From quaranta.domenico at gmail.com Fri Apr 8 11:16:29 2011 From: quaranta.domenico at gmail.com (Domenico Quaranta) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 11:16:29 +0200 Subject: [dev] Invito progetto / LABoral website Message-ID: Ciao cari, vi scrivo per una proposta a cui spero siate interessati. Qualche tempo fa, sono stato contattato da Benjamin Weil, Chief Curator al LABoral di Gijon (http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/en). Per il rilancio del sito dell'istituzione, Weil stava pensando a un ciclo di commissioni, una serie di progetti non pensati per una gallery tradizionale, ma per un uso "performativo" della rete e possibilmente del sito del LABoral. Contattava me, come credo abbia fatto con altri, perché gli facessi delle proposte di artisti con cui ero in contatto. I progetti selezionati verranno presentati di volta in volta sul sito del LABoral per un periodo di tempo definito. Specifico subito che non c'è budget, almeno per ora, né per gli artisti, né per i curatori che fanno da mediatori e che in seguito si occuperanno di presentare i progetti proposti e selezionati. Insomma: se accettate la proposta, come ho fatto io, fatelo sulla base di altre valutazioni: la possibilità di avviare una relazione con il LABoral, l'interesse a usare un sito istituzionale per un intervento pubblico, ecc. Se siete interessati, quello che vi chiedo è di mandarmi una proposta per la fine del mese (diciamo, Sabato 30 aprile 2011). La proposta può essere un breve abstract scritto (preferibilmente in inglese) o già un bozzetto di prova del lavoro, se ve la sentite. Se necessario ne discutiamo, poi io confeziono un documento da presentare a Weil, e se la cosa va in porto si parte con un calendario che concorderemo insieme. Personalmente, la strategia che ho seguito è stata, una volta tanto, di concentrarmi su artisti italiani. Mi sembra che ne valga la pena, dato che non disponiamo, nello stivale, di alcuna istituzione che possa fare un lavoro di questo tipo. Ricevono questa email: Iocose, Elisa Giardina Papa, Les Liens Invisibles, Artisopensource, Paolo Cirio, xname, Jaromil, Molleindustria. L'indicazione di un approccio "performativo" alla rete è ovviamente molto generica. Come ulteriore chiarimento, vi allego (in via confidenziale) il concept steso da Weil e vi racconto il progetto pilota, già online sul sito del LABoral. Si tratta di un lavoro dello spagnolo Rui Guerra (http://www.v2.nl/archive/people/rui-guerra), che visualizza i vari utenti presenti sul sito del LABoral nello stesso momento in forma di cursori. è tutto, per ora. Fatemi sapere se la cosa vi può interessare. Un caro saluto Domenico --- Back in the early days of the World Wide Web, a number of artists started creating online projects. Numerous directions were explored, but a majority of those projects tended to explore the structure of the medium, using the hyperlink structure - such as Refresh, a sort of exquisite corpse which used the automatic refresh function of the web browser, loading another web page automatically from another web site – while others used the bugs in the software. The main source of inspiration for those works was a critical reflection on the emerging medium and the quick appropriation of a turf that was primarily occupied by universities and officials, by commercial entities. By 1995, a number of art institutions started commissioning and producing online art, including such distinguished North American museums as Dia Center for the Arts, the Guggenheim Museum as well as The Walker Art Center. Other initiatives included adaweb and Rhizome, among others, as well as such artists collectives as The Thing in New York, and the famed London-based cooperative studio, irrational.org, founded by Heath Bunting and Rachel Green. The majority of artists working online chose to develop their own web site as a standalone project. These included the likes of Jodi.org (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans), vuk.org (Vuk Cosiç), teleportacia.org (Olia Lialina) or easylife.net (Alexei Shulgin), just to name a few. Fifteen years later, the web has become ubiquitous, and is accessed by a majority of citizens in a very large number of countries in the world, and while authoritarian regimes still control or attempt to control access and use of the network, a large number of humans in the world access the web daily, and make use of it to carry out domestic and professional duties as well as social exchanges. As with television and video in the early 1970s, a number of artists and other cultural producers have continued to take a critical approach to the way the online world has become controlled, how commercial interests have reduced the potential of creative use of the network. They have carried our projects in such virtual communities as Second Life - Cao Fei, and Eva and Franco Mattes just to name a few – or Facebook, and continued to develop projects, although at the margin of the mainstream contemporary art sphere for the most. Interestingly enough, very few institutions have continued to support artistic investigations online. One key issue is that there may not be a viable economic model that enables artists to support themselves with online work. That is because the art market is still very much predicated by the notion of a unique object, which can be purchased, and resold, or integrated in a public collection. It is noteworthy, in that sense, that a new generation of artists working online are actually referring more directly to the world of performing arts that to the one of visual arts. Not only this may lead to new definition of this kind of work, and help define a field that would more easily be supported. Using the online realm as a venue to carry out time-based interventions, these artists combine a number or references that blend the actions of the 1960’s and 70’s and the spirit of hacking. Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial is happy to inaugurate its new web site with a “site specific” work by Rui Guerra. Throughout the months to come, we will invite other artists to produce new works made in the spirit of what could tentatively be referred to as “virtual performances”, or display existing ones for a limited duration. The web site becomes a stage of sorts, rather than an exhibition space. Maybe this new set of paradigm will encourage a second wave of institutional support for this kind of works, which will undoubtedly become more mainstream, as the online realm continues to take more of our time and to become a site for many of our daily business. Benjamin Weil --- Domenico Quaranta web. http://domenicoquaranta.com/ email. info at domenicoquaranta.com mob. +39 340 2392478 skype. dom_40