Perhaps one of the programmatic dreams of the avant-garde -which has been on hold for the longest period of time over the course of this century- was that of generating true 'communities of media producers', to use Bertolt Brecht's well-known expression.  His experiments with radio, those of Soviet artists with film, or of the soixante-huitard neo-avant-garde with video activism, guerrilla television, or cinéma-vérité were all part of a dream that never came true (but has never been given up, either): that of developing  -through artistic practice itself, thus conceived as activism that is simultaneously politically and media oriented- autonomous public spheres, social interaction devices able to induce in the citizenry ways of direct communication, not mediated by the interests of industry or the apparatus of the state.

The appearance of the Internet has renovated and updated the virtuality of this dream.  It could even be stated that, from the start, the art world's approach to the Internet has been marked by the captivating phantasmagoria of this revisited programme. Meanwhile, artistic methods and languages have emerged which are devoted to experiencing the formal potentialities of this new medium, giving birth to what is already usually called net.art.  But at the same time, and together with these neoformalist practices, a spirit of Internet activism should be recognised, which concentrates its efforts precisely on establishing 'communities of media producers'.  In this case it is a question of 'web  communities', which find each other or exchange their expressive productions on the Internet, generating their own public interaction devices, their own 'media', in an autonomous, dehierarchised communications setting -in a post-media domain- in which public circulation of information is no longer exhaustively submitted to the regulation that organises the traditional communications media, structurally oriented towards the social production of consensus (towards organising 'the masses' rather than the communicational articulation of 'the public').

Through 'The post-media era'  we try to bring together, in a common virtual space constituted on the Internet itself, some of these web communities (the majority of which have been developed by artists, art critics or cultural activists), favouring debate and reflection on the nature of the artistic, cultural and communicative practices in contemporary societies. 
 

José Luis Brea