The history of most artistic disciplines is full of figures that fulfilled several roles at once, often out of necessity. When mediums or concepts are new and inaccessible to the writers, curators, and producers who can help solidify and critically frame a discipline, it’s often left to the artist to explain the new thing. Here, Paddy Johnson surveys various New Media artists who, faced with chronic lack of institutional recognition, have proactively shaped the discourse around their medium through writing and curatorial work.

G.H. Hovagimyan is a New York-based artist, one of the first to begin experimenting with digital and online work in the early ’90s. He has curated and participated in shows since the early ’70s and his practice has encompassed poetic manifestoes, “faux conceptual art,” and a notorious 1994 public billboard commissioned by Creative Time titled Hey Bozo, Use Mass Transit, among many other projects. The co-creator (with Peter Sinclair) of the “techno-driven word jam” Rant/Rant Back/Back Rant, it seemed clear that Hovagimyan would be a natural ranter and raver.