What is LA Freewaves, and
what do you do?
LA Freewaves is Southern California's preeminent advocate
for independent, experimental, noncommercial and under-represented
media. For fifteen years, we've presented the LA Freewaves
Festival of Film, Video and New Media, which brings the newest
of the new media arts from around the world to Los Angeles.
We are producing TV programs about the media arts and building
a large online archive, while extending to more international artists
and audiences. See www.freewaves.org and watch for FreeWaves on
TV.
In our image-saturated culture, media literacy is essential to
becoming an informed citizen. Additionally, by exposing all people
to the media arts, we can inspire them to actively participate
in their visual world. By giving the tools they need to understand
or even create their own works of art, we empower them to make
their voices valued.
But what are media arts, anyway?
Media arts include the work of artists who use communications technology – such
as video, film, the web, DVD, or CD-ROM. Media arts are constantly
changing, as artists seize and personalize new and commercial technologies.
The work in this year's LA Freewaves festival ranges from
animation and documentaries to installations and web sites.
Would media arts be considered “avant-garde”?
If so, is the work really accessible to the average person?
Even though this work is experimental, it's also familiar
to anyone who watches TV and surfs the web. As consumer technology
becomes more sophisticated, media arts have become increasingly
accessible to the public. For example, media artists increasingly
use the same tools as parents recording a first birthday party
or school pageant. The question How Can You Resist? has pretty
obvious political undertones.
How did you decide that would be
the theme for the 2004 LA Freewaves Festival?
I see this year's festival as a convergence of two remarkable
developments – neither of which I could have anticipated
a few years ago. First, the public's interest in the issues
surrounding media has increased exponentially. People are skeptical
about the images they see on the television news – are these
images real? Are we getting the whole story? These questions are
no longer the exclusive domain of conspiracy theorists. Regardless
of whether or not you agree with their message or their tactics,
the success of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Outfoxed is evidence that the
public is dissatisfied with sound bites.
At the same time, artists are turning their attention to politics.
Artists are like the canary in the mineshaft, and it is precisely
when free speech is imperiled that we have an obligation to speak
out. For a variety of reasons, commercial media outlets have failed
to address the critical issues of our time – whether it's
the Patriot Act, or weapons of mass destruction, or economic justice
in a global economy. We think the public is craving a more substantive
debate on these issues, and artists want to participate.
Are you concerned that all this might be a little heavy for a festival?
After observing celebrations throughout the world, the anthropologist
Victor Turner described festivals as life in the subjunctive. In
other words, festivals invite us to imagine another, better way
of living; they enable us to ask what if? So, if
you really think about it, a festival is the perfect setting to
challenge the status quo. This is still a celebration, after all...
because resistance is ultimately motivated by hope.
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