A Year in Review with Joanne McNeil
| April 21, 2016 | |
| Digital & Media Art |
As the Foundation gets ready to announce the recipients of the second year of the Arts Writing Awards in Digital Art, we caught up with 2015 Arts Writing Award winner Joanne McNeil to find out how the award has impacted her career and work over the past year. McNeil, a New York-based writer, received the award for an emerging arts writer.
MCNEIL: By its nature, digital art is always emerging, at least in some elements, in one form or another. But it has history too, which is why the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation is a welcome new presence in the art world. By supporting critical writing, the Thoma Foundation is expanding the discourse, recognizing the historical context, and ensuring that the tremendous work happening in digital art is remembered for years to come.
As the inaugural winner of the Arts Writing Award to an emerging writer in digital art, the award provided me with an opportunity to write about and research the work that I love. This recognition and honor opened up doors to many new opportunities over the past year. I lectured at Artists Space with Metahaven and Melanie Gilligan and traveled to Dortmund to speak on a panel about art and affective computing with Cecile B. Evans and Pinar Yoldas at Hartware MedienKunstVerein. I also moderated a panel “Adorn and Subvert: A Discussion on Wearable Resistance,” hosted by Eyebeam, with the artists Lisa Kori Chung, Iltimas Doha, and Adam Harvey.
I spoke with Olia Lialina at an event at Espace Louis Vuitton in Munich and wrote an essay for the catalog to the House of Electronic Arts, Basel exhibition of her work marking the 20th anniversary of her influential net art piece “My Boyfriend Came Back From The War.” Another essay of mine is included in “Jon Rafman: Nine Eyes,” recently published by New Documents. Also with Eyebeam, and in collaboration with Dan Phiffer, I have been writing course materials and organizing workshops that teach students about internet infrastructure in a project we launched called OurNet. Meanwhile, I have been working on a book about internet culture.
The Thoma prize provided me with resources to devote time to my research. This has been an exciting year for me.
The winners of the 2016 Arts Writing Awards in Digital Art will be announced on May 3.