The material and immaterial in Lyotard, Benjamin and contemporary Indigenous art

Powerful arguments have been made that art is moving from the material to the immaterial in an age of ‘virtual reality’ (Jean-François Lyotard). Equally powerful arguments have been put that it is moving from the immaterial to the material in an age of mechanical reproduction (Walter Benjamin). In this essay, we propose that the material and immaterial are inseparable, and that this is what both Lyotard and Benjamin are ultimately suggesting. This would go against those critics who claim that art is becoming too material (Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried), and they themselves can be seen to be admitting that this materiality is possible only because of a certain immateriality. In response to this, Rosalind Krauss’ notion of ‘post-medium’ can be read as an expression of the immateriality that allows the materiality of medium. We conclude by considering three examples of Australian Indigenous art that also point to the inseparability of the material and immaterial: the digital exhibition Connection, the street sign works of Yolngu artist Wanapati Yunupingu and the installation kith and kin by Kamilaroi Bigambul artist Archie Moore, recently exhibited at the Venice Biennale.