Farewell to Experimenta: NCM Reflects on the Loss of a 40-Year Media Arts Institution

News broke this week that Experimenta has wound down operations after four decades at the forefront of Australian media arts.

For those working in the sector, the loss is being felt keenly. At the National Communication Museum (NCM), Creative Lead of NCM Studio Jesse Stevens is among many artists whose careers were shaped by the organisation's support.

In a notice to supporters, Experimenta's board described the organisation as "a pioneering force in commissioning, exhibiting and touring contemporary art shaped by technology," noting it had "consistently championed artists working at the intersection of art, science and technology, helping redefine the boundaries of contemporary practice," since its founding as the Modern Image Makers Association. The board cited the reduction in public arts funding at both the federal and state levels as the reasons for making it "impossible to sustain operations at the level required by Experimenta's mission."

A 40-year legacy

Experimenta was founded in 1986 and spent 40 years as one of the country's major commissioners and supporters of media arts, working across Melbourne and the wider Australian scene and building connections with artists internationally.

"They were so integral to the success of media arts in Australia for such a long time that it seems almost impossible that they're now gone," said Stevens, who is also one half of the experimental artist duo Cake Industries, alongside creative partner Dean Petersen. "Dean and I were commissioned to make and present new work multiple times. Many media artists found their footing through Experimenta."

That footing spanned the full range of the organisation's work, from grassroots projects through to high-end gallery exhibitions, which made Experimenta a rare kind of institution: one equally invested in emerging practice and major presentation.

Part of a wider pattern

Stevens was careful to place Experimenta's closure in a broader context, rather than as an isolated event. "It probably speaks to the state of media arts in Australia in general facing a lack of support, and a struggle for funding in a very competitive landscape," he said. "People's saturation of Instagram-ready moments, and funding spread so thin, means that things like media art, which is complex and expensive to create, has lost support."

His reading is echoed in Experimenta's own account of its closure, which pointed to funding pressure at both levels of government, rather than any single cause.

The timing has only sharpened that sense of a sector under pressure: the same week Experimenta's closure was announced, two major national musical theatre tours, Beetlejuice and Waitress, were also cancelled, in addition to the closure of The Song Company, Australia's premier professional vocal ensemble, after 42 years of performances.

NCM's ongoing commitment

For NCM Studio, the closure underscores the importance of continuing to back grassroots and experimental media arts practice. Stevens pointed to Stigmergy, NCM's current exhibition made in collaboration with independent media arts collective PSEUDO, and featuring a vast array of new commissions, as an example of that commitment in action.

"It's important we continue to commission and support complex art forms, in what is clearly an interesting time for the industry," Stevens said.

"It's important we continue to commission and support complex art forms, in what is clearly an interesting time for the industry," — Jesse Stevens.

Experimenta's board struck a similar note in its closing message to supporters: "Experimenta's impact will endure in the artists it has supported, the audiences it has inspired, and the ideas it has brought into the world. While the organisation's operations are drawing to a close, its influence will continue to shape the evolving landscape of art and technology for years to come."

Saying farewell

Cake Industries posited on social media that for moments like this, there should be a community farewell to mark Experimenta's closure.

Whether or not a formal farewell takes shape, the conversation itself says something – that after all these years, the end of this special institution doesn't feel like something artists are ready to let go of quietly.

Artist duo Jesse Stevens and Dean Petersen have worked together since 2006 as Cake Industries.

Darkly humorous and provocatively satirical, Cake Industries’ performative mechatronic sculptures construct abstract narratives to reveal the complexities and absurdities of modern life. Their human/object hybrid forms are players in a surreal mechanical theatre that is equally strange, disturbing and beautiful.

As an experimental and multidisciplinary permanent artist collaboration, Cake Industries are fiercely self-sufficient, and the broad range of skills in a variety of mediums that they share between them allows them to execute works that are technically, functionally and structurally complex.

Their eclectic practice utilises mechatronics, robotics, human anatomy reproduction, 3D printing, wood-work, metal-work, and reworked everyday objects to create anthropomorphic and autonomous sculptural works.

As an extension to their practice they have created an experimental arts festival, Mecha, a unique arts festival showcasing the best of robotic and mechanical sculpture, performance art, sound, and video art – a home for hybrid and experimental artforms in regional Victoria.