Curating, Communication & Open Source:
Interference — Real Space Exhibitions | Forum #002

Edited by Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl, Franz Thalmair
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The context in which new media art is shown is important: Be it festivals or DIY/hacker-labs, what they have in common is to give those forms of art a truly “avant-garde” aura that maybe had it’s time but is now obsolete. New Media Art is an art form as is painting, sculpting etc. and deserves to be recognised like that. It maybe easier to rest on old cliches, but sticking to this “we are on the edge of it all” — behaviour makes urgent developments impossible. Above that New Media Art is normally not shown together with works of Fine Art. If it is shown in a gallery/museum context it is — most of the time — separated from the other works. This is something that broadens the gap even further.

Post by qui que?
On Tue Oct 21, 2008 12:30 am

how are cont3xt proposing exhibitions?

Post by carlos
On Wed Oct 22, 2008 9:19 pm

i would say it depends (well this is surely not something new). one never can have a recipe that is suitable for every exhibition.

Post by fratha
On Fri Oct 24, 2008 12:17 pm

in fact carlos is right, there is not one single way to exhibit internet-based art. but, nevertheless, i think that there is a need to develop different models and strategies for this. i have got the impression that – until now – curators in art institutions do not have any practice with this as they do have for example with video art, performances and conceptual art – all of them quite difficult to present because of their processual behaviour. one can discuss if documentation material as used for showing performances is the right way, but, for internet-based art there is not even a bad way to be exhibited, isn’t it?

Post by qui que?
On Sat Oct 25, 2008 4:28 pm

looking here at the current net.audio festival of offline, online music; i really can’t see anything online at all – only for the capacity for these things to also be exhibitable online.

Post by carlos
On Sat Oct 25, 2008 9:25 pm

fratha wrote: “but, for internet-based art there is not even a bad way to be exhibited, isn’t it?”

oh, i think there is: setting up a bunch of computers in a gallery and showing one internet art piece per machine. i would say this is something you can’t do nowadays. unfortunately this is still done.

Post by luis_silva
On Tue Nov 04, 2008 5:04 pm

Congrats on another interesting discussion project and just to be provocative (for the sake of discussing) I would like to ask the following: if one of the main distinctive characteristics of internet art is it being online, and if being online is a matter of disembodied (or immaterial) ubiquity, what drives you one to want to show those pieces in a physical (white cube ideology based) context? put in other words, what is the relevance of showing internet art in physical spaces (and I’m referring to hardcore netart pieces and not networked installations)?

Postby luis_silva
On Tue Nov 04, 2008 5:10 pm

in keeping with what I said in my previous post, and asking this directly to Carlos, what drove you to create a physical version of a project like lastwishes? was it incomplete without being turned into an object? and what happens to a highly context driven project like this when it is removed from its context and presented in a traditional exhibition setting. If it isn’t visual (and it isn’t), what the point in putting a mailling list gone rogue inside a museum? do mailing lists exist freely in other settings?

Post by carlos
On Tue Nov 04, 2008 10:46 pm

two interesting questions and both are not easy to answer.

luis_silva wrote: “put in other words, what is the relevance of showing internet art in physical spaces (and I’m referring to hardcore netart pieces and not networked installations)?”

… i think this is a question i am not able to answer here. if there is any relevance in this all – i don’t know. to me internet art deserves to be shown in physical spaces – and by this i am thinking of gallery/museum-like spaces – simply because it is art and it has to be looked at the same way. this is a development that is happening in and out of a net that is already incorporated in “physicality” anyway. so why should we keep up the nineties style of separation (which had another meaning an context back then)? why do you commission internet artworks for a physical gallery (and – be honest – you surely have shown more internet art in a physical space than me)?

luis_silva wrote: “what drove you to create a physical version of a project like lastwishes?”

… well someone wanted to show it in an exhibition.

luis_silva wrote: “was it incomplete without being turned into an object?”

… no, definitely not (see lastwishes materialzed). but i had to find a way for showing it. and i think the worst way to show internet art is to put a computer and a screen in a gallery simply showing the piece. but the question with this piece is “how can you show it” since – as you said – it isn’t visible at all. the possibilities to show such a piece are either

- to describe and explain it (something e.g. ubermorgen.com did with their gwei-project in exhibitions)
- to show a representation of the work (in this case e.g. a screenshot of the online interface of mailman or printed mailings and the “you’re off”-responses)
- or to make a physical extension for the piece. this is what i thought lastwishes materialized would be: it doesn’t change or remove the original artwork from it’s context but instead expands it into another (the third, and in fact the fourth, too) dimension.

Post by chiara
On Wed Nov 05, 2008 3:31 pm

Why not? Or better, you can show the net-art into a museum without de-contextualise it. For ex. as Elena Giulia Rossi has done at MAXXI museum in Roma, during the cycle “Net-Space: viaggio nell’arte della Rete”. Simply installing five computers with an Internet connection in a site-specific place shaped into the museum.

Post by carlos
On Thu Nov 06, 2008 10:01 am

i think this takes the work out of its context. making art on the internet has to do with enabling access to everyone who is connected to the net via a computer. so the idea behind is that one can browse it at home, in the office, everywhere. a museum has to do with some kind of exclosure – only specific people are visiting museums, with a specific idea of what they expect from such a place. taking the art out of the home/office context and putting it in the museum to look at it if you were at home is to me like digging out robert smithson’s spiral jetty and dumping it in an exhibition place. but don’t get me wrong, i really appreciate the work elena gulia rossi and the other curators at the museums are doing to make this form of art visible in such a context.

Post by qui que?
On Mon Nov 10, 2008 3:23 am

luis’s questions follow my own lines. what curational advantage is held over a web designer in showing net.art in it’s computer screen context in galleries. where does net.art end and interactive art begin ? is there clear distinction between high and low interactive art; one dependent on the degree, nature, quality or quantity of interaction. one interesting distinction arrises in considering that net.art bares similarities between both interactive art and new media art, in that net.art does not always involve unser interaction, but can rather be self automated or simply an image (or perhaps a notion) for reflection.

Post by egiuliarossi
On Tue Nov 18, 2008 12:51 am

my name is Elena (Carlos, we have e-mailed for a while through Chiara). I am the curator of NetSpace at the MAXXI, mentioned by Chiara Passa. First of all Carlos, thank you for this forum that is really interesting, and thank you Chiara for bringing the project into the discussion. agree with all of you in believing that there is not a correct way to show net art in a museum’s context. First of all, what net art are we talking about? It has been changing so much since its inception that I strongly believe that since art institutions embraced it, the shift is so radical that we should probably find another name for works that still depend on the network but that are thought for the institutions they are shown in.

I believe that this fastness in changing of content and supports is also the answer to Fratha’s concerns about curators specialized in displaying videos and performance and about the ones who do not seem to be specialized in displaying net art in physical spaces. On the one hand, videos are final products. Besides the many problems that exist when supports become obsolete, videos are thought to be installed ad viewed in physical space. Net art belongs to cyberspace and to the information’s globe, one that is in a continuous change, both of content and of supports. This makes harder for curators to become experts in exhibiting it in the physical space.

Net art changes so fast and it encompasses such a variety of genres, sub-categories. etc. that you can only experiment on a case-by-case basis, which is very challenging even if more open to critiques (they are always welcome, anyway!). Again, with its entrance into art institutions net art is changing radically. Projects that involve internet but that work in a space as installations can be treated as any other form of art. With this premise, I would like to tell you what I intend to do with “NetSpace”.

More than everything else NetSpace an informative project. Its goal is to build an archive of net art in its different phases, and to give an historical context to the works. The nature of net art as an art expression is undisputed, even if rooted in and shared by the network. Born as anti-institutional, at a certain stage it was embraced by art institutions, as it happened for many other art forms in the past. Net Art has been in existence for a relative short time and its sudden inclusion in museums made many people fall into the mistake of thinking that it is new, born out of the blue. As net art entered in museums displays, around the end of the Nienties, and then, soon afterwards, in their collection, I believe that it is impossible for a museum that engages in contemporary art to ignore it (with this I would like to respond to Luis even if his discourse was more generally referring to physical spaces. Hi Luis. Do you remember? We met in Madrid for Art Tech Media!).

What a museum can do with net art (talking about the one that was created to be on-line), I think, is:
1. to present it in the closest way possible to the original;
2. to specify that we are looking at something that was created outside museums;
3. to gather documentation of the works, and to clarify what is its context and the continuity that exists between net art and other past art form;
4. to say something like: here are some of the many examples of what net art is. We encourage you to navigate from home (in NetSpace a short essay contextualizes the works and gives other addresses of works that are more suitable to be viewed from home).

Then, after filling the gap of these past 15 years, we can look at other installations probably either commissioned or thought for museums’ spaces. So, “NetSpace” uses computers at the museum as a means to give some hints to visitors to understand what net art is, an art that was created to be seen online. The project is “educational” (it is in fact coordinated by the Educational Department), and the work of shaping an archive (which is at its very first stage) is as much part of the project as it is the display on the computers.

Overall, to respond to the final question aroused by Carlos, I am sure that once you bring net art into an institution you de-contextualize it, at least that genre of net art that was created to exist exclusively online. So, there is not a correct way to show it in an institution. Mostly, there is not a model we can either follow or create from scratch. This I think is a matter of fact. Nevertheless, there is a way to make people acquainted with it. By showing some pieces on computers it is possible to enable visitors, even the ones who do not use the computer in everyday life. By giving more links on the essay that contextualize the works (considering also what is more suitable to be viewed from home), navigate from one’s own computer, which is the most correct way to viewing it. Then. if we talk about net art installation created for the physical space, that is another story and a new chapter…

Post by carlos
On Wed Nov 19, 2008 10:44 pm

thank you for sharing your experience with us here. first of all i have to apologize for misinterpreting NetSpace. i haven’t ever been there so i said something about it from a distance – apologies for that. all in all i would say we follow the same path here. one sentence of your posting lets me think over some issues i recently had with describing what this project is all about. you wrote:

First of all, what net art are we talking about? It has been changing so much since its inception that I strongly believe that since art institutions embraced it, the shift is so radical that we should probably find another name for works that still depend on the network but that are thought for the institutions they are shown in.

i caught myself in writing about “internet art” and two sentences later about “new media art” – but thinking of the same thing. so to me the question is if the term “internet (or net) art” can be used anymore. it is quite common nowadays to use the net in works of art (as part of a piece, as source of material or as reference) but new pieces of “pure” internet art have become very rare. so should we redefine “internet art” again? this time from a historic perspective not from “within” as it happened in the nineties?

egiuliarossi wrote: “What a museum can do with net art (talking about the one that was created to be on-line), I think, is: 1. to present it in the closest way possible to the original; 2. to specify that we are looking at something that was created outside museums; 3. to gather documentation of the works, and to clarify what is its context and the continuity that exists between net art and other past art form; 4. to say something like: here are some of the many examples of what net art is. We encourage you to navigate from home (in NetSpace a short essay contextualizes the works and gives other addresses of works that are more suitable to be viewed from home).”

this makes me think … if you look at an example i mentioned here before, an exhibition done by jodi this year, would you say this is not a possibility to show net art in a museum? or is this transformation already too much (read: is this still an exhibition of internet art or an artwork in itself?) and further: do you really have to “close this gap of the past 15 years” in order to understand a “translation” of a work of internet art into something physical? to extend my question from the beginning of the thread “display and communication” i would like to ask: where would you locate the borders between “exhibiting”, “transforming” and “translating” and when is it simply not a work of internet art anymore?

Post by fratha
On Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:14 pm

thanks for bringing in your point of view of a curator working for an institution – that’s quite interesting. you are saying that:

egiuliarossi wrote: “Net art belongs to cyberspace and to the information’s globe, one that is in a continuous change, both of content and of supports. This makes harder for curators to become experts in exhibiting it in the physical space. Net art changes so fast and it encompasses such a variety of genres, sub-categories. etc. that you can only experiment on a case-by-case basis, which is very challenging even if more open to critiques (they are always welcome, anyway!).”

I think your are right saying that the exhibiting of Internet-based Art can only be experienced in a case-by-case-practice as each piece differs so much from any other and as there is such a tremendous variety of forms… But, nonetheless one does not have to reinvent the wheel every time. I guess it would be easier for traditional curators, if they could refer to already existing practices within their own work. what I have experienced with installing Internet-based Art into the real space is that you have to work on details and special characteristics and not so much on the global phenomenon of the Internet and Internet culture. by focussing, I don’t know, for exemple, on the interactivity of the work, or one the mechanisms brought to the user and extracting it from the rest, changes the work, of course, but, can bring it into a format the spectator in a gallery-setting can deal with and lead him/her to follow the original work on the Internet.

egiuliarossi wrote: “What a museum can do with net art (talking about the one that was created to be on-line), I think, is: 1. to present it in the closest way possible to the original”

I think that this way of working is not possible, becuase , as said before, there is so much variety: I am not only talking about the fact that there are so many different formats of Internet-based Art but also that there is a high variety of topics one can deal with within only one single work of art: code and the textuality, image, sound, conceptual issues and last but not least the role of the spectator/user in the whole process…

what CONT3XT.NET is dealing with for a while now is the topic of translation in general. translation, brought up on a global level by the proclamation of a “translational turn” within Cultural Studies and other disciplines, is a helpful metaphor to describe the task of the curator. But, even if the concept of cultural translation, as understood and widely used today, has arisen out of the criticism of linguistic/literary theory, Walter Benjamin’s articulations in his seminal essay “The task of the translator” can be applied to the field of Internet-based Art and brought back to the curator’s daily work with texts. This inter-dependency illustrates

“the relation between the so-called original and translation by using the metaphor of a tangent: translation is like a tangent, which touches the circle (i.e. the original) in one single point only to follow thereafter its own way. Neither the original nor the translation, neither the language of the original nor the language of the translation are fixed and persisting categories. They don’t have essential quality and are constantly transformed in space and time.” (quoted from: http://translate.eipcp.net/transversal/0606/buden/en)