Re: [-empyre-] galleries & establishments

["Patrick Lichty" <voyd@voyd.com>]

>My second question (which has been postulated in recent museum exhibitions
>at Whitney & SFMoma - and locally in Montreal with events such as the Web
>section of the Biennale de Montréal) is how to make a transition of
>presentation to a wider public through museum contexts etc. without
>sabotaging the wonderful fluidity of production and presentation on the
>Web? I know that some people have reacted strongly against "museum"
>exhibitions - however, I also feel that Web artists wish to be a part of
>the establishment. The reason I ask this question in part is because I am
>curating an upcoming Web art exhibition at the Musée du Québec (Canada)
>and these concerns have been raised both outside and inside the
institution.

Much of this can be seen in the representational issues within both the ZKM
net.condition show and the last two Whitney bienniales.  A Dutch tv report
questioned the validity of an exhibition of distributed art that really did
not exist there at all, or anywhere for that matter, and wondered about the
aesthetics/issues related to a huge room filled with internet stations
trained to various sites.

In the case of the Whitney, it's clear that the issues related to the
representation of net art within the gallery are not yet resolved.  In both
instances, the work was either relegated to a dark room or 'net.ghetto' or
awkwardly positioned next to the stairwell, outside of the gallery proper.
There are exceptions, like Yael Kanarek's TreasureCrumbs, but that exhibit
was offlien at the moment I saw it, therefore it didn't translate well at
all.

I think the best translation has been the Walker Art Center's portal for the
Let's Entertain show in 1999.  It consisted of a revolving door with a
monitor within it that rotated through the net pieces as you revolved the
door.  Excellent metaphor, and the most engaging interface I had seen yet.

In the exhibitions that I curate, I have found that the best way to resolve
this is not to try.  I don't even attempt to do it.  To me, the best way to
experience net art is through the net itself, and if a monitor is in the
gallery, that's fine, too.  But to me, to try to translate an inherently
immaterial  form in a material context puts forth issues that have to be
considered with acuity, as the interface and the auratic sense of the
material interface often obscures the net art itself.