S+M, 2003

The continuous presence of media content in the collective digital space, as well as the various configurations of aesthetic critical discernment, are the key subjects which Antoni Muntadas explores in his work. He openly questions the problems raised by the explosion of communication channels in the political, social and economic arenas. He proposed the term 'media landscape', to refer to the multi-layered information networks which bring together, the proliferation and censorship of new ideas, in digital neural nets and communities. Muntadas considers himself to be a multimedia artist, and routinely uses video, urban installations, photography, advertising material and the Internet, to exhibit his work. Born in Barcelona in 1942, Muntadas has been a successful academic and an early adopter in the field of media art for over 30 years. He continuously aims to uncover the operations through which public consent and discourse are manufactured, and the decisive role which electronic media increasingly play in this process. Muntadas works are strongly participatory, and are deliberately constructed to engage the viewer into an immediate response to multidimensional processes. His use of the public space which displays his creations as an artefact, makes his multimedia installations critical projects to reflect on the nature of configuration, presentation and contextualization. Muntadas invites us to challenge our preconceived notions about the superscripts of consumerism, the increasing convergence between mass media and global capitalism and the exploration of self and other as narratives of autonomy and control.