New media: The medium or the message?

Paul F. Agusta, Contributor, Jakarta

An old question is raising its inquisitive head at a new exhibition in the heart of this ancient city of Jakarta. The CP Open Biennale now on at the National Gallery on Jl. Merdeka Timur through Oct. 3 features 200 works of art in a wide variety of media by 126 artists from Indonesia and abroad.

Indonesia's first ever international contemporary art biennale offers a look at not only works of art done in the more traditional formats of painting and sculpture, but also features a number of installation pieces and works done in what is being called the New Media.

What is the New Media? Photography and cinematography/videography are wearing this new hat and begging old questions in a thought-provoking manner. Although photography and cinematography have been around for over a century and video has been with us for decades, only in the last decade or so has it been able to gain some validity as a vehicle for artistic experimentation within the realm of visual arts.

In the CP Open Biennale 2003 a handful of artists are experimenting with ideas about pushing technology based media to creative extremes in the tradition of Andy Warhol or even Jean Cocteau.

The works of the artists delving into the potential of the New Media, in particular videography, seem hard-pressed to avoid the old and nagging question as to which should take center stage in artistic presentation, the medium or the message?

The work being shown by Italian artist Filippo Sciascia is a case in point. Series of Kadek (Series of a Woman), consisting of three oil paintings hung side by side next to a television monitor set into the display panel, utilizes video footage of the woman featured in the paintings in an attempt to comment on the assumptions underlining stereotyping in relation to determining individual identity.

Apparently succumbing to the ubiquitous temptation to play with all the visual toys provided by digital video technology, Sciascia lets the message slip away into the morass of visual potentiality. The video piece opens with an undistorted close-up of the woman into which the artist slowly introduces minor distortive effects such as pixelization and blurring, as well as playing around with the perception of focus to create an impression of double-vision.

The artist then ups the dosage of technical tricks to a point where the viewer's attention shifts from the subject to the intriguing mechanizations of the technology.

On the opposite spectrum of this question of style and substance is the piece by Herman Chong and Isabelle Carnavo titled The End of Traveling (Trip to Asiatown and Back), which is a critical commentary on the impact of globalization on contemporary art in Asia in relation to the changes in the societies and cultures existing here.

This piece is a video documentary on this very serious subject, combined with snippets of footage of art happenings and short-short films. By its very nature, a documentary must put the message before any stylistic aspirations that the director, or in this case, directors may have. This reality, coupled with the relatively extensive length of the overall presentation, begs the additional question of whether a work in this format can actually fit into the definition of New Media.

Falling into a comfortable middle ground between these two poles are works by Gabriele Stellbaum, Krisna Murti and Arahmaiani. The work by German artist Stellbaum titled Make My Day is a fascinating and effective examination on the impact of violence on the human psyche. Throughout the piece, the artist consistently employs the camera as a pair of neutral eyes witnessing a human response to a disturbing occurrence. She counters this somewhat distant, subjective view with the effective use of audio exaggerations, sound effects and suspenseful music to achieve an inescapable tension which brings home the intended message.

In his work titled Empty Time, Krisna Murti, an Indonesian artist, presents in slow motion actual audio/video footage of nine dancers performing a ritual dance in front of a king shown on a framed piece of glass through an LCD projector. Although the complexity of the technology used to present this piece brings with it the risk of obscuring the message, the artist never seems to lose sight of the message he wants to convey.

Arahmaiani, an influential Indonesian artist who has been creating art in a variety of media since the early 1980s, presents a highly provocative work titled Human Love. This video piece shows in turn two submerged faces. On the foreheads of the faces are the words "human" and "love" respectively. As the footage progresses, these words are washed away. The message that love is a difficult thing, something that requires struggle to maintain yet will fade away anyway, is clearly conveyed.

The hopeful spirit of the music that accompanies this piece contrasts beautifully with the nihilistic imagery. Given that the visual situation in the piece was highly contrived for the sake of conveying a concept through a complicated technical medium, the artist should be commended for resisting the temptation to overuse the new toys provided by technology. She successfully balances the medium and the message, a very difficult feat for any artist working in either the traditional media or the new media.