Conversation Series: Art’s New Natures

Leino, O. T., Norberg, B., Colosi, N., Björk, Æ., Stenslie, S., & Ag, T. R. (2021). Conversation Series: Art’s New Natures. Contemporary Art Stavanger (CAS) Journal.

Olli Leino

There is no doubt that contemporary art has and is changing in relation to the digital sphere, and that the technological development of recent decades has greatly influenced art’s production, distribution, interfaces and forms. Curator and scholar Tanya Ravn Ag has focused her research on the study of the ways in which the meanings, places and roles of art change with contemporary technological culture. In 2019 she published 'Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art' based on artist interviews and perspectives from curators and theorists. She has continued this work since the book's publication, creating a series of four conversations with artists, scholars and curators grouped around specific themes focused on art's new virtual and augmented environments, art's new ways of making with digital materiality, art's new representations, and art's new natures when acting in a world undergoing lockdown and social distancing. The below interview, titled Art’s New Natures, is the fourth and final conversation in the series and, as the title suggests, is a exploration of the nature(s) of art – how they emerge in response to contemporary modes of existence, adaption, difference, and meaning-making. The conversation includes perspectives from Björn Norberg, Nina Colosi, Æsa Björk, Stahl Stenslie and Olli Tapio Leino.