BREWING SOCIAL AND CULTURAL INNOVATION

Reflecting upon my personal history with media arts since the early nineties, I often talk about a specific kind of interdisciplinarity that I have enjoyed. Media arts move at dynamic cross-roads, where different art forms such as performing arts, visual arts and photography intersect with engineering, various strands of research and new media technologies. The latter makes media art a slippery road, as recently new technologies seem to age quickly and intermingling with different art forms also signifies becoming in some ways part of their main streams. So the electronic art in the late 1990s, computer art in the 1960s or video art in the 1970s may differ quite a bit from the software art or new media art today.

Participating in the Digitaal Platform, IAK-IBK visitors program and attending the Oknopublic03 workshop and Luminous Green by fo.AM, I seem to have enjoyed an extraordinary and delightful dose of the Belgian media arts scene. I will offer some reflections which due to the briefness of my visits can only be partial. During the visitors program I had the opportunity to function as keynote speaker at the ARTEFACTsymposium (STUK) and also to discuss e-culture policy during a meeting with the Department CJSM, Ministry of Culture. Next to that, Dirk De Wit had set up an intensive program of visits which resulted into two returning trips within 2,5 months.

The Belgian media art scene that I have experienced represents a strong mix of different approaches ranging from sound and radio art to software art, installation and public art, wearables, games, and also politically and socially oriented urban initiatives. I am not keen to write about "Finnish media art" as national frameworks only partially reflect the way in which people work. But since we are nationally funded and live local urban realities, it makes sense to reflect upon local cultural phenomena, even national ones, as long as they are not seen from a nationalistic or "constructing a nation" perspective. Belgian media arts seem heterogeneous, intelligent, vibrant and somehow at a turning point, where organizations need to grow and individuals are likely to be increasingly recognized internationally.

Belgian media arts scene benefits from its recent age of bloom. Though some were founded in the 90s, it is only since 2000 that organizations and smaller collectives have become more pronounced and visible. This relative recentness provides momentum and a possibility to make important next steps, to offer sustainable growth for both .orgs as well as for individual artists and researchers.

Quite a curious advantage for the Belgian media arts scene lies in the geographical proximity to the Netherlands, a country that can easily be said to have the most progressive e-culture and media arts policy, and respectively, a flourishing scene run by different types of organizations. Like the Virtual Platform in Netherlands, its "cousin" in Belgium has played an important role as a stepping motor to ignite policy discussion and networking within the national scene. However, mostly due to limited resources for mobility, Belgian media arts are only beginning to be visible internationally. The Dutch media arts scene is much more known through its organizations, theorists, event brands, projects, and festivals than through its individual artists.

The Dutch media arts used to talk about the "Polder model". Everyone knows the story about the dam breaking, and how joined efforts helped to save the flat lands from a catastrophe. In the media arts scene the Polder model has meant symbiotic relationships between organizations, and pushing for common goals in the field of policy. This strategy worked for the Netherlands, and it seems that it may work for Belgium as well. At the ministry of culture, there is a tendency to understand media and arts as a part of e-culture, where cultural and social innovation emerging from this creative field has meaning and impact on a wider scale. There are many practitioners who develop software, social networks, and push disciplines to produce new knowledge and experiences. One should always be careful not to see media art merely as contemporary art, more often, its meaning comes from its transdisciplinary merging features.

Another difference with the Netherlands is of course the striking division of Belgium into a Flemish and a French speaking part. Even though on a practical level both parties mingle, in the area of policy and funding it is the Flemish side that is blooming, and it seems that the French speaking media arts scene suffers much more from a lack of funding. In Finland, we have a six percent Swedish speaking minority. This has resulted into a bilingual national administration as well as into several cultural funds directed at the preservation of the minority culture identifying itself as Swedish-Finnish. I am not saying that the situation is ideal in Finland, but when compared, in Belgium one sees rather cultural division than constructive difference. An outsider sees the waste of opportunity. Cultural difference can be a major engine for constructive change.

On the one hand Belgian media art is presented by contemporary art organizations like STUK, with an interesting profile not only for media art but also for electronic music. On the other hand, media collectives and laboratories (I know many detest this title) like OKNO, CONSTANT, and FOAM workshop, develop, network and present new concepts and work. Many of the organizations are situated in Brussels, but a definite richness of Belgian culture is that there are also culturally active locales in different parts of the country. CARGO, for example in Oostende, seems to take good first steps in developing both a local media artist and an audience base.

I was also delighted to see an intermingling of initiatives such as Citymine(d) and Réseau Citoyen, one a socially interventionist urban organization, the other a techy project with social imagination. Or the work by CONSTANT, as they network local women to build Linux workstations. If new technologies as such by definition lack social and cultural imagination, it is the task of the media arts, or the creative technology developers (call them hackers if you like) to take that agency, to generate social and cultural innovation. That mesh-up network is well in place in Belgium, ready for next steps.

Tapio Mäkelä

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