[rohrpost] TAGallery 010_001010a.live-art(LINKreSource) | CONT3XT.NET.NEWS #17.07

[CONT3XT.NET]

TAGallery 010_001010a.live-art(LINKreSource)
By CONT3XT.NET (Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl, Franz Thalmair)

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With works by: !Mediengruppe Bitnik - #!/usr/bin/doma, Vanessa Oniboni,
Michelle Kasprzak, Luis Silva, LeisureArts, Scott Rettberg, Ela Kagl, Ursula
Endlicher, _____fratha__, CONT3XT.NET

Exhibition at TAGallery
http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/EXHIBITION_alive.art

Statement
http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/STATEMENT_alive.art

Tagger/curator
http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/TAGGERS_alive.art

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The first exhibition at TAGallery with the title "
dead.art(-missing!)LINKreSources"
dealt with itself: the link as the main medium for networking,
collaborating, contextualising along with its role as a sign for mutual
estimation in a social environment was thought to be a fragile entity. It
can loose its functions as quick as it is set up by ahref. Either the server
is not available for a certain time, the URL has changed or the artwork has
been taken from the net. In each of the cases, the link which is not working
stands for the ephemerality of Internet-based Art. Even the big institutions
in the network can't avoid broken links. The requested URL was not found on
this server is just one of the representatives of an Absurdistan, which
needs -- despite expanding technical assistance -- human care and
maintenance, not to be transformed from net.art into dead.art.

Despite this initial statement of "dead.art", TAGallery reflects in its last
official exhibition with the titel "001010a.live-art(LINKreSource)" the
process of development which has been run through with the curatorial
platform during the past months: the most basic method of generating a
freely accessible, modular network of personal associations on the World
Wide Web is to create a link and thereby forge a relationship between two or
more contents.

In the meantime, producing new fields of context through reciprocal
referencing via links to homepages, blogs, databases and artwork has grown
to become one of the most common artistic practices on the Internet. Yet,
links are not only an element that provides a structure for the
hypertextuality on the Internet and thus simultaneously serve as a
multidimensional system of reference. Links also functions as a tool for
remixing existing content, as a simplified way of copying and pasting
and--particularly in the context of New Media and information-based art--as
a meaning-generating entity that plays a part in understanding cultural work
on the internet. Thus, "[w]e define the remix as the process of
understanding a body of knowledge by using technology to rearrange and
recontextualize its elements in order to construct an original narrative.
(...) This remix or digitally constructivist approach--that of constructing
our own narratives through surfing, searching, tagging and sharing--is
becoming the dominant means by which we consume media, learn and communicate
in an Internet-driven information age." (1)

What happens when the link simultaneously becomes the representative of the
art, the context, and the exhibition?

At the beginning of 2007, CONT3XT.NET, a presentation platform for
Internet-based art, and the corresponding name for this discourse TAGAllery
were formed as a del.icio.us account. Del.icio.us is a "social tagging"
platform, a simple Web 2.0 tool with limited functions for administrating
Internet sites using links. These personal yet often publicly accessible
link lists are interlinked among the network of users, who provide keywords
and short summaries for the links. "The 'social' in social tagging comes
from being able to view and share resources with other users of the system.
For example, in Del.icio.us, as soon as a user assigns a tag to an item, she
sees the number of people who have also bookmarked the site, as well as the
cluster of items carrying the same tag, and any additional tags that other
people have used to describe the site." (2)The main premise for using a
Del.icio.us account for curating is the concept of the "tagged exhibition"
(3), which transfers the imagery and work methods of non-commercial
exhibition spaces into a discursive electronic data space. "Tagging" is a
method that enables different artworks to be assigned to singular or
multiple thematic positions and visualized on different levels. Keywords,
which are put together in clusters to form keyword groups, heighten the
readability and possibilities for interpreting the artwork and exhibition
space. In this process, those who tag and the "gallery visitors" engage in a
dialog with the artwork "that offers a way for people to connect directly
with works of art, to own them by labelling or naming them--one of the
aspects of sense-making." (2) A specific characteristic and challenge for
curating Web-based art is the performative and/or process-oriented character
of many pieces, which increases the difficulty of presenting them in real
exhibition spaces. Altered conditions for art production and reception on
the Internet have not only changed the art itself but also the curating
praxis and subsequently the task of the curator that now also call for
process-oriented forms of representation. In contrast to traditional gallery
spaces, the TAGallery not only offers chronological showrooms, semantically
thick exhibition titles and various approaches to contextualizing the
artwork, but also makes public the act of selecting and compiling the
artwork. The ongoing curatorial process is accessible via newsfeed, which
designates a separate space in which to reflect these processes.

The Internet as a museum laboratory -- between production and presentation

In principle, the TAGallery understands itself and the possibilities it
offers as a laboratory and workshop for visualizing "artistic
processes--initiated by the curator--that take place in the form of
interactions between the work and the viewer." Therefore, the online gallery
simultaneously alludes to the altered conditions for art production and
reception and to the role of the museum within this process: "The museum is
no longer a static archive. It is a dynamic and socially powerful
institution. The museum's fundamental change from a static presentational
space to a dynamic production space has had a further, decisive consequence
on the museum as an institution, addressed within the context of Beuys' idea
of the museum in motion, i.e. that it loses its permanent space." (4)

The structure of the media Internet not only provides a space for the
production and presentation of art, it also contributes to blurring the
boundaries between production and presentation. "The discursivity of
multimedia and how it can be associated with a dialectical aesthetic is
characterised by the ways in which montage-like spatial
juxtaposition--achieved through hyperlink structures and search-ability--is
drawn upon for narrative effect. The functionality of links and databases
extend upon already existing tabular, classificatory forms, such as the
collection archive, catalogue, and methods of spatial arrangement in
galleries--all technologies intimately associated with the historical
evolution of the museum. Adopting a museological aesthetic that understands,
and is more effectively calibrated to digital communication technologies,
will see the museum emphasised as a machine for creating juxtaposition, a
generator of conditions for dialogical encounters with the unforeseen
(enabling, even privileging, the experience of surprise, the unexpected and
perhaps the random)." (5)

The exhibition work on the TAGallery was to select different Internet
protagonists--curators, artists, bloggers and theorists--and to invite them
to work on tagging as a system and its use in curatorial processes. The
results of the first ten exhibitions are as diverse as the taggers
themselves. The selections range from variations of exhibitions which tag
"real" art in virtual spaces to conventional thematic exhibitions to
dialogues that reflect the curatorial process and play with the imagery of
the art gallery and finally leads the initially postulated dead.art to sort
of a "001010a.live-art(LINKreSource)"-performance.

(1) Fisher, Matthew / Twiss-Garrity, Beth A. (2007): "Remixing Exhibits:
Constructing Participatory Narratives With On-Line Tools To Augment Museum
Experiences", http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/fisher/fisher.html, [on
August 4, 2007].
(2) Zollers, Alla (2007): "Emerging Motivations for tagging. Expression,
Performance, and Activism," http://www2007.org/workshops/paper_55.pdf, [on
August 4, 2007].
(3) Katastrofsky, Carlos (2005): "tagged exhibition - net/art?,"
http://blog.subnet.at/carlos/stories/1853, [on August 4, 2007].
(4) Wall, Tobias (2006): "Das unmögliche Museum. Zum Verhältnis von Kunst
und Kunstmuseeum der Gegenwart", transcript/Bielefeld, p. 264.
(5) Dziekan, Vince (2005): "Beyond the Museum Walls: Situating Art in
Virtual Space (Polemic Overlay and Three Movements)",
http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue7/issue7_ver2_Beyond%20the%20Museum%20Walls.pdf,
[on July 26, 2007].

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About CONT3XT.NET

CONT3XT.NET is a Vienna-based organisation founded in 2006 as a
collaborative platform for the discussion and presentation of issues related
to (New) Media Art. Against the background of an interdisciplinary
theoretical approach to all forms of communications technologies, its
mission is the critical investigation and documentation of relevant
tendencies in contemporary art production. CONT3XT.NET works both online and
offline and regularly offers news and announcements as well as initiatives
developed by its members in collaboration with artists, theorists, curators,
writers and other Media Art affiliated people. The organisation was founded
by Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl ( a.k.a. Carlos Katastrofsky) and Franz
Thalmair.

Sabine Hochrieser was born in Steyr (Austria) in 1975. She studied "Art
History" and "English Philology" at the University of Salzburg with special
focus on "Knowledge Management within Cultural Activities". Amongst others,
she works as an exhibition organiser, translator and project coordinator in
Vienna.

Michael Kargl (a.k.a. Carlos Katastrofsky) was born in Hall (Austria) in
1975. He studied "Sculpture" at the University Mozarteum Salzburg with
special focus on "Virtual Architecture and Cyberspace". He is a professional
media artist and, amongst others, he works as an art mediator and lecturer
in Vienna.

Franz Thalmair was born in Wels (Austria) in 1976. He studied "Romance
Philology" and "Linguistics" at the University of Salzburg with special
focus on "Sociolinguistics and Semiotics". Amongst others, he works as a
freelance writer within the cultural field and as a communications manager
for museums in Vienna.

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