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hello everybody, Dear List, We are Kalle Mattsson and Amber van den Eeden. Kalle and me organized four online exhibitions on http://www.temporarystedelijk.com/. The last and current exhibition is about net art and is a collaboration with Constant Dullaart. Both Kalle and me studied graphic design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and we work together as a creative/artistic duo. We observe, analyze, combine and make things. We use different media to react to what we see and think is (or is not) happening around us. Kalle is a graphic designer, he is conceptually trained and is a visual craftsman. Me, Amber, I am an artist, curator or mediator and scientist. Before and during my study at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy I studied Communication Science (BA and MA) at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. For us science and art is about asking questions. And within art we are allowed to make subjective conclusions which we don't have to prove. This allows us to be fast, wrong and emotional or personal. Kalle and me always try to capture the core of what we see and think is happening around us, to capture a moment or movement in time and then design a subjective opinion/ message about it. In our projects we often want to raise awareness about a certain subject. With the online project temporarystedelijk.com (and temporarystedelijk.nl) we wanted to express 1. the (banal) issue that the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (while renovating their building and organizing Temporary Stedelijk exhibitions offline) neglects the Internet as an exhibition space, 2. the fact that net art easily escapes the attention of the wider public by being sidelined by museums and galleries. So we bought the temporary domain names of the Stedelijk Museum and demonstrated an alternative of what is possible (making use of the Internet by organizing online exhibitions) and show what is happening now: Net art is in our eyes the only art form that's describing the 'now' as it really is. Net art uses the tools, techniques and structures of the computer: the tool that characterizes our contemporary society in all aspects of our everyday life. For us the challenge was to find a form, a translation into an exhibition, to show net art online to an online audience. We created a space (a virtual stage) in the context of the computer (online) where the audience understood they were going to see art, that they were visiting an exhibition (this happened by using the name of the most significant contemporary art museum of the Netherlands). The questions we asked ourselves while looking at net art were: What is being communicated and how? We tried to understand what the art form was about and we concluded that it says something about how people relate to technology. What we found interesting (in order to create a space in the context of the computer where the audience understood that they were visiting an exhibition) is that net art says something about how people respond to the digital, the Internet, the computer. It says something about how our digital environment shapes us and how we give shape to it. These were our starting points: (art - curator - exhibition - medium - audience) - Net art is an unpredictable experience, an art form that makes demands of the viewer - As curators (and designers) our task is to create a space and tell a story - A curator brings together works; makes them connect and interact with each other - The exhibition space is an online exhibition space - The medium is the Internet (the Internet is more than a digital brochure) - Our computers are where we are - The internet is a mass medium and the viewer/ visitor is often alone - The viewer is a media user and is in essence an active receiver - Media users are conditioned to react in a certain way - Net art demands a certain state of mind of the viewer - The viewer has to tolerate something unpredictable and is automatically participating - The curator has to create an experience, where the viewer will not immediately close the tab and return to the 'trusted' environment - The visibility of the exhibition is crucial; the audience needs to find its way to the exhibition - An online exhibition is not different from an offline exhibition - Net art is in the first place about art, technology is subordinate We decided to treat the whole site as one large surface, a floor, or a wall. A non-linear design solution like this, without a static starting point and a clear finishing line, would encourage the visitor to (actively) explore the site. It's easy to grasp, and still the opposite of being spoonfed content in a scripted way. Since we wanted the site to be one open space, and to not make use of a strict grid for the layout, the artworks could easily be connected with each other, and it made it possible to "hang" the exhibition quite freely. (We like to create and come up with a narrative and atmosphere for every new exhibition). The websites with the artworks are loaded into iframes, as the frames come into view. This means that we don't host the works ourselves, but are dependent on the artists keeping their work online. The ubiquitous "top left menu" grows as the viewer uncovers the site. It shows you where you have been, rather whan where you will go. The visual treatment of the site reflects both the playful attitudes often found in the works, it is made to invite the visitor to take part, to move around. The visitor should understand or figure out the space by himself, we think this way the works get the focus they should have. To make the exhibition work we had to find a balance in the combination of various elements: concept & form becomes content & aesthetics. This resulted in a virtual exhibition in which net art artworks interact with each other, and become a whole, a unity in one show. This is the first time this happened, and a lot of people (artists and visitors) seem to appreciate it. We want to thank Jonas Lund for programming this project for us and we are grateful for his advice in realizing this project. We want to thank Constant Dullaart for this important collaboration; he introduced us to the subject of net art and introduced us to the artists involved and the participating writers as well. We also want to thank Marialaura for inviting us and apologize for our very late contribution to this discussion. To the list: Sorry to send you our first email this late. But we hope you like reading it and to hear from you. Sincerely, Amber Kalle P.S. You can read more about our ways of seeing here, Annet Dekker in conversation with curators: http://www.baltanlaboratories.org/borndigital/conversations-with-curators-4/ and again: You can experience/ visit the current exhibition here: http://www.temporarystedelijk.com/