Octopus


Octopus, by Trevor Paglen allows visitors from across the globe to virtually experience the London exhibition through a live web portal connected to cameras placed in the gallery. Online participants can observe visitors experiencing the work in person and can be “present” in the space by streaming their personal webcams on monitors displayed within the exhibition. As art spaces continue to grapple with visitor access in a post-COVID era, Octopus offers a new perspective on virtual engagement in the gallery space

David Byrne’s fake iPhone apps

WEASELFACE

CHILDSTER 1

David Byrne made a bunch of fake screenshots for iPhone apps that don’t exist. They’ll be in an exhibit called ‘Social Media,’ at The Pace Gallery (510 West 25th Street) from September 16 – October 15:

“The exhibition focuses on contemporary artists exploring public platforms for communication and social networks through an aesthetic and conceptual lens. In an era of increasingly omnipresent new technologies, Social Media examines the impact of these systems as they transform human expression, interaction, and perception.”

Social Media at Pace Gallery

(via Boing Boing)

Photo report: Order and Progress

“Order and Progress is the first Italian solo show by the Dutch artist Rosa Menkman (Arnhem, The Netherlands 1983), curated by Domenico Quaranta at Fabio Paris Art Gallery (Brescia).
The title of the show, inspired by the Brazilian flag (Menkman developed one of the works on show in Brazil, during a residency at the São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound), is an ironic and cynical reference to the ideology behind all technological developments: an ideology that the artist combats with her obsessive exploration of the aesthetic, poetic and cultural consequences of the error.
Menkman’s work focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in digital media. The visuals she makes are the results of glitches, compressions, feedback and other forms of noise.”

I took some pictures :-)

Demolish the eerie ▼oid from Rosa Menkman on Vimeo.

Every website is a monument

Every website is a monument is the first solo Italian exhibition of Greek artist Angelo Plessas at Gloriamaria Gallery (Milan). In his work Plessas combines animated drawings with domain names to create websites. He treats websites as places where we can imagine and experience objects, the same way we can admire a sculpture in a public space.

More infos here.

A serious artist

Yesterday I went to the Tate Modern to visit Gabriel Orozco’s exhibition. I thought I knew his research quite well upon entering the show, but I found myself surprised and amused more than expected. Orozco’s mix of lightness and depth is quite unique.
Unfortunately photographing was not permitted, so I’m posting some “found” pics of the works I enjoyed the most. If you happen to be around London, don’t miss it…

I’m a famous artist

David Kramer, “Impressive Resume,” 2010.
Currently on view at Galerie Laurent Godin, Paris

“We live in this time where everything is in the present tense. Memories are simply the source materials for “tonight’s act.” Any film clip or historical document can be summoned by surfing the web, and entire TV networks are devised to trot out re-runs of Westerns and cartoons, all juxtaposed against the backdrop of people downloading what just happened, off of their telephones for public consumption. Through this, I am a storyteller. An archivist and an entertainer. And most importantly an artist.”

Exhibition One: a computer rendered group show

Gentili Apri is teaming up with Chrystal Gallery to present Exhibition One. A computer rendered group show with works by Kari Altmann, Charles Broskoski, Lindsay Lawson, Billy Rennekamp, Maxwell Simmer, and Harm Van Den Dorpel – curated and rendered by Timur Si-Qin.

Extracting a parallel instance of the work as a three-dimensional representation of geometric data, Exhibition One offers an opportunity to present an alternate framework that posits the questions: Where does an artwork stop and its documentation begin? What is the function of a prospective image that is decisively not-a-model?

Maps and Legends: photos and texts

“The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of ‘how to do’.
The salvation of photography comes from the experiment.”
(Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 1947)

Maps and Legends. When Photography Met the Web focus on the relations that photographic practice is establishing with the world of the Web: its culture, its language and its imagery. From animated.gifs to photos shot in virtual worlds; from the images of Google Street Views to snapshots that change in real time, with the data flows, and on to the camera that captures time instead of space.

testo in catalogo (ita)
catalogue text (eng)

Maps and Legends. When Photography Met the Web
curated by Valentina Tanni

Fotografia Festival 2010
Rome, Macro Testaccio
23 September – 24 October
www.fotografiafestival.it

FotoGrafia Festival is coming soon!

I’m working really hard on the setting of the art show I curated here in Rome. The exhibition is called “Maps and Legends. When Photography Met the Web” and of course it’s about the relationship between photography and internet culture.
The show is part of FotoGrafia Festival 2010, the ninth edition of the International Rome Photo Festival (the website will be live in a couple of days… in the meantime, you can find some info and press material here and here).

I’m posting below the Festival’s invitation, in the animated version made by Jaime Martinez, one of the artists in my show (thanks Jaime!).

If any of you is in Rome or is planning to come before 24th of October, please consider visiting the show :-)
The opening is on Thursday night (23rd September), from 7 to 11 p.m. at Macro Testaccio (Ex Mattatoio), Piazza Orazio Giustiani, Rome.

Anyway, I will post photos and videos very soon :-)

You, the World and I

You, the World and I: new video work by Jon Rafman. A voice over essay about love, memory, photography, technology, and our experience of the world.

“In this modern day Orphean tale, an anonymous narrator also desperately searches for a lost love.  Rather than the charms of the lyre, contemporary technological tools, Google Street View and Google Earth, beckon as the pathway for our narrator to regain memories and recapture traces of his lost love. In the film, they are as captivating and enthralling as charming as any lyre in retrieving the other: at first they might seem an open retort to critics of new technology who bemoan the lack of the tangible presence of the other in our interactions on the Internet.” (full statement here).

[p.s. this is another work that will be shown in Maps and Legends, my forthcoming exhibition during FotoGrafia Festival. Come and have a look if you’re in Rome from September 23th to October 24th]

Archives: Netizens and L’oading

I took advantage of these calm midsummer days to dig into my analog archive and reverse some material that otherwise would be lost. I’m very proud to show you what I found!
Here are some videos that document my first two exhibitions, both organized between the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003. They’re television reviews, so sometimes the voice over tells naive or even wrong stuff, and they’re available only in italian, but nonetheless…
I was younger, slimmer and full of enthusiasm :-)

The first two videos are about “Netizens. Cittadini della rete” (december 2002), a small show I curated in a private gallery in Rome. The show was not just about net art, but about making art in the age of the Internet, and more precisely, it tried to demostrate how important was for this new community of young artists to share a citizenship: the web citizenship.
Artists: Cory Arcangel/BEIGE, Elout De Kok, Jodi.org, Limiteazero, Carlo Zanni
more info: http://www.netizensonline.it/2002

The third video is a review of “L’oading. Videogiochi Geneticamente Modificati” (Genetically Modified Videogames). This show was open from January to March 2003 at the Siracusa City Museum, in Sicily and it was, as the title suggests, about artistic modifications of videogames.
I’m particularly happy that this video exists because this exhibition didn’t have a catalogue, so there’s no documentation around, and I think it was a great project.
Artists: Mauro Ceolin, Brody Condon, Arcangel Costantini, Corby&Baily, Delire, Victor Liu See-Lee, Nullpointer, Chiara Passa, Retroyou, Gentian Skhurti
more info: https://www.valentinatanni.com/2008/07/2003-loading-videogiochi-geneticamente-modificati/

Enjoy the jump in the past :-)

LABoral photo report

“Para-Sites features a series of subtle interventions conceived for interstitial spaces, locations and human-scale architectural elements at Laboral. By means of projections, a parallel reality is superimposed on that of the space itself. The interventions work as parasites, disturbing and altering our perceptions of an already familiar place.

Last week I took a trip to Gijon, in order to attend the opening of Para-sites, an exhibition by Pablo Valbuena at LABoral. I also visited the other two shows currently on view in the museum: Habitar and Process as paradigm, which include lots of interesting projects. As usual, here’s my photoreport.

net.art is dead! Long live pop.net.art!

“net.art never died! It just moved to your local Internet-shop!”. An exhibition project by Aram Bartholl

“Hit an Internet-cafe, rent all computers they have and run a show on them for one night. All art works of the participating artists need to be on-line (not necessarily public) and are shown in a typical browser with standard plug-ins. Performance and life pieces may also use pre-installed communication programs (instant messaging, VOIP, video chat etc). Custom software (except browser add-ons) or off-line files are not permitted. Any creative physical modification to Internet cafe itself is not allowed. The show is public and takes place during normal opening hours of the Internet cafe/shop. All visitors are welcome to join the opening, enjoy the art (and to check their email.)”

SPEED SHOW manifest by Aram Bartholl 2010