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 di
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)
* Cornelia Sollfrank (Germany)
* 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.)
* Alexei Shulgin (Russia)
* Alexander R. Galloway (U.S.A.)
* Adrian Ward (U.K.)
* [epidemiC] (Italy)
* Amy Alexander (U.S.A.)
* Mongrel Project (U.K.)
* Eldar Karhalev & Ivan Khimin (Russia)
* etoy (U.S.A./Holland/Germany/Austria)
* Vuk Cosic (Slovenia)

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