1999

Terminals

Terminals is labor of love that took an agonizingly long time to manifest. The process of creating this book/CD-ROM/Web piece was as painful, difficult and unsettling as it is when watching someone die. Many deadlines were set and many deadlines were missed. Yet when it was ready for completion, closure came quite painlessly and swiftly. Like death itself, it took a long time to come to terms with it, but once we allowed it to present itself, we were shown how mysterious life is and how important it is to recognize death. We began working on the project in 1994 when Liz Brown, the curator of the University Art Museum at UCSB, and I were invited by a group of scholars who were organizing a theory conference to propose an art show as a complementary event.1 Almost immediately I concluded that the reference to technology should not be just metaphorical but should take on an active form, and started conceptualizing how the Web could be used in connection to museum spaces. This, I felt, would address yet another death card presenting itself to the art world-the shifting relationship of artists working with digital media to the established hierarchy and privilege of physical realms. Death, meaning change, not the end. A change I was welcoming and gladly participated in ushering in.