<nettime-ann> [ann] Connessioni Leggendarie - Press Release

["dom/" <qrndnc@yahoo.it>]

*CONNESSIONI LEGGENDARIE*
20 October - 10 November 2005
Mediateca di Santa Teresa.
Via della Moscova, 28 - 20121 Milano.
MM2 Moscova or MM3 Turati.

Connessioni Leggendarie is the first exhibition devoted to NET.ART
history. Referring to a wide audience it reviews the years from 1995 to
2005; during this decade, artists separated by geographical and
socio-political barriers shared ideas and artworks, using them as
creative weapons over a new and unique continent: the Internet.

Working with net languages, developing collective actions with a strong
media impact, bringing irony, deconstruction and, why not, fun inside the
formal severity of digital cultures, artists belonging to NET.ART gave
life to a true legend.

Between complex theories and Dadaist euphoria, Connessioni Leggendarie
will bring us between hopes and fears of our wildly digitized time. A
decade of technical and cultural Far West, aiming to explore and to
conquer new lands, languages, behaviours, contraddictions and limits of a
world traumatically connected to the information highways.

Born with a taste of historical avant-garde and often blamed of computer
and media piracy, NET.ART hit all the aesthetic and conceptual targets in
a time of change with no precedent. Huge emulations, spoofs and pillages
reveal the borders of obsolete conventions and legal parameters.
Aesthetical viruses and media epidemics. Software hacked to blow the
user's mind rather than the user's computer.

The exhibition tracks the topic moments of NET.ART history, which is
however more similar to a Sergio Leone's "dirty plot" than to the clean
museum rooms: to the historian's methods it surely prefers the great
romancer mitopoietical ability. There's no other way to talk about
FuckUFuckMe, the website selling fake technological apparels for
cybersex, ordered by real customers as if they were real; Nike Ground,
the mock Nike campaign organized by 0100101110101101.ORG that made Wien
citizens go out of their mind; the identity correction of the Yes Men,
that made G.W. Bush say: "some freedoms should be limited"; the challenge
to the esoteric American electoral machine, realized with an auction
website, where citizens were able to sell their vote directly to the best
bidder ([V]ote-auction by Ubermorgen)...

The epic narration loves digressions: that's why Connessioni Leggendarie
gathers the fast-paced narration of these adventures and long excursuses
to the utilization of informatic languages as a poetic language [code
poetry], and on the transformation of the software into an artwork,
regretting functionalities in favour of aesthetical, conceptual or social
needs [software art].

Connessioni Leggendarie isn't, and doesn't want to be, a final
exhibition: it's only the first, perfectible version of the legend and an
attempt to suggest to institutions, which are often insensible, ways and
formulas to preserve a history risking to get completely lost as a
document and to be at the mercy of the ungovernable limbo of oral
history. In 1995, Jeff Rothemberg warned: "Digital information lasts
forever - or for five years, whichever comes first".

Aware of this problem, Connessioni Leggendarie tries this new rigorous
interface, using the instruments of documentation and emulation to refer
to the spirit of the legend, rather than to quote. Therefore, video
documents are displayed together with installations, dedicated PCs and
panels, depending on the characteristics of every single project.

Invited artists
* Ubermorgen (Austria)
* The Yes Men (U.S.A.)
* Surveillance Camera Players (U.S.A.)
* Sebastian J. F. (Austria)
* RTMARK (U.S.A.)
* Joan Leandre \ retroYou (Spain)
* Mark Napier (U.S.A.)
* Natalie Bookchin (U.S.A.)
* Jodi (Holland)
* 0100101110101101.ORG (Italia)
* Jaromil (Italy/Austria)
* I/O/D (U.K.)
* Heath Bunting (U.K.)
* Florian Cramer (Germany)
* Electronic Disturbance Theater (U.S.A.)
* Cornelia Sollfrank (Germany)
* Alexei Shulgin (Russia)
* Alexander R. Galloway (U.S.A.)
* Adrian Ward (U.K.)
* [epidemiC] (Italy)
* Amy Alexander (U.S.A.)
* Mongrel P
_______________________________________________
nettime-ann mailing list
nettime-ann@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ann