Re: <nettime> Armin Medosch (1962-2017)

[Rasa Smite <rasa@rixc.lv>]

> All of these projects, and many more that I cannot
> account for personally – and need your help to fill in – where
> transdisciplinary, collaborative and exploratory, often ahead of their
> times. This is, however, something that the art and the academic
> system rarely appreciates.

Thanks, Felix! I have a lot to say about Armin's projects “ahead of
their times”, as Armin for long time has worked with us - me and
Raitis, he was invaluable contributor to most of the largest RIXC's
projects. I know him from the 90s, we participated in one of the
conceptually most powerful 90s net.culture events - Art Servers
Unlimited (1998), co-organized by Armin. But more close collaboration
came later, when Armin, me and Raitis, together developed a large
scale curatorial project – WAVES – Electromagnetic Waves as Material
and Medium for Arts (2006), taking place in National Arts Museum in
Riga. Waves was not only challenging the ways how and which kind of
art has to be shown in museums, but it suggested new approach in
developing media art theory – namely, through curating practices. This
exhibition consisted of 40 artworks from all over the world, and was
also later shown in Dortmund (2008). http://rixc.lv/waves

In 2014, when Riga was European Cultural Capital, we again invited
Armin to co-curate an other large scale exhibition – FIELDS, which
now manifested new situation in arts - post-media conditions. We
selected works that were considered to be “contextual seedbeds for
social change,” arguing that “the changing role of art in society
is one where it does not just create a new aesthetics but gets
involved in patterns of social, scientific, and technological
transformations”. Fields (2014) exhibition also shaped strong artistic
and theoretical background for Renewable Futures, new travelling
art&science conference series, launched by RIXC.

http://rixc.org/fields/en/exhibition/3/ (concept by Armin & RIXC)
http://rixc.org/fields/en/exhibition/4/ (artists)

In-between WAVES and FIELDS, he also was contributing to RIXC’s
conferences, and he was co-editor of Acoustic Space, peer-reviewed
book & journal series, for editions: Waves (Vol.6, 2006), Spectropia
(Vol. 7, 2007), Art As Research (Vol.9, 2010), Networks and
Sustainability (Vol.10, 2010), Techno-Ecologies II (Vol. 12, 2014),
Open Fields (Vol. 15, 2016).

http://acousticspacejournal.com

Needless to say, that both these projects are ahead of its time.
Especially the Fields project was not approbate yet, time was too
short…

I met him recently, last November in a cafe, in Vienna, discussing our
forthcoming FIELDS / Renewable Futures volume, which will come out
soon, in April 2017... just this time without the last touch, last
improvements by Armin, which will be missing a lot, as Fields was the
concept which still needs a lot of time to be shaped... So the Fields
book will come out now in memoriam to you, Armin.

But particularly I will be missing our quite frequent, often hard
(that's what “critical culture” is about), but always in-depth,
fruitful and inspiring discussions with Armin. Or saying it in a more
simple words, we feel very sad, as we have lost our friend of RIXC.

Rasa and Raitis


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