Digital Dynamics – Nýjar birtingarmyndir listarinnar

Digital Dynamics – Nýjar birtingarmyndir listarinnar

Digital Dynamics – Nýjar birtingarmyndir listarinnar

English version

Sýningin Digital Dynamics – Nýjar birtingarmyndir listarinnar er haldin í tilefni að kynningu og útkomu bókarinnar Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art, sem ritstýrt er af Tanya Toft Ag og gefin út af forlaginu Intellect Books. Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir er höfundur kaflans „Visions and Divides in Icelandic Contemporarty Art“, en hún er jafnframt sýningarstjóri Nýrra birtingarmynda listarinnar. Sýningin og pallborðsumræður um sama efni, ber að líta á sem framhald af umfjöllunarefni kafla bókarinnar.

Á undanförnum áratugum hafa tölvur, forrit, stafrænar myndavélar fyrir ljósmyndir og hreyfimyndir, ásamt Internetinu breytt því hvernig listamenn skapa og setja fram verk sín. Á allra síðustu árum hafa samfélagsmiðlar opnað nýjan vettvang fyrir sýningu verka og víðtækari dreifingu en frumkvöðlar netlistarinnar gat nokkurntíma dreymt um. Kynslóðir listamanna sem hafa alist upp  með lyklaborð og leikjatölvur sem framlengingu af fingurgómunum, líta á sýndarveruleikann sem eðlilegt framhald af efnislegu rými.

Þau sjá tölvuleiki, sjónræn samskiptaforrit, vettvang skyndiskilaboða og persónulegar vefsíður sem opin rými fyrir útgáfu og kynningu á verkum sínum. Internetið hefur einnig gert listasöguna samstundis aðgengilega í gegnum myndir af listaverkum frá öllum tíma, sem afmáir sögulegar tímalínur og stigveldi milli áhugafólks og atvinnumanna. Á árdaga Internetsins var litið á það sem útópískt rými sem fljótlega umbreyttist í dystópískan suðupott að því er virtist merkingarlausra upplýsinga, sjálfhverfra auglýsinga, pólítísks áróðurs, almenns eftirlits og efnahagslegra róreiðu.

Engu að síður hefur anarkískt netkerfi hins dystópíska Internets varðveitt rými fyrir frelsi einstaklings, pólitískan aktívisma og gagn-menningarleg mótmæli. Sem stafræn hraðbraut er Internetið netkerfi sem greiðir fyrir flæði kóðara upplýsinga og hluta. Sem kóði er netið tæki og tungumáli, á meðal annarra tæknilegra tóla sem eru orðin hluti af verkfærakassa listamannsins. Netið er geymsluhólf fyrir margskonar viðfangsefni, sem hafa veitt ímyndarafli listamanna samtímans innblástur, og gefið verkum þeirra merkingu á undanförnum árum.

Listamennirnir sem eiga verk á vefsýningunni Nýjar birtingarmyndir listarinnar (e. Arts New Representations) hafi allir sótt innblástur á Internetið og efnisveitur þess. Ólík frumkvöðlum netlistarinnar eru þeir ekki uppteknir af því að vefa verk sinn í netið, heldur vinna þeir með vídeó, fundnar myndir, hljóð, vísindagögn, forrit, þrívíðar hreyfimyndir og skönnun, sem hægt er að greypa inn á ólíkar vefsíður eins og gert er á þessari sýningu.

Innihald verkanna snýr að efni eins og líkamsímynd, félagslegri stöðu, óöryggi, ótta, sambandi manns og náttúru, vísindagögnum og óhlutbundnu myndmáli. Verkin eru ljóðræn, pólitísk, húmorísk og vekja til djúprar ígrundunar á sama tíma og þau fara yfir mæri og leggja til nýjar birtingarmyndir listarinnar. Þátttakendur í sýningunni Nýjar birtingarmyndir listarinnar eru Sæmundur Þór Helgason, Anna Fríða Jónsdóttir, Hákon Bragason, Ágústa Ýr Guðmundsdóttir og Haraldur Karlsson.

Samhliða sýningunni verður sýnd upptaka af pallborðsumræðum, þar sem annar hópur ungra listamanna ræðir afstöðu sína til stafrænnar tækni og áhrif hinna stafrænu og síðstafrænu tíma á eigin listsköpun. Þátttakendur í pallborðinu eru Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar, Auður Lóa Guðnadóttir, Fritz Hendrik Berndsen og Freyja Eilíf.

Viðburðirnir eru styrktir af Nordic Culture Fund og Nordic Culture Point sem hluti af Digital Dynmics: New Ways of Art . Þeir eru skipulagðir í samvinnu við Artzine og Tanya Toft Ag.

Sjá nánar á vefsíðunni: digitaldynamics.art

Um listamennina sem eiga verk á sýningunni

Sæmundur Thor Helgason (f. 1986) starfar í Reykjavík, London og Amsterdam. Hann er einn af stofnendum HARD-CORE, félags sem frá árinu 2011 hefur unnið að þróun aðferðar við sýningarstjórnun sem byggir á algóritma ásamt því að reka netgalleríið Cosmos Carl. Árið 2017 stofnaði hann Félag Borgara (e. Fellowship of Citizens), sem hefur það markmarkmið að berjast fyrir borgaralaunum á Íslandi.

Hann starfar nú sem gestalistamaður hjá Rikjsakademie van Beeldende Kunsten í Amsterdam þar sem hann vinnur að verkum tengdum markmiðum Félags Borgara. Á Artzine sýnir Sæmundur Þór stiklu fyrir vídeóverkið Working Dead (2020), þar sem við sögu kemur kemur magagrófsþrýstibeltið Solar Plexus Pressure Belt™. Það er hannað af Sæmundi Thor í samstarfi við tískuhönnuðinn Agötu Mickiewicz og Gabríel Markan, sem gerði lógóið. Beltið hefur þann eiginleika að draga úr kvíða eins og þeim sem fjárhagsáhyggjur geta valdið. Vefsíða: saemundurthorhelgason.com

WORKING DEAD (2020) official trailer from Saemundur Thor Helgason on Vimeo.


Anna Fríða Jónsdóttir (f. 1984) starfar í Reykjavík og hefur sýnt verk sín bæði hér á landi og í. New York, Vín, Lichtenstein og Hong Kong. Verkið Thought Interpreter fjallar um það hvernig við skynjum áhrif frá öðru fólki og hvernig við tengjumst öðrum án þess að geta skýrt út hvernig.

Verkið stendur fyrir öll litlu skilaboðin sem við tökum við frá öðrum manneskjum í okkar daglega lífi, og hvernig við skynjum þessi skilaboð og söfnum þeim saman í eigin líkama. Verkið tengist einnig rannsóknum á því hvernig tilfinningar og merking geta haft áhrif á gerð vatnsmólekúla og hvernig við sem manneskjur  tökum við og sendum frá okkur þessar tilfinningar. Anna Fríða er með BA próf í myndlist frá Listaháskóla Íslands og MA próf í List vísindum frá Universität für die Angewandte Kunst í Vín. Vefsíða: annafrida.com


Ágústa Ýr Guðmundsdóttir (f. 1994) er búsett í London og starfar þar og í New York. Hún vinnur við gerð  þrívíddar hreyfimynda fyrir hljómsveitir og tískuhönnuði en gerir einnig eigin myndbönd  sem hún birtir á Instagram síðu sinni undir nafninu iceicebaby. Verk Ágústu Ýr fjalla um samfélagsmiðla, sjálfsmyndir og klámvæðingu og hvernig sjálfsöryggi getur unnið gegn staðalímyndum. Ágústa Ýr tók þátt í viðburðinum Waiting for the Tsunami (The New Circus) með Alterazioni Video við opnun sýningarinnar Time, Forward í V-A-C Foundation á Feneyjartvíæringnum 2019. Hún er útskrifuð frá School of Visual Arts í New York. Vefsíða: agustayr.com


Hákon Bragason (f. 1993) starfar í Reykjavík. Hann vinnur verk sín í sýndarveruleikarými sem áhorfendur ganga inn í með þrívíddargleraugum. Hákon sýnir verkið On a Branch þar sem hann skoðar nærveru fólks innan þrívíðs netrýmis. Ekki verður hægt að eiga í venjulegum samskiptum inni í rýminu og fær fólk aðeins að vita af nærveru annarra í gegnum fjölda laufblaða sem birtast á tré í miðju rýmisins. Verkið spyr spurninga um samskipti, tengsl og samskiptaleysi. Hákon hefur verið virkur í starfi listahópsins RASK collective frá því hann útskrifaðist með BA gráðu í myndlist frá Listaháskóla Íslands vorið 2019. Vefsíða: raskcollective.com/artists/hakon.html


Haraldur Karlsson (f. 1967) er búsettur í Osló og Reykjavík. Hann hefur sérhæft sig í gerð tilraunakenndra vídExit Visual Buildereóverka á síðustu tuttugu árum. Nýjustu verk hans byggja á segulómmyndum af heila og hjarta sem hann kannar á listrænum forsendum. Haraldur hefur lengi fengist við að blanda vídeómyndir á lifandi tónleikum og í streymi. Hann ætlar að streyma beinum videósnúningi á Facebook laugardaginn 13 júní kl. 21, sem síðan verður aðgengilegur á Artzine. Haraldur stundaði nám við fjöltæknideild Myndlista- og handíðaskóla Íslands, og við vídeólistadeild AKI (Academy of Arts and Industry) í Enschede, Holland, auk þess sem hann lagði stund á hljóðfræði og skynjarafræði (sonology) við Konunglega tónlistarskólann á The Hague (The Royale Conservatoire of the Hague). Vefsíða: haraldur.net


Pallborðsumræður

Upplýsingar um þáttakendur fyrir neðan.

Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar (f. 1977) býr og starfar í Reykjavík. Verk hennar fjalla um merkingu fylksins (e. matrix) frá sjónarhóli upprunlegra goðsagna og nútíma stafrænnar tækni. Fylkið ber að skilja sem hnitakerfi raunveruleikans sem einstaklingar ferðast um. Geirþrúður skoðar einnig staðfræði í innsetningum sínum og í gegnum myndefni sem hún viðar að sér úr opnum aðgangi á netinu. Hún stundaði nám við Listaháskóla Íslands, École nationale supèrieure des Beaux-Arts í París og við Konsthögskolan í Malmö.

Freyja Eilíf (f. 1986) býr og starfar í Reykjavík. Í verkum sínum framkallar hún myndir frá leiðslum inn af ólíkum vitundarsviðum og notar eigin hugbúnað sem verkfæri til að skoða ýmis óvissufræði. Hún innur verk í blandaða miðla og skapar uppsetningar staðbundið inn í hvert rými til að skapa samhljóm við þá skynjun sem hún fæst við herju sinni. Listræn rannsókn Freyju er innblásin af póst-iterneti og póst-húmanísma í listum, hugvísindum og dulvídinalegum fræðum. Freyja Eilíf útskrifaðist með BA gráðu frá Listaháskóla Íslands árið 2014. Hún stofnaði og rak Ekkisens Art Space á árunum 2014-2019 og rekur nú Museum of Perceptive Art.

Auður Lóa Guðnadóttir (f. 1993) býr og starfar í Reykjavík. Verk hennar byggja á goðsögum, bæði fornum og nýjum sem hún setur fram sem myndrænar frásagnir í litlum skúlptúr sem vísa í skrautstyttur. Myndheimur hennar er að mestu sóttur á Internetið sem hún notar sem uppsprettu verka sinna. Auður Lóa er með BA gráðu frá Listaháskóla Íslands og hefur verið virk í íslensku listalífi undanfarin. Hún hlaut Hvatningarverðlaun Myndlistarráðs árið 2018.

Fritz Hendrik Berndsen eða Fritz Hendrik IV (f. 1993) býr og starfar í Reykjavík. Hann hefur áhuga á bæði meðvituðum og ómeðvituðum sviðsetningum í lífi, list og menningu. Í verkum sínum kannar hann þessi viðfangsefni í gegnum ólíkar skáldaðar frásagnir, t.d. í samstarfi við ímyndaða Fræðimanninn (e. The Scholar) sem er sérfræðingur í að horfa á heiminn í gegnum „Gráu slæðuna“ eins og hann kallar það, um leið og hann afhjúpar gráar og ljóðrænar hliðar lífsins. Verk Fritz Hendriks eru innsetningar, málverk, skúlptúrar, ljósmyndir og vídeó. Hann er með BA gráðu frá Listaháskóla Íslands, og starfaði í átta mánuði hjá Studio Egill Sæbjörnsson í Berlín fyrir Feneyjartvíæringinn 2017.

Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir sýningarstjóri


Aðalmynd/video með frétt er eftir Ágústu Ýr Guðmundsdóttur

Digital Dynamics – Nýjar birtingarmyndir listarinnar

Digital Dynamics – Arts New Representations

Digital Dynamics – Arts New Representations

The exhibition Arts New Representations opens on Saturday June 13th at 14:00 on the website of the online magazine Artzine (https://www.artzine.is). The exhibition is part of the presentation and publication of Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art, edited by Tanya Toft Ag and published by Intellect Books. Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir, the author of the chapter “Visions and Divides in Icelandic Contemporary Art”, is the curator of the exhibition. The exhibition and a panel on the same subject will follow up on the discussion of the book.

In recent decades computers, software, digital cameras for still and moving images and the Internet have transformed the way artists create and represent their work. More recently social media have offered platforms for representation, and a wide dissemination of art that early pioneers of net art could only dream of. Generations of artists that grew up with computer keyboards and game consoles on their fingertips, perceive the cyberspace as a natural extension of their physical spaces.

They see computer games, visual communication platforms, instant messengers’ platforms and personal web sites as an open space for instant self-publishing and promotion. On the other hand, the Internet has made art history immediately accessible through images of art works from across the ages’ that blurs historical timelines and hierarchies between amateurs and professionals. In its early days, the Internet was a utopic space soon to be transformed into a dystopic melting pot of meaningless information, narcist self-promotion, political propaganda, general surveillance, and economic chaos.

However, as an anarchic network the Internet dystopia has kept a space for individual emancipation, political activism and counter-cultural protests. As a digital superhighway the Internet is a network facilitating the flow of coded information and objects. As a code it is a tool and a language, among other digital technological tools which have become part of the artists’ toolbox. As a vast bank of subject material, the Internet has inspired the imaginary of contemporary artists and arts’ content in recent years.

The artists represented in the online exhibition Arts New Representations have all been inspired by the Internet and its broad contents in some way or other. They are not like the early net artists eager to weave their work into the net itself, but work with video, found images, sound, scientific data, software tools, 3D animation and scanning that can be woven into online platforms. Content wise their work touches on subjects such as body image, social status, insecurity, anxiety, human-nature connections, scientific data and abstract imaginary. Their works are poetic, political, humorous and deeply thought provoking as they transgress boundaries and propose new artistic representations.

The artists participating in the exhibition Arts New Representations are Sæmundur Þór Helgason, Anna Fríða Jónsdóttir, Hákon Bragason, Ágústa Ýr Guðmundsdóttir og Haraldur Karlsson.

Parallel to the exhibition a panel of young artists will discuss their position on digital technology and the impact of the digital and post-digital on their own art practice and on Icelandic contemporary art. The participants in the panel are Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar, Auður Lóa Guðnadóttir, Fritz Hendrik Berndsen og Freyja Eilíf.

This program is supported by Nordic Culture Fund and the Nordic Council of Ministers as part of Digital Dynamics: New Ways of Art. It is organized in collaboration with Artzine and Tanya Toft Ag.

See further information: digitaldynamics.art

The Participating Artists

Sæmundur Thor Helgason (f. 1986) Website: saemundurthorhelgason.com/

WORKING DEAD (2020) official trailer from Saemundur Thor Helgason on Vimeo.


 

Anna Fríða Jónsdóttir (f. 1984) Website: annafrida.com


 

Ágústa Ýr Guðmundsdóttir (f. 1994) Website: : agustayr.com


 

Hákon Bragason (f. 1993) Website: : raskcollective.com/artists/hakon.html


 

Haraldur Karlsson (f. 1967) Website: haraldur.net

Streaming starts at 9 PM 13. June 2020.


Digital Dynamics – Arts New Representations from Margret E. Olafsdottir on Vimeo.


 

Panel Discussion

Participants:

Geirþrúður Finnbogadóttir Hjörvar (f. 1977)

Freyja Eilíf (f. 1986)

Auður Lóa Guðnadóttir (f. 1993)

Fritz Hendrik Berndsen / Fritz Hendrik IV

Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir Curator


Featured Image/video: By Ágústa Ýr Guðmundsdóttir

An interview with Cosmos Carl

An interview with Cosmos Carl

An interview with Cosmos Carl

Cosmos Carl is a project by artists Frederique Pisuisse and Saemundur Thor Helgason. Their website can be described as an artist-run online exhibition platform that celebrates the democratization of the web while unveiling its potential when it comes to presenting artworks. Frederique and Saemundur are both based in Amsterdam, where we met to talk about the ongoing voyage of Cosmos Carl.

B: When and how did the Cosmos Carl adventure begin?

F+S: It started after we moved in to our first apartment together in 2014, along with two other people who are both curators. Two artists, two curators in one house. There was a separate room in the house that we thought to do something with, like hosting exhibitions or artists’ projects, which in the end didn’t work out. So we resolved it by doing something online instead. When we started out we saw Cosmos Carl as a response to the net-art at the time, which was very code-based. This made the presentation of art very difficult if the artist didn’t have experience in coding. Artists were already using platforms like YouTube and Vimeo to distribute and present their work online, but mostly through their private artist websites and portfolios. Cosmos Carl became a way to use these existing platforms to explore the online presence of artworks and a way to critique platform-based capital by misusing them for art.

Our first project was with Icelandic artist Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson, and it was our contribution to the Frieze art fair of 2014. We made a film with him and originally hosted it on a special Cosmos Carl Vimeo page. Styrmir’s video recalls an encounter he had while buying fried chicken from a street vendor. At the same time the story is told, he navigates a little trip from an apartment, to the market, and to the vendors house where a humorous exchange of deals takes place. The visualization of his trip happens on Google Maps. It was after this project that we realized the full potential of Cosmos Carl, and the video was later moved to Styrmir’s own Vimeo account and presented as a hyperlink on the CC website.

 

Calling you from Cosmos Carl (2014) by Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson.

The name came to us while watching the Cosmos series, made by Carl Sagan in the 80s. I (Frederique) kept referring to the show as Cosmos Carl, and it seemed to fit with what we were doing by creating an online exhibition space. The internet is often perceived as this infinite, non-material thing but vast enough to cruise around as Carl Sagan does in the series. Our intention is to expose and show our visitors corners of the web they wouldn’t necessarily see otherwise.

B: What advantages do you see in artists using these pre-existing platforms versus the traditional artist-as-coder approach when it comes to presenting art online?

F+S: We were already using platforms such as Google Drive and similar apps to communicate and work through. We find them interesting because the politics of those platforms are much more embedded in to the fabric of the world wide web. When we started, we thought net-art was really formal, in the way that artists were using code and software to create images and fictional worlds, almost like paintings and sculpture. We are interested in seeing art being presented online in a more casual way, within the flow of browsing social media sites or eBay. It’s important for us to see art contaminate and be a part of our every-day internet usage.

B: When I visit the Cosmos Carl website, I feel as if I’m at a virtual transfer station… I enter it, and I am immediately sent back to other, often more familiar interfaces. How do you see artworks contributing to this flow of images we are so strangely accustomed to?

F+S: The language of the Cosmos series has provided us with a good analogy, for the viewers travels through space on Carl Sagan’s voyager. Experiencing the Cosmos Carl websites means navigating through a constellation of artworks which exist on different platforms. It’s like a cross-section of the web, and more like a map in this sense. The page directs our visitors to platforms and content that they don’t usually belong to. From the perspective of the platforms that host some of the works it’s difficult to figure out what the interests of visitors arriving via Cosmos Carl actually is.

The online art crowd is pretty undefined to the platforms if you compare it to their subscribers and daily users. We see art occupying these spaces as part of our process to reclaim space for art and democratize the web. Artists used to feel hesitant by showing their work online because of the border that coding created, but in reality, artists use the internet as much as anyone else in their research and free time. As a consequence it has become much easier for artists to imagine their work online if they imagine it belonging to this flow. We encourage them to display their work as they would like to stumble upon it in their act of browsing online and contribute to this flow of data, images and sounds…

It’s been over a year now since an artist has supplied us with a link to their own website and sadly, most of those earlier contributed links are offline by now. In one case, a porn site actually bought a domain name once owned by Nicolas Riis. He made this website and named it cleancare.club It was a beautiful website with his research material and objects that belonged to his thinking process. it was actually a type of object porn. Then he stopped paying for it, so the domain name was taken over by this porn site and for a while Cosmos Carl was temporarily presenting Nicolas Riis’ contribution as a porn site!

It’s currently offline again, but I’m sure the domain will get another resurrection. Actually, now it has become a sort of video platform! Dropbox, eBay and the like just stay online however. The biggest websites don’t renew their links, the URLs just get longer. One work was actually presented as a poetic tour through a fictional apartment on AirBnB! No one has yet reported it as a fake place, so it stays there, which is a really fun thing.

To sell a river? (2016) Josephine Callaghan

B: It’s very beautiful to think about art belonging more and more to the gesture of browsing the web… Jorik Amit Galama’s work is hosted on liveleak.com, and it’s interesting how the work appears next to advertisements, click bates and videos that could relate to his film called Cateater. Do you think it can take over at some point? What’s the influence of art taking up online space, where does it lead, besides a more inspiring and cultured web experience?

F+S: We believe we are continuing the trajectory of culture jamming, a movement which has its roots in activism. Google and YouTube are “bad” corporations, but we use them anyway. By using them you are forced to agree to their specific terms and conditions which concern your privacy online. We see Cosmos Carl as being quite mischievous because it uses the platforms in an unintended way. Culture jamming made use of already existing advertisement images to alter them and therefore shift our understanding of corporate identities and capitalism. We like the idea of using these existing platforms in an unintended way, to undermine and critique them.

Cateater (2019) Jorik Amit Galama 

Jorik Amit Galama’s film Cateater is a good example. The work is an essayistic film and poem which pops up on the very dodgy platform liveleaks.com. The platform allows for very violent and disturbing content, and Jorik’s contribution to Cosmos Carl involves uploading a video to liveleaks that responds to it in a way that hopefully confronts its daily users and their addiction to this unhealthy material. The impact is probably more if you don’t get introduced to the work via Cosmos Carl, but stumble upon it through its clickbait title Cateater. It’s interesting for us to see artworks in these different contexts of the web and claiming space there in a gesture of disruption and critique.

Few contributions are really on the edge of our own ethical borders. One piece took place on a sex workers platform named myfreecam, used by two artists who were raising funds for a future exhibition. The piece consisted in them doing live nude drawing in front of a webcam. The concept was that they were wearing socks, and I remember there was a dog involved as well. Viewers could therefore attend the event, chip in and ask for specific drawings. It is of course very different when you enter these kind of chatrooms with the interest of looking at it from an artistic perspective to a perverted one. That line really blurred there and we felt the work confronted notions of the male gaze by dealing directly with a platform that encourage it. In a way, it’s interesting to think about these two different groups coming together in a chatroom like that, and all of them being anonymous as well.

When you visit this link now you are redirected to Camilla Rhodes’ profile on this platform. She is the alter ego of an artist from Mexico who finances a part of her practice by doing these types of performances.

Nude with Socks (2018) Camilla Rhodes and Zoe Claire Miller

B: Cosmos Carl is accessible 24/7 and provides visitors with a private experience of art. How do you feel about the accessibility and intimacy the web provides? How does it influence your visitors?

F+S: It’s tricky with online art. In a way it very much conforms to the on-demand attitude, but at the same time it’s not a social act. We feel like people might ignore Cosmos Carl for a few months and then come back to it to binge artworks. Just statistically speaking, people spend around 3 minutes on average on the site itself, before they embark on the journey provided by the hyperlinks that are there. It’s a very light site with almost nothing on it, and therefore becomes a pretty easy task to immediately jump out of it as soon as you enter.

B: Can you tell me how the design of the site came together?

F+S: We borrowed the design from the Werkplaats Typografie (Arnhem) and the typeface is made by Gabríel Markan, also known as Gnax Type. The typeface, available through the Cosmos Carl website, mixes references to digital aesthetics and traditional calligraphy. We like it because it makes the interface and design of Cosmos Carl very unfamiliar and therefore fits with this idea of being a portal.

B: I’m curious to know how an online opening works, and how you introduce yourself to the rest of the web?

F+S: We have a launch every other Friday. There is a ritual which takes place with the introduction of each new link. It’s good for us to keep it rigid. Adding works to the site is practically as simple as sharing a link. We announce each new work on Facebook with an event, and afterwards the links exist on our page as undated, infinite hyperlinks. We feel positive about branching out through interviews and doing more things in public, hopefully belonging to more intricate networks of websites. People are going to be led to our page via artzine, which is a great thing. A Wikipedia page would also be helpful.

We had a contribution as part of a collaboration with the Young Art Biennial in Moskow with Art+Feminism. They are a group of online activists who edit and add pages about women artists, writers, thinkers, musicians, and the more forgotten female figures in history. This needs to be done because Wikipedia is sadly a very male-dominant place. If you look at any male writer who has done something and compare it to a female one, there will undoubtedly be more information and praise about the male one. It’s also very likely that the woman you’re looking for doesn’t even exist on Wikipedia. How we present ourselves outside the CC website is something we are thinking about now, and hopefully we can find a solution to integrate more creatively into people’s calendars. Facebook served us well so far, but we feel there could be a more old-school, analog way to announce the launch of each new link. To be resolved.

B: …and how do you tackle issues relating to the lifetime of the page and the links provided?

F+S: Rhizome started a service which lets you record websites. It started by archiving the net art works from the 90ies and records them in a way that enables you to experience them in the technological context of the time. For example, Constant Dullaart made a work which used Google, and when you visit the piece through Rhizomes archive, you see the work through a browser from that time. You see the piece in its original quality and resolution.

You can do it to your own page as well, and we’ve started archiving Cosmos Carl through their service. The archive of the internet (archive.org) has also been archiving the internet, but in a less precise way. It visits every single website every now and then, and skims over it while taking screenshots. It then creates an overview of the development of your website through screenshots, which you can of course download in case you want to make a biography about your website. But Rhizome is more precise and works better for what we need, it enables us to record the whole website experience with all its links.

B: …So online archiving methods lets you store entire websites similarly to how you store image information inside a .jpg file?

F+S: Precisely. We were wondering if Cosmos Carl needed to be archived, or if we should just celebrate the temporal nature of the internet. The more a link is shared, the longer it lives. But links die out, websites disappear. There are companies which maintain everything very well, but even there, images take up a lot of space and disappear for no reason. No one knows where they go.

As far as artworks go, well, we think it’s important to see them as just being a part of the internet. We decided to start archiving Cosmos Carl because we are making a guided tour through the website that places it within the context of what is happening in the world of platform capitalism today. Capitalism is becoming more and more platform-based and we are interested in reflecting on what the status of art works are within that process. Our work speaks of these less-obvious layers of the internet, but in the subtle activist way that art does. We are able to critique it while being the users of it.

B: You recently did a presentation (at Page Not Found in Den Haag) in the context of the website being a publishing practice. How does the notion of publishing strike you as a part of Cosmos Carl’s qualities?

F+S: We believe that the notion of publishing has been inherent in the workings of CC since the beginning, but we are only finding out now through these interests coming from other publishers. We use these opportunities to give lectures and talk about the works we have on the site, and we are happy to be branching out at the same time we are starting to archive and preserve the websites qualities.

B: It’s interesting you are branching out more and more in to offline territory. What are some of the upcoming activities of Cosmos Carl?

F+S: We have an opening at Banner Repeater in London on the 26th of April. It’s great, because the space is actually located on the platform of a train station! Banner Repeater is an exhibition space and a bookstore, and we were invited to make an exhibition with them around the notion of online publishing. We will show a video where a guide takes the viewer through the city of Amsterdam, with characters entering the story and presenting different parts of Cosmos Carl through their smartphones and tablets.

Our plan is to go through public and platform-based spaces to further elaborate on the blending of offline and online living, and how that distinction is becoming less and less relevant today. For us, those two experiences are constantly merging, and it’s a bit scary what is happening today with state- and privately owned platforms merging in to more fluid entities. It is becoming a bit like a Black Mirror episode.

In parts of China they have actually started doing everything through the phone. You pay for everything with it and what you do online and offline is running together in to one coherent story. That’s one extreme of it and we plan to show another, which presents situations in real platforms such as libraries and public squares while browsing our platform-based website.

In the work we will also visit an exhibition space in Amsterdam where Alex Frost’s piece, ‘Wet Unboxing (Big Mac)’ 2018, will be on view. Alex presented the piece on the website recently, and this part of our voyage is made to compare an online exhibition experience to an offline one. The video is still in the making of course, but we want to create a Carl Sagan-inspired voyage which presents the story of Cosmos Carl as an entity which merges offline and online living and explores the status of the artwork within the age of platform capitalism.

 

Bergur Thomas Anderson

 


www.cosmoscarl.co.uk

Featured image: Wet Unboxing (2018) Alex Frost 

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