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We all looked at that site and this knowledge shows
Interview with Steve Dietz
Domenico Quaranta. What curatorial methods did you follow in collecting and archieving ada’web?
Steve Dietz. Opportunity (ada'web was being discontinued by its corporate owner) met long range strategy (had decided to start a "digital arts study collection" based on our commissioning program) via networking (had done a "studio visit" with Benjamin Weil and crew a while earlier, so we were familiar with each other).
D.Q. Some of the links from ada’web to other sites now take us to the funeral inscription of all dead sites: 'Error 404'. How did you deal with the question of the inevitable loss of the context around ada’web?
S.D. Primarily through acceptance and through commissioning "The Unreliable Archivist" as an artist-generated project about archiving ada'web. I do wish we had captured at least first page screen shots of the now 404 pages.
D.Q. .... Can we record a 1996 art project without recording its 1996 environment?
S.D. Yes, technically, although it's clearly not the same. May be able to use Wayback machine or other archives in the future to recreate the past.
D.Q. One of the worst consequences of this loss is the current online inaccessibility of Weiner's 'Homeport', one of the most interesting projects of the 'digital foundry'. What about that?
S.D. I agree completely. It is a project that would be worthwhile to "restore" in the same way that darkened paintings or other degraded media have been as a special project.
D.Q. What’s the difference between curating a dotcom like ada’web and a museum website?
S.D. The line between curating work for sale and not selling work that is curated is almost a taboo. At the same time, the relationship — or formal lack thereof — is constantly manipulated. If curating a dotcom site is based on sales, I would say that it is different than curating for a museum because the vested interests are potentially different than the goals. For example, search engines that return results based on who has “bought” the search term makes me suspicious whether the results really are the best ones.
However, I think that curating for a for-profit institution (a dot com) vs curating for a not-for-profit insitution (a museum) are not necessarily that different. Indeed, both Walker Art Center and America Online gave up their web art programs precisely because of monetary pressures.
D.Q. Can you tell me your opinion about the rule of ada’web in the history of net art?
S.D. Seminal.
D.Q. Why? Do you think current net art owes something to that experience?
S.D. Precisely because it was such an experience in a way that few other sites at the time attempted and which few other sites since have achieved. We all looked at that site and this knowledge shows.
D.Q. Can we find in ada’web a prominent work of art, something that had an enduring influence on later projects, or do you prefer to look at ada as a whole?
S.D. In the end, I believe ada'web is greater than the sum of its parts. At the time, Jenny Holzer's Truisms was a kind of breakthrough as were many of the projects, but it is the overall site that has the greatest resonance and importance to my mind.
D.Q. Do you think there’s a place for 'another' ada’web today? How much the net art field has changed from 1995?
S.D. Yes! I think it is critical that the field develop a rich, heterogeneous environment, where no single approach is dominant or _the_ way to go. Even at the time ada'web was operating, Stadium, artnetweb, internationale stadt, the thing all made a rich context.
D.Q. What's your idea about ada’web as an 'entrepreneurial venture' (Scott), 'a new approach to the economy of the arts' (Weil)? After four years from its loss of funding, was it a success or a failure?
S.D. ada'web is an unquestionable success, but I think that many ideas about how to go about economic self-sufficiency have gone by the wayside, and this was not the genius of ada'web, so to speak.
D.Q. I think that projects like Simon's Alterstats (supported by ada) and The Web Stalker corroborate Weil's idea that net art can be useful for corporations and software developers. What do you think about this conception of net art as a 'creative research'?
S.D. I'm skeptical that art and corporate research can benefit each other in a very direct way. Especially over the long term. Too many trade offs. But I'm a fanatical believer that each venue can learn from the other – the relationship just needs to be structured differently than "creative research," I think.
D.Q. Would you like to change something today in the way you archived ada’web in 1998?
S.D. I would like to be more rigorous in recording meta data about the exact state of ada'web. I would like to have done more "variable media" interviews with more of the participants. I would like to have captured more fully more of the context of ada'web.
D.Q. What do you think about the Variable Media Initiative? Do you find any mistake in this kind of approach?
S.D. I view the Variable Media Initiative as a valuable tool, not a complete solution—which is how I think its proponents view it. There are, presumably, many mistakes to be found in the specifics of VMI, but that is part of its beauty that it is flexible and not fixed and open to change. I do think that the issue of artist wishes vs cultural needs are unresolved by VMI.
D.Q. In a way, you archived ada’web two times: collecting it in Gallery 9 and commissioning The Unreliable Archivist. What’s the best way? How much that second archivist is ‘unreliable’, and how much the first?
S.D. I think the best way was, of course, both. Unreliable Archivist was not intended as a literal archive but as a parable of archiving, which I think remains relevant but not a reason not to archive.
D.Q. Introducing The Unreliable Archivist, you say: “No matter how intelligent archiving agents are in 2020, they will be poor substitutes if they can't represent an individual point of view”. What’s the role of subjectivity in your curatorial work?
S.D. I don’t know what the root is and generally, I am not convinced by notions of origin.
D.Q. Talking about museums on the web. For different reasons, you left the Walker (or the Walker left you), and Ippolito & Weil changed from a full-time to a part-time job. Do you think American museums are losing their previous (and pioneering) interest in net art?
S.D. It’s hard to say with such a small sample. At the same time, the Whitney is supporting Artport, Dia is continuing to do stellar commissions, the New Museum is joining a strategic alliance with Rhizome… Perhaps there will be a second wave of interest by mainstream museums, and hopefully it will be more nuanced and better integrated than the first wave.
D.Q. If American museums seem to lose interest in net art, European museums, with few exceptions, don’t find it interesting at all. What’s net art without museums? And what museums without net art?
S.D. I have always contended that net art doesn’t need museums. I still believe this. And institutions that purport to present the “art of our times” that don’t figure out ways to actually do this with net art will become history museums — with lacunae — all the more quickly.
Steve Dietz è curatore indipendente e critico. Attualmente è “visiting teacher/artist” al Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota). La sua esperienza di curatore del “New Media Initiatives Department” del Walker Art Center di Minneapolis, da lui fondato nel 1996, si è conclusa improvvisamente nel maggio 2003, quando la direttrice del museo Kathy Halbreich ne ha annunciato il licenziamento, con la conseguente interruzione del programma del dipartimento. Halbreich si è impegnata a mantenere online la “gallery 9”, a tutt’oggi uno dei più avanzati programmi di commissione e archiviazione di progetti in rete, ma la sua attività verrà congelata fino a nuovo ordine.
Nel periodo di attività al Walker, Dietz è stato anche co-fondatore (con il Minneapolis Institute of Arts) del sito ArtsConnected, un programma di condivisione delle risorse informative dei due musei, e (con la McKnight Foundation) della comunità online mnartists.org. Fra le mostre da lui curate, ricordiamo Beyond Interface: net art and Art on the Net (Museum and the Web, 1998), Cybermuseology (Museo de Monterrey, 1999) e, per il Walker, Shock of the View: Artists, Audiences, and Museums in the Digital Age (1999), Art Entertainment Network (2000), Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace (2001-02) e Translocations (2003), una sezione della grande mostra How Latitudes Become Forms.
Nel 1998 ha curato l’archiviazione di ada’web, ed ha commissionato alla triade di artisti Janet Cohen/Keith Frank/Jon Ippolito il progetto The Unreliable Archivist, che propone una archiviazione alternativa di ada’web servendosi di criteri assolutamente aleatori.
Questa intervista è stata tenuta tra aprile e giugno 2002, rivista e ampliata da Dietz in data 23 settembre 2003.
Open Letter to Kathy Halbreich (con la sua risposta e quella di Dietz)