Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The | Medium Pdf

You might read “Reinventing the Medium” and wonder if it is merely an artifact of 1990s theory. On the contrary, its relevance has exploded.

In the age of generative AI (Midjourney, DALL-E, Sora) and NFTs, the question of medium specificity has returned with a vengeance. When an AI generates an image from a text prompt, what is the medium? Is it the algorithm? The dataset? The GPU? Krauss’s framework is eerily prescient.

To “reinvent” the medium today means to hack the technical support of our age: the social media feed, the search engine algorithm, the blockchain. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf

| Greenberg (Old Medium) | Krauss (Reinvented Medium) | |------------------------|-----------------------------| | Medium = physical material (paint, canvas) | Medium = technical support (rules, apparatus, convention) | | Purity (eliminate everything extraneous to material) | Hybridity (combine supports in new, consistent ways) | | Medium is fixed, universal, a priori | Medium is invented, specific, a posteriori | | Progress through self-criticism | Progress through re-invention and recoding |

Krauss argues that Greenberg’s medium leads to a dead end: painting reduced to opticality and flatness. Reinvention, by contrast, allows artists to create new media for each new set of artistic problems. You might read “Reinventing the Medium” and wonder

Krauss borrows the term “post-medium condition” from philosopher Stanley Cavell. However, she clarifies that this condition does not mean the end of media. Rather, it signals the breakdown of traditional, a priori media (e.g., painting, sculpture) and opens the possibility for artists to invent new, specific media on a case-by-case basis.

“The post-medium condition does not imply the negation of the medium. On the contrary, it opens the way for the medium’s reinvention.” To “reinvent” the medium today means to hack

“Reinventing the Medium” has been enormously influential, but also contested:

Krauss herself addressed some of these in later essays, particularly on the “post-medium condition” and the work of artists like Stan Douglas and Pierre Huyghe.

Once you locate the PDF, do not read it linearly. Krauss writes in a dense, crystalline style—every sentence carries weight. Follow this method: