Feb 1, 2015
Encounters with the Material: Krzysztof Wodiczko and site-specific media art
Forthcoming in Discourse.
This article examines media practices that open encounters with the material as a critical intervention into the virtual condition. It addresses Krzysztof Wodiczko’s site-specific large-scale image projections as an example of this type of media practice. Wodiczko’s work has been characterized as “interrogative,” that is, critical of social and political problems associated with site. Building upon discussions of site specificity in art, this article contends that his projections are an interrogative address of materiality and ends with general conclusions about the potential for media practices, like Wodiczko’s, to rupture the virtual.