Methods of Art – Archive of Artists Interviews

At this point, you know I am being described as a net artist and a lot of my work is created
specifically for online consumption but I also have started my career with a variety of media. I have
been exhibiting for years. So, the media art kind of label is pretty much recent. Really only in the last
ten years. So yes, I make things (laughing). I mean, every kind of label that artists can have imposed
upon them have a best-before date. Like, you know in a few years everyone who is described as a
net artist would be extremely embarrassed about it. That’s just natural (laughing) but I don’t really
worry about the label. If anyone is referring to me as a post internet artist or what ever. It doesn’t
matter. So authorship, that’s an odd thing and also becomes even more unclear when we are talking
about Ways of Something. Which is a curatorial project, and yet is being heavily identified with me
and I think that’s more because when it’s all said and done it’s gonna be 114 artists involved. And so
for easy identification it like, becomes me but, I don’t like the label of the ‚artist as CEO‘ or ‚artist as
outsourcer‘. The source, the images how they chose to make their 60 seconds was totally up to
them as artists. It’s their art. And because it’s THEIR art the whole work, even though it’s identified
with me, really belongs to 114 artists. So it is like respecting their decision as an artist. That it was
NOT my place to say: well, this doesn’t fit with the next piece. I am wrangling them (laughing). It’s
true! It can be very, very tricky but it’s worth it for the work. What’s unique in ways of something, is
that it was an opportunity for artists to look at art history and try to negotiate the art history with their
own practices. Especially episode one because I think that dealt the most straight forwardly with art
history and the artists that were involved with that were absolutely DELIGHTED to be dealing with art
history. Because that’s not something that gets handled much in net art! Most artists are kind of… if
there is aesthetic choices, they’re generally somewhere around New York modernism in terms of
graphic style or else, in all fairness a lot of net artists who are dealing with code are thinking about
contemporary issues of surveillance and control and what it means to be a digital user. Not just a
digital artist.

Lorna Mills / Artist

Bio

*Canadian artist, who has actively exhibited her work in both solo and group exhibitions since the early 1990’s, both in Canada and Internationally. Her practice has included obsessive Ilfochrome printing, obsessive painting, obsessive super 8 film & video, and obsessive on-line animated GIFs incorporated into restrained off-line installation work. Recent exhibitions include “Abrupt Diplomat” at the Marshal McLuhan Salon for Transmediale, “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” at Transfer Gallery, Brooklyn NY and “DKRM” at DAM Gallery, Berlin. Mills has also co-curated monthly group GIF projections, with Rea McNamara, for the “Sheroes” performance series in Toronto, a group GIF projection event “When Analog Was Periodical” in Berlin with Anthony Antonellis, and a four person GIF installation, “:::Zip The Bright:::” at Trinity Square Video in Toronto, with Sara Ludy, Nicolas Sassoon and Rick Silva. Lorna Mills‘ most recent curation project, “Ways of Something” is a collaborative remake of the 1972 John Berger documentary “Ways of Seeing” episodes one through four, featuring 113 networked artists.

For her general online appearance Lorna Mills chooses to display her work in place of her human image.

www.digitalmediatree.com

Transcript

PDF

Credits

The interview was conducted on January 31 2015 at McLuhan Salon, Embassy of Canada, during transmediale in Berlin.

Interviewed by: Konstanze Schütze

Filmed and recorded by: Paul Barsch

Edited by: Paul Barsch

Transcript by: Lea Hoßbach, Ella Tetrault

Produced by: University of Cologne (Cologne), Institut für Kunst&Kunsttheorie