Panel

This panel explores how communications and new media are increasingly employed in the arts to engage, connect, and empower global audiences in times of crisis.

As ruptures from world crises deepen, more people look to alternative models for exchange and mediation. Technological means have recently surfaced in the arts that successfully bridge social, cultural, and political differences. Different disciplines come into play, in questioning, challenging, and experimenting with social and political change. How do artists, curators, and theorists use telecommunications technology proactively? How do peer-to-peer networks, on-line social spaces, and blogs lead to participation and empowerment? How are artists using electronic systems to reposition the notion of dialogue and to define dialogue as mediation that counters or disrupts stereotypes and dangerous ideologies?.

The panel features artists, theorists, writers, thinkers, and critics from different backgrounds, and is moderated by artist Randall Packer.

Moderator 
Randall Packer, artist, Assistant Professor, Department of Art, American University, Washington D.C., Secretary-at-Large, U.S. Department of Art & Technology

Participants
Steve Dietz, curator and Director, Zero-One, San Jose, CA
Carin Kuoni, curator and Director, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School
Drazen Pantic, internet activist, Co-Director, Location One, New York
Jon Winet, artist and Professor, University of Iowa

Presented on occasion of the College Art Association’s 95th Annual Conference, and co-sponsored by the New Media Caucus of CAA