodara in 2006 and Doctoral Fellowship from Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi in 2011.