As Bebo Fades Art Cinema Lives On

[Stuart Cosgrove]

I am a great lover of dramatic paradox, cruel juxtaposition and decorative : colons..

So in the week that Bebo has announced it has frozen all commissioning and decimated its once-cool London office, it is good to see hoary old Scottish art : shit still dancing like Pina Bausch on the shallow grave of web 2.0.

Bebo's demise coincides with the launch of Central Station and the the rise of Running Time a unique selection of film and video works made in Scotland over the past fifty years. The first ever exhibition dedicated exclusively to artist films in Scotland, it includes more than 100 films by over 60 artists.

Highlights include: David Hall's influential Television Interruptions, originally shown unannounced on Scottish Television in 1971, and Margaret Tait's poetic Orcadian tributes such as Where I am is Here (1964).

Luke Fowler's fresh take on documentary realism in Pilgrimage from Scattered Points (2006) and Henry Coombes' powerful drama The Bedfords (2009) set in 19th-century Scotland.

..and a series of short animated films by David Shrigley and Katy Dove.

Social networking is unquestionably one of the creative breakthroughs of the last 5 years but what is instructive about Bebo's problems is that many of the first wave of global networks have ended up being too 'scattered', too unfocussed,too 'demographic' and in time lacked a real world point-or-purpose. Many like Bebo have also suffered from the precocious over-attention that some digital media has attracted.

Here are three predictions. Central Station will grow slowly through 'word of mouth' and via art connectivity; it will never come close to being a 'brand' with Bebo's steep global growth curve, but its gathering underground respect will strengthen its social relations with a real (art) community, and it will aggregate and commision great work. It is more a corollary of Frieze, the Turner Prize and The Baltic than MySpace and its is in that context it will finally be judged.

Bebo wanted to be for all the young dudes: Central Station is more modestly about encouraging : young artists to : share online. Some of the art is really good but sadly none of it is pretentious enough for me, but then again neither was Michel Foucault.

Please note creative use of colons for no significant : grammatic purpose. Cool eh?

[Richard Saville-Smith]

Blimey Stuart, Foucault not pretentious enough for you?? I guess you must be a Derrida man....

[Anne Bonnar]

Other critical differences between Bebo and Central Station are the value system and business model: CS benefits from the involvement of public service partners like 4Ip and arts council subsiding the development. Like Running Time, (ends Sunday) made possible with the public subvention of the National Galleries of Scotland, Scottish Arts Council and the List.

[Ewan McIntosh]

Quite : Stuart. Central Station's word of mouth is already gaining an equally passionate audience in London along with its Glasgow 'home', and is fast becoming the talk of the Manchester art community. I'd be interested in knowing how many folk know about it at this week's Media Festival there, though. Bebo, and before that MySpace, has been the dahling of the media industry for its 'community' building, based around the masses: sheer numbers rather than impact keep advertisers and accountants happy.

As a media company underwriting and helping with its direction, I think we've done well to resist the desire to count beans. It's a community that will live or die on the long-lasting, slow-to-build trust that the best genuine communities require to thrive. I can only imagine if Murdoch were to have got his hands on the idea we'd be charging artists to share and punters to view, and finishing it off with a few MVUs advertising hatchbacks and the Postcode Lottery.

Bebo is now to online community what creative use of colons is to grammar: of no significant purpose. It's time for communities to know what they're about and who they're for, and resist the temptation to water themselves down into just another watering hole for digital nomads.

[Stuart Cosgrove]

Yes that's the one.

[Stuart Cosgrove]

Surely you don't mean Bebo the new media phenomenon that was going kill off Channel 4 and bring and end to the TV schedule?