The problem of exhibiting & archiving
Media Art

Media Art has traditionally been considered a difficult genre to exhibit. It presents a true challenge for curators, art galleries and museums. Because of the specific technical requirements of these media works, not all galleries and institutions can showcase them. They may lack or technical resources, budget or a theoretical base in their artistic programme to include this kind of projects. Most of the media art formats made today are not accessible to a wider audience and are utterly incompatible for buying or archiving. How can be a living bio-art sculpture achieved and preserved? How can a network art format be kept and transmitted to future audiences, since it only lives in the momentum of internet users interactions? How to keep these visual humanities alive in the memory of an archive?

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Besides, media artworks usually address socio-political topics that have to be shown in specific exhibition contexts. During the time between both worldwide wars the concept of media was articulated around the transmissions and communication media, the so-called “mass media”. While the notion of communication itself changed its sign towards information thanks to the mathematical theories of communication of the Cybernetics of Nobert Wiener or the Theory of Information of Shanon and Weaber, the new technologies gave media the chance to raise more social, economic and artistic protagonist with socio-political messages. Very often, these artworks acted as a platform for communication and interaction between the artists and the audience, rather than a closed, inaccessible work. Nowadays most of media artworks have inherited this conception, and they show not only proper aesthetics but social and political messages that are a reflection of nowadays postmodern social culture. Therefore, a cultural and humanistic context has to be considered to include these works in a suitably way inside an exhibition.