Hi everybody:
There are many questions going on, and I find it impossible to refer to them
all. So I'm going to begin for the last one: do curators find it "easier" to
exhibit net.art than physical works?
There are maybe many answers to this question but I think that any answer
needs, first of all, to be contextualized. As a Latin American curator,
working mainly in Latin America, there's an immediate response: No.
If "exhibit" means to do it in a physical space, the main reason is a
technical one: difficulties to get the hardware to exhibit the pieces,
difficulties to have a good Internet conection (many times the works must be
exhibited off-line!), difficulties to conect computers in places that are
not prepared for electronic equipments... But those are not specifical
curatorial problems.
(( If "exhibit" includes "virtual" exhibitions: "...well... you know...
that's not exactly an exhibition... Are you crazy? What do you need money
for? Internet is a free space! OK, we may find someone to design the page
for you and we may ask the university to place it... Anything else?..." (the
progressive answer); "We need people to come to the museum and, who's going
to come to watch the pieces of those unknown artists, specially when they
can do it at home?" (the common answer). But these are not specifical
curatorial problems too ))
Going back to the physical exhibition, I think that there are many other
things to think about. One of them is included in the "common answer": why
would people move to do something that they may do at home? Why would they
spend time in the context of an exhibition to do something they maybe do
very often (surf/esplore the web) even if the exhibited works are quite
different from the stuff they are used to navigating?
If we look at Documenta X or Venice/Sao Paulo Biennials experiences the
failure is absolutely apparent. And we know that people that didn't explore
the pieces at the exhibition probably didn't do it at their homes neither...
Other venues, as Ars Electronica or ISEA are not very different, even when
they have web-oriented audiences.
I think that net.art worth being exhibited and its relations to the rest of
artistic production and to curatorial discurses should be explored. But we
have to face first a conceptual problem: how to do it. And I woldn't say
that's an "easy" commitment.
Rodrigo Alonso
PD: I appologize if my English is quite weird (it's not my mother
language...)
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