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Data sheet (Event):

Enter Action Digital Art Now: Exhibiting Net.art

Title of event
Enter Action Digital Art Now
Start date
2009-02-07
End date
2009-04-26
Event location
ARoS Arthus Kunstmuseum, ARoS Alle 2, Denmark
Type of event
Exposition
Participation method
Analyse
Theme
6- Museum practices for works featuring technological components

Observer: Andrea Koteles

Enter Action Digital Art Now is the title of an exhibition. This exhibition spans over three spaces, the Special Exhibitions Gallery in AroS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark, online, and out in the city through performance. The online section of this exhibition also acts as an online exhibition catalogue that brings all pieces together in space and time. The specially designed website makes use of a more interactive interface style, in order to coincide with the theme of the exhibition: technology and its interaction with people.

The website is designed to exist in a virtual 3-dimensional space within which the works are dispersed. There is a template on how the works are displayed and what documentation accompanies them. These documents include: photos of the pieces in the gallery, videos of people interacting with the pieces in the gallery, artist information, artist interviews on video, and basic information such as title, artist, year, and courtesy of.

There is one art piece that does not contain all of these documents. This is the Net art piece that the online exhibition was created to highlight. There are two interesting things to note about this piece in the exhibition: one, its selection and two, its interactive quality. The selection process was done by form of a relay. The curators asked artist Morgan Jacobsen to select two pieces and then ask another artist to select a piece, and so on until there were ten pieces. There is then a link to a blog, where users can suggest other Net art works. This link will remain active for as long as the exhibition is on, until April 2009. Their choice of a relay system is said to be “in keeping with the ramified and democratic character of net art” (Source: www.aros.dk/enteraction). I believe the choice to create a blog is also in keeping with this democratic character.

Although I appreciate their attempt to capture the ramified nature of the Internet, I don’t believe they’ve gone far enough. By including such a large number of Net art pieces, the depth of context for each piece has been compromised. Furthermore, none of them have surrounding documentation. All that exists to introduce the pieces is a short paragraph, and then a link to the site. This could be seen as an attempt to add to the ‘democratic’ nature of the exhibition. However, I believe one of the strengths of a good exhibition is the selection and contextualization it brings to a work.

The artist Morgens Jacobsen has one piece included in the exhibition, his disappearing blog, Glemsel.net. Being the artist who helped curate the show, an interview between him and curators Anne Sophie Witze and Anne Sophie Lossing has been included on the site. In this interview, Jacobsen describes the process behind his piece, along with the concept and the debates that surrounded it. This is an extremely interesting aspect of the work that, although is still accessible, is not apparently so. It also does not comply with how the rest of the pieces are documented in the exhibition.

In general my concern rests on the fact that the pieces in the Net art exhibition were not given as much attention as the more material pieces of the exhibition. There may be logistical issues with getting all of that documentation, but this could be remedied by relying more heavily on the audience for input. Making use of the ramified nature of the Internet could mean making audience content available through more than just the blog they did set up. The audience could contribute with opinions, photos, or even screen capturing software to share their experience with these Net art pieces.

Links:

ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum website
[On-line] (Page consulted March 3, 2009)

Enter Action Digital Art Now Online exhibition
[On-line] (Page consulted March 3, 2009)

Enter Action review on Artnews.org
[On-line] (Page consulted March 3, 2009)


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