Aram Bartholl – Blog

Once a day, during nightfall the Berlin TV tower switches its warning lights from white to red. I love this, magic! and I’ve looked out for it often over the years. Tonight I finally caught this moment on video. Be my personal hero and watch the whole thing! Or skip to 1:00 min if you are in a rush ;))) … Or even better try to catch the moment in Berlin on the street, it is around 9:45pm currently.

Current & upcoming shows / talks

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7.-10.11. 2013
The Influencers Festival
theinfluencers Barcelona, Spain

24.10. – 30.11.2013
Echtzeit
Stadtgalerie Bern, Switzerland

27/28.9.2013
Todaysart
Todaysart festival, The Hague, Netherlands

30.8.-13.10.2013
OFFLINE ART: Hardcore
at Kasseler Kunstverein, Germany
curation, group show

30.8.-13.10.2013
Hello world!
solo show at Kasseler Kunstverein, Germany

1.8.-29.9.13
Espace[IM]media
Espace[IM]media, Sheerbroke, Canada

18.7.- 8.9.2013
Playtime – Videogame mythologies
Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Russia

18.6.–27.7.2013
Summer Splash 2
DAM Gallery, Berlin
with: Aram Bartholl, Constant Dullaart, Ernest Edmonds, Eduardo Kac, Sommerer & Mignonneau, Evan Roth, UBERMORGEN.COM, among others

16.5.-26.6.2013
★RETWEET★IF★YOU★WANT★MORE★FOLLOWERS★
solo show at xpo gallery, Paris, France

8.5.-13.7.2013
Fußnoten zum Aufbruch
Motorenhalle in Dresden, Germany
with: Zbynek Baladrán (Prag/CZ), Aram Bartholl (Berlin), Franca Bartholomäi (Halle), Till Ansgar Baumhauer (Dresden), Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau (Prag/CZ), Gregory Buchert (Lyon/F), Maria Bussmann (Wien/AT), Ayelen Coccoz (Buenos Aires/AR), Chto Delat (St. Petersburg, Moskau/RU), Ulrike Gärtner (Dresden), Göran Gnaudschun (Potsdam), Arti Grabowski (Krakow/PL), Igor Grubic (Zagreb/HR), Eberhard Havekost (Berlin), Martin Kippenberger/Walter Dahn (Köln), Friedl Kubelka (Wien/AT), among others …

3.5.-30.6.2013
Playtime – Videogame mythologies
Krasnoyarsk Museum Center, Russia

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…..Past shows / talks / workshops

An interview I gave at the opening of ★RETWEET★IF★YOU★WANT★MORE★FOLLOWERS★ by Yvette Neliaz THX!!

http://www.damepipi.tv/2013/05/aram-bartholl-retweet-if-you-want-more.html
ARCHEOLOGIE DU PRESENT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS BY YVETTE NELIAZ POUR http://DAMEPIPI.TV

★RETWEET★IF★YOU★WANT★MORE★FOLLOWERS★
XPO gallery, Paris
17.5.-26.6.2013, opening May 16, 7pm

THX EVERYONE!! OPENING WAS GREAT!!! :)))

★RETWEET★IF★YOU★WANT★MORE★FOLLOWERS★

First solo show in Paris by Aram Bartholl at xpo gallery
17.5.-26.6.2013, opening May 16, 7pm
xpo gallery, Paris

PRESS:
http://www.aqnb.com/2013/05/22/aram-bartholl-xpo-gallery-reviewed/
http://www.damepipi.tv/2013/05/aram-bartholl-retweet-if-you-want-more.html
http://www.fadwebsite.com/2013/05/23/aram-bartholl-exposition-personnelle/

Flickr picture set

Statement:

Aram Bartholl’s work creates an interplay between internet, culture and reality. The
versatile communication channels are taken for granted these days, but how do they
influence us? According to the paradigm change of media research Bartholl not just
asks what man is doing with the media, but what media does with man. The tension
between public and private, online and offline, technology infatuation and everyday
life creates the core of his producing.

For the show Retweet if you want more followers at xpo gallery, Paris exhibition
Aram Bartholl created a series of new works questioning the Internet immanent
ubiquitous scream for attention. The constant stream of codes, signs and change
force the user to filter, decode and recalibrate every day. Screen scape of high speed
time lines, hidden code, endless video or 3D space invade our minds for ever while
large parts are blocked. The impossible to remember what link was hot last week is
ignored by the calm, hypnotic glow of the screen which makes us smile.
Retweet this now!

Works:

Retweet
LED sign , Book, 120x40x8 cm
Twitter is the most advanced incarnation of todays high-speed online attention craze. What are the
hottest breaking news? Which are the latest trending topics? Gossip never traveled so fast! The fastest
way to spread information on Twitter is to get a lot of retweets on a single tweet. The more user repeat
the original message the more attention it gets. The invitation to ‘RETWEET!’ is a typical tweet format to
generate retweets and thus also more followers which are the currency on twitter. A vast stream of
mostly self-referential tweets containing ‘retweet’ are fired off on twitter every second. In an endless
scream for attention the follow-train runs silently on high speed through the never-ending timeline.
Credits: Greg Leuch

Private Password
b/w monochrome series
C-print, aluminum dibond, acryl, 59×77 cm
Like many other Internet services LinkedIn.com got hacked in summer 2012 and lost its user database
to unknown hackers. A couple months later a part of the encrypted passwords lists was leaked in
forums specialized in decrypting passwords as a ‘computer sport’. Private Password is a series of prints
each showing ca 12.000 clear text passwords of actual LinkedIn users accounts. Each password was
invented by a single individual, complicated enough so it can’t be guessed easily but at the same time
simple enough to memorize it. While online identities became more and more important consumer
hardware of today equals the processing power of super computers from 2000. A password you can
learn by heart without hard training is not a save password any more.

Art Forums
Website and installation
website, PC laptop, USB hub, USB led fans
Art-forums.org is a classic Internet forum website with a default setup of the bulletin board software
php BB. Everyone is invited to register at art-forum.org to discuss art. Internet forums as a place for
direct user interaction represent a massive and important part of Internet culture and online
communication. In the era of FB, Twitter and social web Internet forums with their typical design,
animated emoticons and amateur culture seem outdated although they are more open and interactive
than a FB wall. The same underestimation is true for classic PC hardware culture and its gadgets vs the
new polished monofunctional era of tablet computing. ‘Art-forums.org! The best way to discuss art
online’

Offline Monochrome
Triptych
3 wifi routers, 35x85x3 cm
Disconnected from the Internet each of the three routers broadcasts a single monochrome color.
Visitors have to connect individually to each of the local networks to see every part of the triptych on
their mobile device. Are there enough visitors to see all three at once? How do the mobile screens
correspond with the router installation? What are the screen sizes and the quality of each display?
Questions for a classic wall piece format re-calibrated for 2013.

PrintScreen
Series of monotypes
acryl on paper, canvas, plexi, aluminum, variable from 16×23 to 58×80 cm
Screens are our every day window to digital space. We spend many hours every day looking at screens
of any kind and dimension. Over the last couple decades computer screens have changed constantly in
size and proportions. In more recent years mobile screens became prominent and soon the classic
rectangle will move into glasses vision. Todays screens can display millions of colors, the resolution and
number of dots per inch are getting higher and higher. In a close relationship the printed image has
been under heavy digital influence ever since the computer became mass medium in the production of
the image. The physical screen doesn’t seem to exist as long it is turned on. Its magic glow blinds us
with a constant demand for attention. PrinttSceen is a series of actual monotype prints of my very first
PC black & white CRT tube, my current 2560 x 1600px LCD display and my actual mobile phone touch
screen.

Dust Scapes
Unique,
C-print, alumium dibond, acryl, 141×60 cm
The computer game Counter Strike is one of the most successful first person shooter series and was
especially popular in the first half of the 10′s of the 21st century. With new groundbreaking teamplay
game mechanics it profoundly influenced the game development of the FPS gaming genre. Millions of
gamers have played the game and its scenarios over and over. De_dust used to be one of the most
popular maps in the early days of the game. A vast amount of memory and emotional burst by an
unbelievable large number of players is compressed into this very space. The pure architecture and
absence of the action in Dust Scapes amplifies the collective memory of the space, which only exists in
software on servers.

Dust (model)
Scale 1:333
3D print, laser sinther, alumide, 36 x 33 x 4,5 cm
Dust is a 1:1 scale replica of one of the most played computer game maps in the world. The idea is to
build the 3D model of ‘de_dust’ of the first person shooter game Counter Strike as a permanent
‘building’ from concrete to make this map accessible as a large-scale public sculpture. The dimension
would be 115 x 110 x 15 meter and material is planned to be concrete. Dust (model) is a 1:333 scale
model 3D printed in alumide of the actual planned building and exact copy of the gaming map. The
ongoing development of the whole Dust project was initially commissioned by Rhizome NYC in 2011

Are you human?
Series, unique
aluminum anodised 3mm, laser cut, 44×122 cm to 39×89 cm
CAPTCHA is the acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans
Apart” and was developed in 2000 by information scientists at the Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
Web-based services such as Yahoo require users to recognize and type a randomly generated series of
letters or numbers which appear on the screen as a CAPTCHA image. This test is designed to ensure
that a web form is not being completed by the automatic scripts used by spammers. But sometime it is
also for humans quite hard to decrypt the distorted letters and numbers while the software by
spammers still often succeeds. Unlike every other file on the Internet each code is uniquely generated
by a script on the server and is disposed once it has been used. It will never appear again online in this
very form.

Google Portrait
Series, Google search: Sergey Brin
charcoal on paper, 1m x 1m
A Google Portrait is a drawing that shows the Google search request for a specific person in form of an
encoded URL. Any smart phone is capable to decode the matrix-code with a barcode reader app. In
return the software runs a Google search on the portrayed person and shows the result page in the
browser. ‘Vanity surfing’ is a very popular way to make sure the Google result page does not show
unwanted information. This very page with the 10 most important links represents the contemporary
portrait of a person today. It is the first batch of information we learn about someone. It puts people in
context of their activities and often also displays pictures. The portrait dynamically changes over time
depending on Googles algorithms. While the drawing of the QR code is static the activities of the
portrait person result in a constantly changing online identity

Forgot your password?
Aram Bartholl
2013

4.7 million LinkedIn clear text user passwords printed in alphabetical order in eight books (21 x 27 cm, ca. 800 pages each) shown at

Brand Innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship
A group exhibition stolen by Eva and Franco Mattes
at Carroll / Fletcher, 23 April – 11 May 2013

Really good show!! Thx for great pics! Good text!

Vernissage
Mittwoch, 08.05.2013, 20:00 – 22:00 Uhr
Motorenhalle - Wachsbleichstraße 4a, 01067 Dresden
http://riesa-efau.de/kalender/2013/05/08/fussnoten-zum-aufbruch-950/

Footnotes to breakup

A human being gets off, a group, many groups, generations, whole societies are in a state of breakup. What does connect these breakups? What kind of effects into art and out of art do they have? Phenomena of setting off will be illuminated from many different perspectives. The result will be a network of possible meanings for the individual and the collectivity. The term breakup is mainly connoted positively. But of course, there are also many examples for a problematic or even absolutely negative breakup. Eventually the word has got several aspects of meaning in our language. Besides the internal or external breakup to new – internal or external again – worlds, there is also the simple breakup of the road surface, of incrustations, of painting tops.
In the exhibition “Footnotes to breakup” and the accompanying events, we will ask questions for the tensions between personal, collective and social breakups and get to the bottom of them together with artists and other experts. Do we live in a period of a breakup? How do they work? Is there after Fukushima, amid a fiscal and a crisis of values, a stronger willingness to break fresh ground? Nearly nobody will start just for a breakup, for sure. This begs the question of the motives, as well as of those who don’t want to or cannot get off. At the latest since modernity breakup has basically been a term with positive connotations. Associations seem likely to utopia or the New human.
No later than at this point it becomes clear how complex and problematic the per se harmlessly seeming breakup can be. On the one hand, we will continue the topic breakup of last year’s Phenomenon Prosperity, but on the other hand we will also refer to our own situation. In front of the Motorenhalle there is being erected a new building for us. Its completion at the end of this year will imply another breakup for riesa efau, of course, and thereby give an impulse for our reflections.

Fußnoten zum Aufbruch

In der Ausstellung Fußnoten zum Aufbruch und den begleitenden Veranstaltungen sind Fragen nach den Spannungen zwischen persönlichen, kollektiven und gesellschaftlichen Aufbrüchen zu stellen und gemeinsam mit Künstlern und weiteren Experten auszuloten. Leben wir in einer Zeit des Aufbruchs? Wie wirken Aufbrüche? Gibt es nach Fukushima, inmitten einer Fiskal- und Wertekrise eine höhere Bereitschaft, neue Wege zu gehen? Wohl kaum Jemand bricht allein des Aufbrechens wegen auf. Die Frage nach den Motiven steht ebenso wie die nach denen, die nicht aufbrechen wollen oder können. Spätestens seit der Moderne ist der Begriff des Aufbruchs prinzipiell positiv besetzt. Assoziationen zur Utopie oder zum Neuen Menschen liegen nahe. Spätestens in diesem Augenblick aber wird klar, wie vielschichtig und wie problematisch der an sich harmlos scheinende Aufbruch sein kann. Mit dem Thema Aufbruch schließen wir einerseits an Phänomen Wohlstand aus dem vergangenen Jahr an, beziehen uns andererseits aber auch auf unsere eigene Situation. Vor der Motorenhalle wird gerade ein Neubau errichtet, dessen Fertigstellung zum Jahresende für riesa efau natürlich einen neuerlichen Aufbruch bedeuten wird und so einen Anstoß für unsere Überlegungen gibt.

Künstler/innen
Zbynek Baladrán (Prag/CZ), Aram Bartholl (Berlin), Franca Bartholomäi (Halle), Till Ansgar Baumhauer (Dresden), Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau (Prag/CZ), Gregory Buchert (Lyon/F), Maria Bussmann (Wien/AT), Ayelen Coccoz (Buenos Aires/AR), Chto Delat (St. Petersburg, Moskau/RU), Ulrike Gärtner (Dresden), Göran Gnaudschun (Potsdam), Arti Grabowski (Krakow/PL), Igor Grubic (Zagreb/HR), Eberhard Havekost (Berlin), Martin Kippenberger/Walter Dahn (Köln), Friedl Kubelka (Wien/AT), Heimo Lattner (Berlin), Muda Mathis + Sus Zwick (Basel/CH), Eduardo Molinari (Buenos Aires/AR), Pavel Mrkus (Rumburk/CZ), Société Réaliste (Ferenc Gróf & Jean-Baptiste Naudy, Paris, Budapest/F/H), Stefan Nestler (Dresden), The Trailblazers (Mircea Nicolae, Stefan Tiron und Larisa Sitar, Bukarest/RO), Laura Pawela (Warschau/PL), Ute Richter (Leipzig), Jürgen Schön (Dresden), Jirí Suruvka (Ostrava/CZ)

Aram Bartholl (D)
How To Vacuum Form
Installation und Video (6:13 Min.), 2012

In vielen seiner Arbeiten reagiert Aram Bartholl auf die zunehmende Virtualisierung unseres Lebens mit einer Re-Materialisierung von Zeichen, Icons oder Verhaltensweisen zurück in die materielle Welt, die eigentlich nur im virtuellen Web- Raum Web einen Sinn haben. In der vorliegenden Arbeit balanciert der Künstler noch subtiler zwischen virtuellem und realem Environment. Er inszeniert eine Arbeitsstation zur Do it Yourself- Herstellung und Bemalung von Guy-Fawkes-Masken.In diesen anonymisieren sich in der Gegenwart Hacker der Gruppe Anonymus, deren Name geht auf die Bezeichnung eben anonymer Kommentatoren in Foren, aber auch anonymer Spieler in Games zurück; die Maske wurde Symbol der Occupy Wall Street und weiterer antikapitalistischer Bewegungen, Symbol für Veränderung, Revolution. Als solches wird sie durchaus ernst genommen. So wurde in einigen arabischen Staaten das Tragen der Maske verboten, da sie im Kontext des Arabischen Frühlings als Bedrohung der statischen Verhältnisse interpretiert wurde. Zu den Volten der Geschichte der Maske gehört aber auch, dass die ursprünglich vom Zeichner David Lloyd mit durchaus anarchistischen Ideen gestaltete Maske ausgerechnet von Anhängern des ehemaligen konservativen US-Präsidentschaftskandidaten Ron Paul in die Öffentlichkeit gebracht worden ist. Interessant ist an der Geschichte hinter der Maske, wie der durchaus als religiös fundamentalistisch und konservativ zu wertende Anschlagsversuch des historischen Guy- Fawkes vom Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts – als Sprengstoffexperte wollte er als Teil einer katholischen Verschwörung den englischen König samt Parlament in die Luft sprengen – sehr schnell auch als anarchischer, befreiender Akt interpretiert wurde.
In der Installation von Aram Bartholl liegt der leichten Maske eine schwere Gipsform zu Grunde. Eine total abenteuerlich- wackelige Konstruktion bringt die Hitze auf die PVC Platte. Mit einer demgegenüber regelrecht profimäßigen Vakuumpumpe saugt man die heiße Platte in die Form. Auf dem Tisch liegen Arbeitsergebnisse, Halbzeuge und Arbeitsmaterialien verstreut. Man kann sich bedienen.Neben der hinlänglich bekannten weißen Maske gibt es schwarze Exemplare. Durch den popkulturellen Bezug auf Darth Vader verstärkt, fließt der Dualismus von Gut und Böse ein, von Hell und Dunkel, Ying und Yang. Da es zu einfach wäre, den Betrachter mit einer derart simplen Botschaft zu entlassen, gibt es die Masken auch in einer dritten Farbe, in der Transparenz. Allein diese Maske stellt als Edition ein Kunstwerk dar. Hinter der Maske, die auf einem Stativ in die Gesichtshöhe justierbar ist, kann man sich fotografieren lassen. Man kann auch sinnen über den Sinn von Maskierungen oder über den schönen künstlerischen Griff, per Definition Intransparentes transparent zu machen.Im Video, das die Installation begleitet, ist nicht nur das „Making of“ der Installation und die Anleitung zur Fertigung der Maske sondern auch der Auftritt des Künstlers mit seinem Stand bei einem Compuer-Kongress zu sehen. Womit wir zurück am Beginn wären.

Imagine a search engine inserts a personal easter egg for you! :))))) thx guys!!

@arambartholl thanks for sharing @duckduckgo! An easter egg in your honor duckduckgo.com/?q=arambartholl — bottom right corner :)

— DuckDuckGo (@duckduckgo) 22. Mai 2013

★RETWEET★IF★YOU★WANT★MORE★FOLLOWERS★

First solo show in Paris by Aram Bartholl at XPO gallery
17.5.-26.6.2013, opening May 16, 7pm
XPO gallery, Paris

(found on Gerichstr. Berlin)

YOUR ART!! party at Eyenbeam last Saturday was super cool!! As part of the F.A.T. GOLD program visitors were invited to build a golden necklace to show art from their phones.  The concept is based on an intervention I did with Khoi Vinh during the Seven on Seven conference at Rhizome 2012.  More documentation about the F.A.T. GOLD exhibition at Eyebeam to come.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bartholl/sets/72157633205582132/

‘Express Yourself’ intervention with Khoi Vinh during the Seven on Seven conference at Rhizome 2012.

Prior YOUR ART!! party at my birthday party in Berlin Dec 2012

http://www.flickr.com//photos/bartholl/sets/72157632425447016/

I ll show a new piece “Forgot your password?” at Eva & Franco Mattes’ ‘stolen’ show at Carroll/Fletcher next month. (See also where Artie has ‘stolen’ the concept  from before ;))) Nice press release! I took the liberty to OCR it into machine readable format below.  (NOT EDITED!!! :)

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

i ;_56<57 Eastcastle St
London WIW sso
www.carrolItletcher.com
info@carrolltletcher.com
PRESS RELEASE

Exhibition: Brand Innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship

Date: m2 23 April – 11 May, 2013

Opening reception: 3Fhursday-19-July-2012-,-6-8pm Monday 22 April, 8:30 – 9pm
Carroll/Fletcher and Eva and Franco Mattes present Brand Innovations
for Ubiquitous Authorship, a group show of anists whose works frequently challenge
traditional notions of object production and material constraint.

For this exhibition each artist was asked to produce an object using a custom printing or fabrication
service. These services, such as CafePress and Zazzle, exist to provide users a cost-effective way of
producing fully customized products, from t-shirts to iPhone cases, and a host of other objects-
custom 3D printing from companies like Shapeways, full printed books from companies like Lulu, &c.
These services have arisen as the result of increasing consumer demands toward customization and
print-on-demand objects, offering a venue for traditional “self expression” to be imprinted onto
commonplace goods. As the tools for image creation and dissemination have become increasingly
democratized, these services attempt to expand this domain into the realm of objects. They are used
here to transform images from a plethora of authors into a mass of commodities.

Higher-Pietu+es Carroll/Fletcher has not seen a single piece in this show as of the writing of this news
release. We expect this backwards approach to be filled with highs, lows, and hopefully more than a
few transcendent successes. The result will be a gallery of art, artifact and artifice.

For further information wnmct . +44 (0)20 7323 6111

Participating artists andwriters include:

Annabelle Arlie Brian Khek

Andreas Banderas Martin Kohout

Aram Bartholl Bryan Krueger

Body by Body Lindsay Lawson

Chris Coy Jaakko Pallasvuo

Christofer Degrér Jon Rafman

Nick DeMarco Sean Raspet

Constant Dullaart Rafael Rozendaal

Andreas Ervik Borna Sammak

Matt Goerzen Oliver Sutherland

Aaron Graham Daniel Temkin

Toby Huddlestone Brad Troemel

Parker Ito Artie Vierkant

Justin Kemp Andrew Norman Wilson

Exhibition concept stolen from Artie Vierkant’s show by the same title.

DVD Dead Drop vol.6: ‘Vertical Video’

March 19 – May 7, 2013 at the Museum of Moving Image NYC

by Sakrwoki aka curatingyoutube.net and Aram Bartholl. 2013, 62 mins. DVD.

Vertical Video is a one-hour selection of amateur videos captured in the 9:16 aspect ratio, first compiled for a special screening in Berlin entitled Vertical Cinema. The DVD includes a special How To video with instructions for adjusting a home theater or other viewing environment to properly experience these works.

Fueled by a proliferation of mobile, inexpensive, high quality cameras and free online distribution platforms, self-trained media producers continue to invent creative uses for media technologies that challenge contemporary viewing behaviors and expectations. Even though the 9:16 aspect ratio is often understood to be “wrong” €“the result of using a camera “incorrectly” €“videos in 9:16 are being created and distributed online at an increasing rate. Unchained from cinema screens, televisions, and computer monitors, media makers are free to create for viewing experiences outside of traditional horizontal exhibition hardware.

Vertical Video is a compilation of videos with a wide range of subjects including architecture, wildlife, bodies in motion, gaming, eyewitness accounts, and current events whose vertical treatment is a natural and fitting decision. Until now, many of these videos have only been seen online where they have been thickly pillarboxed and shrunk to squeeze into the existing horizontal viewing system. This compilation provides evidence that a new generation of media producers, freed from concerns about conventional screening requirements, reject the arbitrary restrictions of the horizontal screen and maintain a more fluid relationship with the frame.

The selection was originally screened at Vertical Cinema Platoon Berlin on Feb 18 2013, see also http://datenform.de/vertical-video-eng.html

Olia Lialina opening the show at xpo gallery Feb 21, 2013

For the opening of OFFLINE ART: new2, curated by Aram Bartholl at XPO Gallery.

Let me steal a few seconds of your attention to remind you about some obvious facts and terms. The Internet and the Web are not the same. The Internet is older and bigger, it is a distributed network born in 1969 and turned into a global Internetwork at the very beginning of the 80s.

The Web is younger. In two months we will celebrate its twentieth birthday. The first cross-platform browser, Mosaic, was released to the public in April 1993. There are people who date the beginning of the Web to 1989, when Tim Bernes Lee invented the WWW system, but nothing happened between 1989 and 1993. Nothing before the rest of us started to shape it.

The Web is younger and “smaller.” It began in 1993 as a modest service, one of many. I have a book here with me, “The Whole Internet” – I always have it with me. It has 400 pages and only fifteen of them are about the Web. But it was growing very fast. By 1995, it would make no sense to write a book entitled “The Whole WWW” or something similar, because it was already immense by this time.

The Web became the Internet very quickly. In the 90s many got to know about the Internet through the Web. Many never ever left the Web, so they haven’t seen the rest of the Internet. In the new millennium, most of the users don’t even know there is a difference. I sometimes get angry at new students who don’t know about it, but at the same time, I’m fine with this because the Web is the best thing that happened to the Internet. The best thing that happened to us. It is the best thing that could happen to artists and to the contemporary art world, though not everybody would agree with this.

Apart from the many doors and windows that it has opened to artists and institutions, the Web gave life to a very important movement: net art – or, as one would have called it during the mid 90s, net.art.

Retrospectively, we can say that it gave life to two art forms: web art and net art. The first was busy with browser, HTML and scripts, with the idea – revolutionary at the time – that a browser IS a place for self-expression, for experimentation, for making art. Net art was busy with networking itself.

In the beginning, web and net art were represented by the same people. They – I mean, we, worked for the Web, on the Web and because of the Web. But we didn’t want to be called web artists; we liked being called net artists. The reason is that, for net artists, visual and coding experiments with browsers were less important than the fact that our works were ONLINE.

Artists of that generation emphasized connectivity, networking, and the distributive nature of the works through several means. There was a great desire to create projects that weren’t visible on a computer that was NOT online. Today, we often hear that there is no difference anymore between offline and online, that they are both real life. True. Twenty, fifteen years ago, we knew very well when online stopped and offline started, where net art stopped and where CD-ROM, interactive or whatever art started.

A show that goes back to the initial idea of net art opens tonight. It focuses on connection, its presence, and its absence. It even starts off with a provocative title. I don’t know what you think about when you read OFFLINE art, but I can only think about ONLINE art.

OFFLINE ART: new2 was curated by one of the most important new media artists, Aram Bartholl. His objects and installations in public places precede today’s art and design trends that play with the relationship between the digital and analog worlds. But he is also a net artist, a classic net artist, because he keeps himself busy with the question “am I on or off?”

This question was and still is central to net art, despite new realities, new devices and generational change.

Aram is also a brave artist, because he is not afraid to enter into one of the most slippery issues related to contemporary and media arts: Does it make sense and is it possible at all to show net art in a gallery or real space?

I have been involved with this discussion for the last fifteen years through my own artistic and curatorial work. I can tell you that the answer has changed from a definite No to Maybe, to Yes, but and finally, to Yes.

It became clearly positive some years ago, when the Web stopped being a new medium and became a mass one. It was quite a difficult moment for net art and web art, because these forms are extremely medium-specific. Web artists and net artists are doing work about the medium, but, as soon as it stops being new – when it a matures, when it becomes a mass medium, it becomes very difficult to have a close connection with it. By the way, many net artists went OFFLINE at that time to make works “about the internet and the web” from the outside, in order to keep a distance, to keep the relationship alive.

But there was also a bright side to this: the fact that the Internet became a mass medium meant that net artists got bigger audiences, both online and offline. Ten years ago it made sense for net artists to only address people in front of their computers; today, I can easily imagine addressing visitors in a gallery because most of them have just gotten up from their computers. They have the necessary experience and understanding of the medium to get the ideas and jokes, to enjoy the works and to buy them.

What is especially interesting about today’s exhibition is the fact that it counts on people who came not only with knowledge but also with their own mobile devices. So you are here and you are in front of your own computers again.

How to show net art in the real space? Another eternal question

OFFLINE ART is not Aram’s first answer to it. Three years ago, he conceptualized Speed Shows, an exhibition format that suggested renting an Internet café for one evening and opening online works on computers in a standard browser with standard preferences. It was a great gesture and I’m happy that these series of events still happen all over the world, because it is important to go to Internet cafés, to sit at least once in a while in front of a public computer. It was great for net art because a standard computer with a standard browser is a natural atmosphere. It is much healthier than installations and custom built objects around a work that only needs a browser. “Net.art never died! It just moved to your local Internet-shop!” was the motto of the series. The paraphrased motto of OFFLINE ART could be “net.art never died! It just moved to your local network!”

Once again, Aram suggests showing (distributing) the works through standard devices – Wi-Fi routers. They are modified, though. One router, one artist, one work of art: one network per artist. It is elegant and almost absurd.

This can be very attractive for collectors, who were always warned that you couldn’t buy net art; for this, you’ll have to buy the whole network. Well, here it comes, the artwork and the network.

I’m sorry if it sounds a bit sarcastic, but it is not because I’m against selling. I think, and I have repeated this for fifteen years, that selling web art is easy. Any other art form is more problematic than a web-based one, especially when it comes to pragmatic and legal issues. Additionally, there are so many ways to do it, so many ways to reshape and re-contextualize, to keep and collect. OFFLINE ART is an example of how it can be done.

We can try to see today whether this setting works and how it works. Will you look at the router or will you look at the work it is transmitting? Will you go through one router to another, or stay for hours in front of one? Will you keep the files you’ve downloaded on your devices and transfer them to your nextphone or overwrite them immediately?

You can access the works of twelve artists who belong to the tradition of web art through the routers, and then buy the routers. For OFFLINE ART, Aram selected classic and new works that play with web culture and browser aesthetics. They are all accessible through browsers, not apps. I think it is great to do this in 2013, because at this moment it looks like apps are taking other, but it is not true. Web designers and browsers will adjust to the small screens in the near future and the Web will once again become the environment we are in, even on mobile phones.

As soon as you connect your devices to each of the routers you will get a beautiful piece of web art. The exhibition itself is a wonderful net art project. Thank you for paying attention to both, for keeping both movements alive

Olia Lialina, 21 February 2013

I pass this new2.odt to you. Please scan, spell-check and put it online :)

Olia Lialina opening the show at xpo gallery Feb 21, 2013

Thx to Olia for this wonderful and very important opening speech!

Aram Bartholl
»Go!Go!Go!«

Solo Exhibition

Aksioma | Project Space
Komenskega 18, Ljubljana
6 – 22 March 2013

Exhibition opening and artist presentation:

WED 6 March 2013 at 7 pm

[MORE]

How to ANDROID DISCO! 1.Go to Settings 2. Select Developer options at bottom 3. Check all boxes in section User interface. Done! PAAARTY!

— Aram Bartholl (@arambartholl) February 26, 2013

WARNING:If you are a photosensitive epileptic you might need help to have your phone set back to normal. (looks very much like a JODI piece :)))

Also as text at http://www.ecrans.fr/Offline-Art-il-faut-savoir-reseaux,16024.html
Thx to Marie Lechner for the great piece!!

Google Portrait: Kate Middleton
Charcoal on Paper
100 x 100 cm

Aram Bartholl, 2013

On display at DAM Berlin at Art13 London  March 1-3 2013

Good by Kate! Was cool hanging out! :))

Flickr picture set of OFFLINE ART: new2 opening at xpo gallery in Paris last Thursday. The opening was magic! Thx to all the artist taking part in this experiment! Thx to xpo gallery for making this possible! Thx to Olia Lialina for the fabulous opening speech! Thx everyone!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bartholl/sets/72157632855770234/show/

The Vertical Cinema night at Platoon last Monday was really cool!! Good crowd and lot of fun!! Thx to Platoon for hosting us!

I am showing  a new work at DAM Frankfurt “BACK TO BACK” , opening next Sunday . “Graphic Arrays” is about screen resolutions and aspect ratios and how these evolved over the laste decades. The left board is dedicated to more recent mobile vertical resolution ending at iPad retina. The right board represents the long history of desktop screen pixel sizes starting with the classic VGA (640×480) IBM standard from 1987 till todays common 2560×1600 desktop monsters.  It’s also fun to look up the top screen resolutions of Internet users for each year screenresolution.org, sometimes even sorted by country (which it was up to date).  My first screen ever was a PAL 576×768 on a C64. Currently I am looking at 2560×1440 vastness. Of course the DPI(PPI) has increased immensely over the years, especially with all the mobile screens recently. It feels weird to look at a 5:4 SXGA screen (1280×1024, my favorite!)  today, almost portrait ration?!? At the same time when you cut a piece of paper in 16:9 format it looks overkill horizontal. But we look at that ratio all day! (…our glowing window of desire … (in 16:9 …;)) Update: The actual  resulution of pixel sized paper sheets is classic 72 ppi (pixel per inch) like the first screens in the good old days. :) Some people’ve been asking…
See also related the verticalcinema.com project.

BACK TO BACK at DAM Frankfurt
Opening, February 17  2013, 11 am – 15 pm
Exhibition: 20th February – 27th April 2013

with: Aram Bartholl (D), Eelco Brand (NL), Joan Leandre (ES), Gerhard Mantz (D), Manfred Mohr (D), Vera Molnar (F), Frieder Nake (D), Casey Reas (US)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bartholl/sets/72157632865293922

Graphic Arrays

media: paper, aluminum dibond,
dimensions:   54 x 72 cm, 90 x 56 cm,

Aram Bartholl 2013

‘

Last Friday I made a cam bootleg of the world premiere of the TPB AFK film at Berlinale. Whole story and video etc can be found on FFFFFAT :))

Current & upcoming shows / talks / workshops
_________________________________________________________

16.5.-26.6.2013
★RETWEET★IF★YOU★WANT★MORE★FOLLOWERS★
solo show at xpo gallery, Paris

8.5.-13.7.2013
Fußnoten zum Aufbruch
Motorenhalle in Dresden

20.4.2013
see#8
see Conference, Wiesbaden

1.-14.4.2013
F.A.T. Lab GOLD – 5 years of fffffat!!
at Eyebeam, New York, US

28.3.-4.4.2013
Art Paris
with xpo gallery, Paris

6.3.-27.3.2013
Go!Go!Go!
solo show at Aksioma, Ljubljana, Slovenia

1.3.-3.3.2013
Art13 London
with DAM Berlin

21.2.-12.3.2013
OFFLINE ART: new2
at xpo gallery, Paris
curated by Aram Bartholl
participating artists : Cory Arcangel, Kim Asendorf, Claude Closky, Constant Dullaart, Dragan Espenschied, Faith Holland, JODI, Olia Lialina, Jonas Lund, Evan Roth, Phil Thompson, Emilie Gervais & Sarah Weis

20.2.–27.4.2013
BACK TO BACK
DAM Frankfurt am Main
with: Aram Bartholl (D), Eelco Brand (NL), Joan Leandre (ES), Gerhard Mantz (D), Manfred Mohr (D), Vera Molnar (F), Casey Reas (US)

18.2.2013
Vertical Cinema
presented by curatingyoutube.net & Aram Bartholl
hosted by Platoon Berlin

Past shows / talks / workshops
….

(sehr23, our studio wifi..)

Love this!! Grand father of game mod culture meets latest super star in mod heaven. :))

+

… results in this recent game: Ace of Spades

DVD Dead Drop vol.5 curated by Fach & Asendorf!! YEAHHH!! Massive!! THX!! :))

BEST OF Fach & Asendorf Gallery
February 8–March 14, 2013, at Museum of Moving Image, DVD Dead Drop

Compiled by Ole Fach & Kim Asendorf (http://fa-g.org)

Fach & Asendorf Gallery debuted online in 2011 with these words:

The Internet, it is everywhere. It is here, it is there and it is where you actually are. It is so huge that nobody ever could print it. It is so deep that no one ever would dive to its end. There is peace and war in it, love and hate and all between. Once you have traveled through it, you will never forget, and you will come back, asap.

Since then, Fach & Asendorf Gallery has served 24 online exhibitions of digital and net art to more than 28,000 unique visitors. To celebrate the beginning of their third season, Fach & Asendorf Gallery presents BEST OF, an enormous collection of unreleased and exclusive work by 76 artists from around the world spanning a broad range of formats including applications, videos, and animated GIFs. BEST OF is a whole week of Internet on DVD.

Participating artists:
A Bill Miller, Absis Minas, Alan Butler, Alexander Peverett, Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Andrew Benson, Andrew Rosinski, Anthony Antonellis, Aoki and Peverett, Art 404, Bea Fremderman, Brandon Blommaert, Carlos Saez, Charles Chalas, Chris Collins, Christian Petersen, Claudia Mate, Clement Valla and Kyle McDonald, Constant Dullaart, curatingyoutube.net, Daniel Leyva, Daniel Rehn, David Kraftsow, Deanna Havas, Dominik Podsiadly, Emilie Gervais, Emilio Gomariz, Fabien Mousse, Ferestec, Florian Kuhlmann, Francoise Gamma, Fritz Laszlo Weber, Georges Jacotey, Goto80, Grace McEvoy, Hugo Scibetta, Jacob Engblom, Jan Robert Leegte, Jasper Elings, Jennifer Chan, Jerome Saint-Clair, JK Keller, Johannes P Osterhoff, Jon Satrom, Jonas Lund, Jonathan Pirnay and Jörn Röder, jonCates, Jordan Tate, Jörg Piringer, Julien A Lacroix, Lorna Mills, Małgosia Woźnica, Manuel Fernández, Mark Beasley, Mark Durkan, Martin Böttger, Matthew Williamson, Max Capacity, Michael Manning, Mitch Trale, Miyö Van Stenis, Nicholas O’Brien, Nick Briz, Nicolas Boillot, Nicolas Sassoon, Niko Princen, Paul Flannery, Philipp Teister, Rajeev Basu, Raphaël Bastide, Rick Silva, Rollin Leonard, Sara Ludy, Sarah Samy, Sarah Weis, Sebastian Schmieg and Silvio Lorusso, Stefan Riebel, Sterling Crispin, Ted Davis, Theodore Darst, Thomas Cheneseau, Travis Hallenbeck, Yoshi Sodeoka

Upate: Picture documentation of the show here

I am very pleased to announce this upcoming show I curated for xpo gallery. The exhibition format is inspired by David Dart’s Piratebox. OFFLINE ART is some sort of cross-over of Speed Shows and Dead Drops bur still very different :)). Tech specs and software to be released soon! Credits to Matthias Strubel for code! Thx!!
CU there everyone!!

Si ce bulletin ne s’affiche pas correctement, veuillez cliquer ici. save the date 21st February Paris SAVE THE DATE Xpo Gallery is pleased  to announce the next exhibtion OFFLINE ART: new2 curated by Aram Bartholl participating artists : Cory Arcangel, Kim Asendorf, Claude Closky, Constant Dullaart, Dragan Espenschied, Faith Holland, JODI, Olia Lialina, Jonas Lund, Evan Roth, Phil Thompson, Emilie Gervais & Sarah Weis Opening Thursday 21st  February, 6.30-9.30pm 7:00pm Introduction by Prof. Olia Lialina exhibition until Saturday 14th March  2013 XPO GALLERY  17, rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth – 75003 Paris new2 is the first show realized in the OFFLINE ART exhibition format. Web based art works will be accessible via wireless network but disconnected from the internet .A high profile selection of 14 artists of various ‘Internet generations’ – who are all working digitally and online – will present  recent and new works. OFFLINE ART: new2 is a group show all about files, versions and copies that questions the endless ‘new’ in our era of the daily remix on the Internet. A digital file can be copied endlessly, without any loss of quality, and the web culture of nonstop creation, sharing and remixing of files has influenced a whole generation of artists.Over the last two decades, internet artists have been constantly and prolifically creating web-based works.  Often files are collected online, reused, recycled and remixed in varied and numerous ways. The next version is called ‘…-new.gif’ but is already outdated 5 minutes later, with the arrival of  ‘…new2.gif’. Computers and the Internet don’t require a final version. ‘I still need to make some changes….’.What is the current state of net art and what happens when works are taken offline?? What is the correct format in which to show a piece of art in a gallery space that has only previously existed on the web? And what is the relationship between internet art and the ever-growing number of mobile devices?OFFLINE ART: new2 reflects recent discussions among artists and curators on how and if pieces should be available offline. All pieces in this show are browser based and at the same time only locally accessible. In the end it is the decision of each artist how and which version will also be available on the INTERNET. The OFFLINE ART exhibition format: Browser-based digital art works are broadcast locally from wifi routers which are not connected to the Internet.  Each art work is assigned a single wifi router which is accessible through any device, like smart-phones, tablets or laptops.  To access the different art works, the visitor has to connect to each network individually. The name of the network reflects the name of the artist. No matter what URL is opened, only the specific artwork appears in the browser. A small web server holding the art piece is installed on a USB flash drive which is connected to the router. Like frames holding the art, the routers are hung in the exhibition space which is otherwise empty. The art i tself becomes visible only on the visitor’s private screen.The pieces are locally widely accessible but disconnected from the Internet Aram Bartholl 2013 visitez  www.xpogallery pour connaitre les jours et horaires d’ouverture de la galerie ou pour réserver une visite privative de l’exposition please visit www.xpogallery.com for opening times or require a private viewving Facebook Twitter Cliquez ici pour vous désabonner de la liste de diffusion.

My current favorite clip. These sort of moments are the best in life!

My favorite email spam picture of the week! :))

I was live today! On http://iphone-live.net/ by Johannes P Osterhoff. Also congrats to your new project bezos.cc :)) http://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/jan/12/dear-jeff-bezos/