art

Media artists share with their counterparts in other fields the huge task of moving public opinion on culture's social value. It's been a long tunnel, but every now and then, there's a glimpse of light.

I’m heading to Boston on Wednesday for an industry conference called Commonwealth. The conference, co-hosted by the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) and the Center for Independent Documentary, is a place where community media centers, national media arts organizations, university educators, museum presenters, film festivals and archives, youth media programs, public access television stations, national arts policy think tanks, and related groups come together to assess the state of the field, share resources and best practices, inspire each other, build relationships to benefit local neighborhoods, national movements, and global communities.

When I first read about this I was pretty skeptical, "of great another conference that purports to think about media and the future," yet as I look through the program I am genuinely curious. And for a bitter person like me, that is saying something.