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WHITNEYBIENNIAL.COM
concept : miltos
manetas
organised by
electronicorphanage.com and michelethursz.com
powered by newstoday.com
, supported by archinect.com
description
: every two years, the Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art in NY,
is putting together a major art exhibition which is suppose to collect
the most interesting american art of the moment. Miltos Manetas
and Peter Lunenfeld, noticed in early February 2002, that the museum
has not registered the domain www.whitneybiennial.com. Manetas ,
decide to put together an Internet exhibition which opened the same
day with the Museum show. Click here for a text
by Benjamin Bratton to learn more.
special thanks
: michael
rees for "turntable"
,carbonatedjazz
for webdesign and the cover
page and
gnac for the
music.
list of curators/writers,
organisations that are inviting artists: jan aman, andreas angelidakis,archinect.com,
stefano Chiodi , joshua decter, laurence dreyfus, alex galloway,paul
groot,patrick lichty ,peter lunenfeld, lev manovich , magda sawon,
newstoday.com, hans ulrich obrist ,marisa olson, michele thursz,
roosavelt savage, philippe vergne, olivier zahm and purple magazine
.
Press
release:
Today, is active
a new generation of creators : they are using computers and Internet
and they doesn't care much about the so called "Real Space".
The work of most of them is TELIC, and a few of them succeeds to
do some NEEN work* . Some of these people, are professional artists
, but many work as designers, architects, webdesigners and programmers
or they just do "" things"" without care about
what this output will be called. Because most of them are absent
from the landscape of the contemporary art shows, we decide to present
them in a parasite collection which opened online,in the same day
with the Whitney Museum show.
We invited them
to contribute a Flash piece. It can be either an art work or their
logo, something complete, or a note for a possible artwork. Because
today, most film previews are today better than the actual films
: the WHITNEYBIENNIAL.COM is conceived as a collage of previews.
Question
: Why shall they all had to do a Flash animation ?
Answer
: It was an experiment : we believe that as Peter Lunenfeld writes
at the KLM theory*, "Flash is today's Pop". In fact ,
Flash is an easy technology which lets you draw a cartoon or a logo,
animate it and even make it interactive: the user will click on
it and the cartoon(or logo )will reply. It brings together all other
forms of art such as photography, written text, movies and drawing
in such a way that makes contemporary art of the past century look
like a proud grandfather: Flash is, again according to Mr. Lunenfeld
, "PoliTech, the irrepressible joy and lightness of being digital
after the boom economy has gone bust." It is also scalable,
that means that you can display it on different dimensions without
any loss of quality. With very little budget and in a short time,
you can do something that looks better than any "art video"
or "installation".
Question
: What is the "Turntable" ?
Answer
: It is an application which we commissioned to artist Michael Rees
. It works as a normal turntable that you can use it to mix not
only sound, but also Flash movies: all pieces become samples and
the user, like a visual DJ can make his/her composition online.
The viewer, can change the colors of the background , make the animation
larger or smaller, transparent or opaque etc."Turntable",
is a revolutionary tool, because it opensources material and makes
even from any "closed" pieces a work in progress: for
the very fist time, the artworks in this show, function in both
ways, as samples and as stand alone pieces.
Relationship
of the Whitneybiennial.com with the Museum's Whitney Biennial.
Think of a snake
and a cow. A cow, as well as the institutional show, is large, slow
and short-sighted, instead a snake is fast and experimental . Even
if the Whitneybiennial.com was naturally in "competition"
with the Museum show, ( because they are both a different view of
the actual visual reality ) , it was not exactly an anti-show. We
didn't care about the official show, we just wanted to use it for
our own purposes.
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*about
neen and telic
Almost two years
ago, in May 2000, we commissioned from Lexicon Branding (the company
that introduced Powerbook and Pentium), a new word which was suppose
to define any artistic experience relative to the computer screen.
If that name would have been an accurate translation of "what's
going on", it would have been a successful term. In fact they
proposed us "Telic", a very convincing and sophisticated
term invented by the human stuff of the company , but we decide
to acquire(and introduce at a Demo/performance at the Gagosian gallery
in NY)a name which their machines coined . This was Neen,
a palindrome created by a computer program after they feed it with
words such as "screen" and let it run the different combinations.
Neen, which
by coincidence in old Greek means " exactly now : not a second
later "was a controversial name. Only a few people , felt that
it was proper to call themselves Neensters and what they do Neen,
and this was because most of us, myself included unfortunately,
we are doing still a lot of TELIC. Our times, are Telic. But we
want to see more Neen happen.
Lets define
Telic: Telic is magic through technology. Telic is our relationship
with the tools which help us design the World and see things in
a perspective. Telic Rem Koolhaas S, M,L, XL : it is constructive:
anything related with job, is Telic. People which are busy with
aesthetics but who also have jobs and clients, are Telic.
But sometimes these Telics produce very important Neen. Its, usually
as a small detail which they will hide inside the nightmare of their
job. Neen in this cases, is what their clients don't understand
but they have not the courage to ask or they happen to like it anyway.
Telic is serious : it makes sense or it's a sense wannabe. People
recognise it easily and trust it. Neen instead, is Telic that went
nuts: you wouldn't believe that it's possible and even who makes
it cannot easily repeat it. But Neen looks great ! There are a few
100% Neensters , people without a specific profession who linger
around us . Telic is Giacometti , Neen is Fontana. Nature is Telic
and Miracles are Neen. Miracles which have a purpose , become Telic,
instead miracles like the one where Jesus walks on the water, stay
Neen for centuries. But again, if Jesus would come back today and
he will start walking on the water he will be very Telic. Really,
there is no way to preserve Neen, because it expires a second after.
Neensters are the people who are OK with that.
SELECTED
PRESS FOR THE WHITNEYBIENNIAL.COM
:
+ NEW
YORK TIMES, MARCH 08,
+ NEW
YORK TIMES, MARCH 04,
+ NEWSWEEK,
MARCH 19
+ LE
MONDE , MARCH 26
+ EL
PAIS , MARCH 29
+ THE
GUARDIAN, MARCH 21
+ SALON.COM
+ ARTNET.COM
+
NEURAL.IT
+
ARTANDJOBMAGAZINE.COM
ARTFORUM, MAI
2002 ( Mild About Larry: 2002 Whitney Biennial
Bob Nickas, Bruce Hainley, George Baker, and Saul Anton )
Read : Benjamin
Bratton (rhizome)
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