IMA Salon

IMA Salon refers to the tradition of French salons of the 17th and 18th centuries.

“The French salons of the 17th and 18th centuries rivalled with the academies for the attention of scholars. While, at first, the academies themselves still had the character of salons and combined social life with research, science and general education were separated later on… The grand salons of Paris are a unique example of cultural institutions exclusively organised by women. These private circles played a key role in restructuring the French elites as the nobility met the bourgeoisie in the salons.” [see Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science, 1989]

IMA Salon
resonance room 006

Transferred to today`s situation, IMA Salon is located in virtual space at ima.or.at. While wealthy ladies patronised young men in the salons of the 17th and 18th centuries, today we see our task in offering an interesting platform to as many women as possible but also to men who are ready to have a look at their own history from a slightly different perspective.

“When I use the terms male / female, I rather think of historical structures/constructs than of biological characteristics. All biological sexes are welcome and invited to contribute to making this resonance room resound.” [Elisabeth Schimana, 2005]

The Hosts and Hostesses
prepare topics, invite experts from the fields of science and the arts and take care of the physical and spiritual well-being of the participants.

The Moderators
chair and moderate the virtual discussions and are responsible for the material`s presentation.

IMA Salon is structured in two areas, one for experts and one for the general public. These two areas are chaired by different moderators.

The First Topic
Research on our ancestresses: How were women involved in the processes of arts and technology and what were their utopias? We open up the first timeframe from the turn of the century to World War II.

Why?
Many utopias date back to those times. Many developments that fall under media arts today had their origins then, many ideas remained utopias and were lost in the maelstrom of history – in part due to the political events – and can be re-discovered and re-assessed today.

“Complementing existing artistic techniques, the electrification of the arts lead to an increasing use of technology in the arts. The discovery of invisible media (X-rays, magnetic fields, etc.) by scientists has created a strangely mixed context of natural sciences and mysticism for the term medium. As a result, I believe that the time of electrification (which, after all, went hand in hand with scientific research on the ether and radiation and was paralleled by a more scientific orientation of society as well as related utopias) is one of the periods of history that are key to media arts.” [Seppo Gründler, 2005]

Difficulties
In most cases, it is already difficult and requires much efforts to investigate utopias developed by men. All the more difficult it is to find our ancestresses and their utopias. Therefore, we hope that the salon structure will result in maximum resonance – also from potential actors whose existence is still unknown to us.

Environments / Research Areas / Role Models
For example: Mary Ellen Bute
Mary Ellen Bute is said to be the first artist combining science and the arts. Her works are considered to be music for the eye. In 1993, Mary Ellen Bute first met Lev Sergeyevich Termen in his studio in New York. They co-operated on the following experiment:

“We immersed a tiny mirror in a small tube of oil, connected by a fine wire which was led through an oscillator to a type of joy-stick control. Manipulating this joy-stick was like having a responsive drawing pencil, or paint brush that flowed light and was entirely under the control of the person at the joy-stick.” [quoted from Albert Glinsky, Theremin, 2000]

Other potential environments for ancestress research:
Italian Futurism
Beginnings of noise music/machine music and radio utopias.
“La Radia dating back to October 1933 already showed the way far beyond the concept of the radio as a medium – after all, the Italian word for radio is also radio and not radia. It is a metaphorical expression for the manifold varieties of electronic art as we know it today as well as for its cross-border structures defying hierarchies.” [Andrea Sodomka 2004]

The environment of Friedrich Kiesler and kinetic theatre, a gesamtkunstwerk combining colours, shapes, sounds and machinery that should not be based on the traditional style inventory but should use the mechanical means and apparatus of its times and everyday culture.

Output
Again and again, female artists feel a great desire to know more about their own history in order to link up and make reference to it, which is a matter of course for our male colleagues.

IMA Salon / resonance room 006 is to make a contribution to this quest. In co-operation with scientists, artists are to be actively involved in the process of investigating and reflecting on the history of their ancestresses and are to be motivated to make reference to the theoretical writings and practical artistic work of their female colleagues in their own texts and artistic output.

Schedule
Within one year, two or three topics are to be discussed in the resonance room 006.

Procedure:
– IMA will select and invite the hosts and hostesses.
– The hosts and hostesses will propose a topic and look for experts and a moderator with whom they wish to co-operate.
– Comments received from the public will be integrated into the results of the expert discussions.
– Data and information will by processed and input into the database.
IMA Utopia
Subsequently, IMA should make efforts towards artistic realisations building on the data material obtained (possibilities for performances/funding).

Elisabeth Schimana and Andrea Sodomka 2005