Part of Winter 2009
A co-presentation with Images Festival 09
How is the Internet changing our perception of art? With its indiscriminate cataloguing and non-hegemonic invitation to participate in that collecting, the Internet presents an idiosyncratic account of Art Since 1960. The democratic and self-regulating mechanisms of the Internet make artworks and art world information easily accessible for re-presention by its users.
Pleasure Dome and Images Festival are honored to host an informal multimedia lecture with Hanne Mugaas and Cory Arcangel that examines the alternate discourse on contemporary art that is unfolding on the world wide web. “The control systems that normally govern the systematization of art are dismantled by the search algorithms and whims of home users,” according to Hanne Mugaas. The academic discipline of Art History is bypassed and the curatorial rigour of the museum is rejected in each Internet users’ posting. Certainly institutions have their Websites, but they are overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of posts by users who ignore their methodologies. What are the results when this discourse is disrupted or lost? Are the long established theories of art merely fusty conceits, irrelevant and elitist notions?
Gathering together art images, video and audio, Hanne Mugaas and Cory Arcangel survey Internet art collections and probe how users contextualize them. They offer their view on how this open sourcing of art and ideas has resulted in a variety of contiguities, conflations and collisions.
Cory Arcangel is an internationally renowned digital hacker known for his conceptual art projects. www.beigerecords.com/cory/tags/artwork/.
Hanne Mugaas is curator of art ephemera as well as a thought provoking art and culture pundit. View her collection of audiovisual postings at hanne-mugaas.com/artblog/.
