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Orit Gat

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BIO

Orit Gat is contributing editor (print & publishing) for Rhizome. She writes about art for other places, too.
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Published on Tue Oct 18, 2011

## Performance, Public, and Online Presence: Gretta Louw's Controlling_Connectivity

An artist living in a gallery for the duration of a show is a trope of visual art performance, which left a mark in popular culture portrayals of performance art. Even though these works emphasize considerations of the gallery space, the relationship between the artist and the audience is not always the center of the piece. In the iconic I Like America and America Likes Me, Joseph Beuys was rushed from the airport to a New York gallery in an ambulance and left in an ambulance, leaving the US without having set foot on its soil. Tracy Emin lived in a locked room in a Stockholm gallery as part of Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made in 1996. The audience could only see her naked figure through fish-eye lenses embedded in the walls as she spent her days painting.

In a new project launching November 2, Berlin-based artist Gretta Louw takes this relationship two steps forward, one step back. Like Beuys, she could not be seen at the gallery, but like Emin, she will be viewed through a lens. Twenty-four hours a day for the ten day duration of the show, Louw will be in constant communication with her audience via different online platforms: Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth. The project, Controlling_Connectivity, is described on Art Laboratory Berlin's site,

> Controlling_Connectivity uses the pervasiveness of internet-based social networking, as well as the obligation and opportunity for constant connection with these platforms as a paradigm for a severe and systematic disruption of normal, socially accepted patterns of life and interpersonal interaction during a self-documented performance. Taking to its natural extreme the notion that new technologies are increasingly dictating our social interaction, professional life, and have a far reaching effect on many other aspects of daily life, Gretta Louw ...

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Published on Thu Oct 13, 2011

## Artist Profile: Simon Denny

Corporate Video Decisions, 2011

“Corporate Video Decisions,” your current exhibition at Michael Lett gallery in Auckland, includes the covers of Corporate Video Decisions, a magazine from the 1980s about the use of video technology in corporate culture, shown on flatscreen televisions, and a series of printouts of the entire content Diligent Boardbooks’s website, a paperless business software company based in Christchurch, NZ and New York. I’m really fascinated by this double inversion of the way content is communicated to us: the print magazine on monitors, the website printed out. Can you talk a little bit about the exhibition and your use of inversion, as well as languages of marketing and advertisement, as an aesthetic strategy?

Yeah, I should say first that there is another layer of processing that is maybe difficult to make out in the online photos of the exhibition. The print magazine covers were actually photographed playing as jpegs on the LCD 3D-enabled televisions, then that whole image is inkjet printed on canvas, twice—like two copies of each canvas—and these are screwed together with aluminum tubing between the two canvasses in each corner, spaced to mimic the dimensions of the monitor they depict. So you have two canvasses with the same image on top of each other in place of the monitors.

To answer the question, for me, the exhibition’s aim is to present two snapshots of different moments in the recent history of commercial video through looking at these quite different pieces of ephemera—a magazine and a website. The nature of video technology is such that a fast, controlled, obsolescence cycle is systemic to its existence, and materials and formats come and go very quickly. As this is the case, making an exhibition that has this fact built into the way it is presented is for me very important. That is to say, the way the content is presented should form a dynamic which helps describe the show’s themes. Depicting the fickle material conditions of video via changing formats of what is regarded at a certain moment to be contemporary ephemera (magazines, websites), which are then presented through another fast shifting technology (printing), one indicates these movements in the presentation structurally.

Contrasting this ephemerality with the themes that are covered in the 80s magazine—trade fairs, gender and minority equality, economic conditions, crisis culture, generic products—(these topics clearly relate very well to our current moment also), underlines the truism that while technology might change, certain issues tend to be relevant for longer periods.

For me the exhibition’s format highlights this tension between the permanent and the impermanent, between vast material change and comparatively slow shifts in life/work conditions.

On the language of advertising, one has of course this ambivalent relationship to it where one knows it’s manipulative, but its efficiency is seductive and affective. One most likely follows this language’s logic implicitly in one’s self. That is to say this way of communicating is unavoidable and is just there. I am not sure if looking at this is really an aesthetic strategy. Even just conversing can be considered to be a commercial act, and it’s not so easy to attach a value to this. It is one’s life, after all...

Published on Tue Oct 11, 2011

## Artist Profile: Keren Cytter

Video Art Manual, 2011.

Your most recent work, Video Art Manual, was shot in HD, but than, in addition to the HD exhibition version, you also created a standard DVD version that was released as part of the Texte zur Kunst editions. Can you talk a little bit about this shift between technologies and its meaning?

Texte zur Kunst asked me to make a DVD edition for their magazine. It came out much better than I imagined (in terms of image quality and general quality) so I thought it’s a shame to show or circulate the work only as a simple DVD and not show the full quality of the image (I shot some parts in HD and they look great). I also needed the money, so I thought I better sell videos through the galleries as HD editions separated from the Texte zur Kunst edition.

As an artist working in a time-based medium, you are quite preoccupied with he time viewers spend with your works, so much so that for your untitled piece for the 2009 Venice Biennale, you had the wall text state that the video is nine minutes long instead of sixteen. Do you think people invest more time when watching your pieces online? And how different is the experience of watching them on a computer screen as opposed to an exhibition space?

I think people invest less time watching my work online—I think it’s easier to be distracted by other things when you are watching a video on the internet. It’s hard for me to watch videos online without skipping forward or pressing refresh on my mailbox. I think the experience depends on the viewer. I personally feel more comfortable downloading movies and watching them at home, feature films included. The experience ...

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Published on Thu Oct 06, 2011

## Artist Profile: Krist Wood

Top: Still from Siix, 2009. Bottom: Still from Mausoleum, 2009.

Looking at your work online is a process of discovery by links. It unfurls in a number of different websites, like Computers Club, Begin Records, both of which you set up, and Internet Archeology. Could you talk about the character of these initiatives and whether you see a cohesive element in them?

I will state what I think they are and describe an aspect of my interest in each. Computers Club is a set of identities that derive from computer users. The concept of identity in the context of the internet has been my principle interest as a computer user. To me, an identity on the internet is a fascinating system of information that gives rise to a character embodying a unique kind of shape and form. These forms can be arranged into a super-structure of information that itself has a kind of identity. The way that these characters synthesize, capture and release information; make choices, and exert influence gives rise to a higher order identity, as a grouping, that shifts and evolves over time. Computers Club is such a grouping. What shape will it take and how will it feel? That's what I wonder.

Begin Records is a preservation for the creative works of individuals who have a polymathic way of life. My philosophy of art is rooted in an idea that the core of one's person is unique and different from that of any other. People could journey inward, venturing as close as possible to that core or center, then endeavor to rearrange their environment to reflect what they've discovered there. That is my personal definition of art; something that I think has many definitions. The general act of rearranging one's environment could encompass ...

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Published on Wed Oct 05, 2011

## Another Book on the Bookmarks Shelf: BooksOnLine

> BooksOnLine is an experimental free access library initiated in 2006 by artist Pierre Hourquet. The website features more than thirty books by a variety of artists, with titles such as Honey blood (by artist Suzanna Zak), Slow (Flemming Ove Bech), Not in that Particular Order (Grégoire Grange), or Homeless Caravan (Damon Way), hinting at the book's content, but not revealing a thing about the artist or the designer.

"In the beginning, I wanted to publish books. Designing books and printing them is very easy. But distributing them would be a full-time job. So I decided to publish books online.

The first books were made with friends—artists or photographers—then, after making a few books, I decided to contact artist I like. Every artist I've contacted has been very glad and enthusiastic to contribute. Some of them became good friends.

I like to design the most basic book I could, a very simple one with a colored cover and few pages. So the books have the same shape, the same number of pages, and all use the same font. The layout is more specific for each book."

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RHIZOME ACTIVITIES

Discussions (1) Opportunities (1) Events (0) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION
Posted on Fri Jun 14, 2013

## Internet Real Estate, Art and Power: The cases of Artsy and .art

OK so now I feel inclined to comment because while I like to fact that Michael stands up for his writers, you seem unconvinced of my approach to this article. Here goes: I am not inducing that the gTLDs are a good idea from the fact that e-flux applied. In fact, I have no real interest in the gTLDs except for the fact that their introduction brought about a lot of good writing on a subject that I find very interesting: how to organize the internet.
I think the meaning of this article is in the conflation of Artsy and e-flux, but nevermind that. Here's the real point: I have no actual interest in criticizing e-flux for its decision to apply to run the gTLD. I'd be happy to do that if they actually win it, and once they start charting out what they'll do with it. In the meantime, my only goal in this piece is to point to some problematics and interests in these two discussions on URLs, branding, art, and money.
About democracy and the internet community: well, first of all, I'm totally unconvinced that some weird democratic taxonomy is the best we can come up with. And in the case of e-flux, I think their time/bank project is an interesting precursor to what may happen with .art. I thought the time/bank had a great chance of being successful because e-flux had a built-in community of people who are interested in alternative economies around it. Instead it's circulating as an artwork and continuous project that is more of an experiment than a real entity. Who knows if .art (which attracted attention via that same e-flux community) won't be the same.

OPPORTUNITY
Posted on Thu Feb 23, 2012

## iSpy @ Flux Factory in April

Deadline:
Thu Mar 01, 2012 13:00

Flux Factory is seeking proposals from game designers, technical wizards, emcees, performers, set designers, house bands, and all manner of mischief makers! We need your help to create iSpy, a live reality show meets stage show spectacle meets video game that combines game design and theater with the topsy-turvy power of networked cameras in public spaces.
The experience will revolve around players carrying networked cameras in public space, beaming images back to the gallery-turned-theater as they compete to finish absurd challenges with the audience’s help (e.g.: corralling strangers to swing at pinatas, in-store scavenger hunts, and impromptu games of Balderdash on the street). The Flux theater will be rigged with cameras and surprises too, turning everyone into unwitting players.
As an interactive and theatrical game experience, this project is not limited to the gallery. The production of iSpy will be highly collaborative, with all invited creators helping to form events open to the public during the last two weekends of April 2012. We need collaborators to make mini-games, elaborate scoreboards, 70’s game show-style sets, spectacular lighting design, and surprising interactions, and we need house bands, emcees, actors, technical crew, facilitators, and much more to make it happen.

http://www.fluxfactory.org/news/open-calls-2012-exhibition-season-2012/

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