This is a forwarded message from the Vienna-based organisation CONT3XT.NET.
Hopefully the project may be interesting to some participants of the list,
best fratha

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CONT3XT.NET.NEWS #03.07
CULTURE | INFORMATION | MEDIA | FRUITS OF EVERYDAY LIFE



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TAG | TAGallery | THE ART Gallery

To post a link and thus to relate two or more contents is a basic method to
create a freely accessible and modular network of personal associations on
the World Wide Web. The act of linking, which has come to be one of the most
common cultural practices on the Internet and which is a simplified version
of the copy/paste-technique, creates new contexts on Web-based platforms,
personal homepages, blogs and last but not least (art-)databases.

Yet, what if a link turns into the representative of the artefact, the
context and the exhibition at once?

TAGallery by CONT3XT.NET extends the idea of a tagged exhibition and
transfers the main tasks of non-commercial exhibition-spaces to the
discourse of an electronic data-space. The method of tagging allows the
attribution of artworks to different thematic fields. In TAGallery the act
of selecting and recombining -- besides chronologically ordered show-rooms,
exhibition-titles in a semantically concentrated form and various ways of
contextualizing the presented artworks -- will be published as well: The
continuous progression of curating can be followed by the public, using
newsfeeds.

__ to the gallery [ http://del.icio.us/TAGallery ]
__ about the gallery [ http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/About_TAGallery ]



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EXHIBITION_001 | dead.art(-missing!)LINKreSources

Without works by: Richard Rinehart, Brian Mackern, Michael Lovatt, Wendy
Battin, Fabio Doctorovich, Dan Egnor, Eidolon, Dr William Moritz, Sneha
Solanki, Neil Zakiewicz | Tagger: Franz Thalmair [fratha] | Opening: 16
February 2006 (through open-end)

The first TAGallery-exhibition deals with itself: the link as the main
medium for networking, collaborating, contextualizing along with its role as
a sign for mutual estimation in a social environment is a fragile entity. It
can loose its functions as quick as it has been 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 Web-based art-forms. 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.

In the first link-collection, the element of missing, i.e. the void where
actually should be something, is extended above the often quoted discussion
of the the 404-code (error message for file not found) in the net-context.
The symbolism of the 404 is no longer the main element of reflection, but it
is replaced by the discussion of the simple fact that there is nothing where
there should be something. The reference to the missing is replaced by the
discussion of the non existence of the artwork and, thus, bound to a
reflection about the work itself and its conditions of production. The
actually arbitrary symbol transforms itself into an indexicalic sign, which
remains, despite missing, still connected physically to the object: what may
have lead to the fact that an artwork is no longer on the Internet? Why are
the servers unavailable? Is the disappearance to be interpreted as a
metaphor or as a conscious act of withdrawal? The first exhibition in the
TAGallery refers with its inherent material to superior -- missing --
implications, which allows the freedom of interpretation.


__ to the exhibition [ http://del.icio.us/TAGallery/EXHIBITION_dead.art ]