Introduction to net.art (1994-1999) - Installation:
text: Natalie Bookchin and Alexei Shulgin; Stones: Blank & Jeron
(1999)
Introduction to net.art (1994-1999)
First things first - net_condition is not an exhibition
about net art it's an exhibition about making art in an 'online universe'.
Ignoring the official rhetoric for just a moment, one could say that
it's an exhibition about how to overcome the unbearable contradiction
of trying to exhibit net art whilst demonstrating the requisite sensitivity
to its values.
An overtly material work, Blank & Jeron, Natalie
Bookchin and Alexej Shulgin's Introduction to Net Art; a row of stone
tablets in which the many more than 10 commandments of net art were inscribed.
Apart from their satyrisation of their own cynical manipulation of the
avant-garde label and rapid fire execution of some founding tenets and
techniques of net art, the tablets highlight the rampant dogmatism of
cyber culture. Both these works undid the notion of network culture's
unpredictable, flexible and reactive structures through figuring its
monolithic characteristics in supposedly dumb matter. To conclude, they
revealed that everything is not only everything, but everything can also
really be 'something' and that something is far older than the millennial
frenzy over 'online universes' will allow. Perhaps one need go no further
than ZKM's atrium to have such a revelation. top of page
Josephine Berry, The Unbearable Connectedness of Everything
