The Blank Generation
Issue #40
Rhizome’s Lauren Cornell on curating the now
By Alysse Dalessandro
Published: June 1st, 2009 | 12:00pm
Many talented emerging artists never receive recognition, and if you happen to be a young artist working in the niche realm of Internet Art, getting noticed can be damn near impossible. Lauren Cornell, the 31-year-old Executive Director of Rhizome and Adjunct Curator at NYC’s New Museum, is working to change that.
VZ: What is Rhizome?
LC: We support artists working at the furthest reaches of technological experimentation as well as those responding to the broader aesthetic and political implications of new tools and media.
VZ: How would you define Internet Art?
LC: When Rhizome was founded in 1996, Net Art was understood to be art that was online or reliant on a network. Now, 13 years later, we classify it as work that is based on the Internet … work that is made for the Web; or work that that carries the logic and aesthetics of the Internet into other forms.
VZ: What is the challenge in working with new media?
LC: It is an emerging field so it is not widely understood. As [Executive] Director, my goal is always one of education: telling people about this art form, getting people excited about it, and making them understand that it’s only going to grow in importance.
VZ: The New Museum has a current exhibition called The Generational: Younger than Jesus that you worked on. Why do you think it’s important to showcase this new generation of artists?
LC: The [exhibit] was conceived to explore the notion of generations in art, and how belonging to the same age group can play out across culture, geography, and other variables. With 50 artists from all over the world, the show presents a complex picture of a generation with a multitude of ideas.
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