Next week I will be in Sao Paulo, Brazil to take part in the International Symposium Futuros Possíveis / Possible Futures at the university FAU-USP. The symposium “proposes a debate on emergent themes in the field of preservation of artistic and cultural heritage, by gathering a net of international experts in conservation of digital art and in collections digitilization.” Participants are Ana Pato, André Stolarski, Annet Dekker, Arianne Vanrell, Beth Saad, Christiane Paul, Cicero Silva, Daniela Kutschat Hanns, Domenico Quaranta, Gabriela Previdello, Gerfried Stocker, Gilbertto Prado, Guilherme Kujawski, Gustavo Romano, José Luis de Vicente, Lucas Bambozzi, Manuela Naveau, Monika Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss, Paula Alzugaray, Patricia Kunst Canetti, Pedro Puntoni, Renata Motta, Rudolf Frieling. Check it out!
Category Archives: 2012
Panel Discussion: Electrosanne Festival
Tomorrow, Friday September 7, 2012, I will be part of the round table “La culture D.I.Y, l’open source et le copyright” in the frame of the Electrosanne Festival in Lausanne, Switzerland, together with: Yan Luong (social media strategist and moderator of the panel); Lemonade (dj) and Léo Wannaz (founder of the indipendent label Creaked).
Panel discussion: Fondazione Ratti, Como
Tomorrow, Thursday, September 6, 2012 at 6 PM I will be at Fondazione Ratti, Como to discuss with Elena di Raddo my book Media, New Media, Postmedia (Postmediabooks 2010). The event is part of the Festival Parolario.
Open Call: In My Computer
The LINK Center for the Arts of the Information Age invites artists, thinkers, and computer users to submit proposals for its ongoing book series “In My Computer”. Click here to find out more!
On the New Aesthetic
My take on the New Aesthetic meme is available on Flash Art, in Italian. English readers may try to googletranslate this. Good luck…
Domenico Quaranta, “Una nuova estetica?”, in Flash Art, Issue 303, June 2012, p. 26. Pdf download here.
“After Prince” and “After Cariou”
“After Prince” and “After Cariou” are two twin websites displaying a collection of animated gifs based, respectively, on the work of American Artist Richard Prince and French photographer Patrick Cariou.
In December 2008, Patrick Cariou filed suit for copyright infringement against Prince, Larry Gagosian, Gagosian Gallery, and Rizzoli books after a number of photographs from Cariou’s publication Yes, Rasta (2000) were reappropriated without consent in Prince’s Canal Zone series. In March, 2011, Manhattan federal court judge Deborah Batts ruled against Richard Prince and the Gagosian Gallery, demanding that all works and materials relating to Prince’s Canal Zone be delivered up for impounding, destruction, or other disposition.
“After Prince” and “After Cariou” are projects of the students of the “Net Art” class at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. Anybody can contribute. The projects have an educational value, with a focus on collage, appropriation and remix as grounding languages of contemporary art, collaborative platforms, open cultures and animated gif as a native online language.
Every content of these websites is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
To Contribute:
- Google “Richard Prince” / “Patrick Cariou” or just visit the artists’ website;
- Choose an image and download it;
- Make your animated gif;
- Visit http://afterprince.tumblr.com/ or http://aftercariou.tumblr.com/, click on “submit” and upload your image (or just upload the image on your Tumblr with the tag “after prince” or “after cariou”).
In the Uncanny Valley
My two followers may already have realized that some months ago I stopped blogging on this website, using it as an archive, a portfolio and a news feed about my activity. One of the reasons was the launch of a new blog project, In the Uncanny Valley. Here the statement:
“According to Wikipedia, “the uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.”
What fascinates me in this concept is the idea of a “limit”, set not by an external constraint (in this case, advancements in technology), but by human sensibility. We already can exceed this limit, but if we do, we will produce a monster. I like to think that the same idea can be extended to any kind of human artifact. Uncanny valleys are everywhere.
This is the place where I collect and share my research notes about art, and about what is uncannily similar to it. Enjoy.”
Raitunes
“When an Image Becomes a Work” on Pool.info
My text about Maurizio Cattelan and memes (published in Italian on Flash Art) is finally available in English on Pool.info. Thanks Louis Doulas!
Domenico Quaranta, “When an Image Becomes a Work: Prolegomena to Cattelan’s Iconology“, in Pool.info, May 4, 2012.
Healing the Media
On Saturday, April 14, Constant Dullaart‘s first solo show in Italy will open at Fabio Paris Art Gallery. This is the text I wrote for the brochure (English, downloadable pdf).
Online art market
In the last issue of Flash Art, I have a piece about the online art market, from the Vip Art Fair to Rafael Rozendaal (in the picture, likethisforever.com, 2011), from [s]editions to The Download to Artmicropatronage. In Italian… (downloadable pdf here).
BYOB Milano
I’m organizing a BYOB in Milan, that will take place at Museo Pecci Milano on Thursday, April 12, 2012. Check it out!
Collect the WWWorld in Basel – Photos and video
Photo and video documentation of Collect the WWWorld at the House for Electronic Arts Basel is now available on YouTube and Flickr. Some backstage is available on the Link Center’s Facebook page.
Upcoming next week…
- On Monday, March 5 2012 I’ll (virtually) take part in LOADING. Videogioco, arte, media…, a symposium on art and videogames organized by the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, with a short lecture about “art games”;
- On Tuesday, March 6 2012 I’ll present my book Media, New Media, Postmedia to the students of the Institute for Media Studies /i/f/m, University of Basel (more info);
- On Thursday, March 8 2012 I’ll have a guided tour to my show Collect the WWWorld. The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age, opening at The House of Electronic Arts Basel.
Tonylight
“Tonylight”, in Tonylight – Flooding Noise, exhibition brochure, Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia, March 2012. Downloadable pdf, Italian only
Collect the WWWorld at the House of Electronic Arts Basel
Collect the WWWorld. The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age
March 9, 2012 – May 20, 2012
Opening: March 8, 2012, 6.30 PM
(A guided tour with the curator is scheduled for 7.30 PM)
Curated by: Domenico Quaranta
Co-produced by: the LINK Center for the Arts of the Information Age and the House of Electronic Arts Basel
Attribution Art?
Domenico Quaranta, “Eva & Franco Mattes: Attribution Art?“, in Artpulse Magazine, issue 10, Winter 2011 – 2012. Where I speak about thefts with Jodi, Maurizio Cattelan, Nike’s CEO, Dieter Roth, Edward Kienholz, the Holy See… and the Mattes of course…
The Machine as Seen…
My comments on the exhibition Nostalgia Machines (David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence) have been just published on the Bell Gallery blog. In the image above, the amazing Measuring Angst, 2009, by Jonathan Schipper (a visit to his website is highly recommended).
When an Image Becomes a Work. Premesse a un’iconografia di Cattelan
Domenico Quaranta, “When an Image Becomes a Work. Premesse a un’iconografia di Cattelan“, in Flash Art Online, January 25, 2012. Italian only, but if you can’t read, you can still look at images…
Laboratori: Merz Akademie
I started contributing short articles to the “new media” column of Italian magazine Artribune. The first article is online, and it’s about the Merz Akademie. The cover image has a wrong caption – the wonderful Flexible Dancefloor Disco is by Saskia Aldinger – but also Helene Dams’ I Can Has History is worth a look!
2012 Updates on the MINI Museum
The MINI Museum, my “museum en valise”, turned out to be an interesting challange, and a surprise, at least for me. Launched in September 2010, the project went slower than expected, but it’s still alive; and this is the first surprise. The Museum traveled, hand by hand, from London to Berlin, and from Berlin to the Netherlands, where it is currently based. And it left my circle of contacts very soon, and this is the second surprise. Here is a list of the artists who run it and contributed to its collection in 2011:
Paul B. Davis (London)
Thomson & Craighead (London)
Martin John Callanan (Berlin)
Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson (Berlin)
Belchkitchen | Quinten Dierick (Arnhem, The Netherlands)
Quinten handed it over Bertin van Vliet (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), who made the first show of 2012. The Museum is now in the hands of artist and curator Robbie Driessen, and its future, as ours, is uncertain. For more updates, check out the website!
Content Awareness
I’m extremely proud to announce “Content Aware”, the first solo show of Enrico Boccioletti, one of my former students at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. The show will open on Saturday, 6 PM, at Fabio Paris Art Gallery. I wrote a text for the exhibition brochure, available in English and Italian. Enjoy!
Domenico Quaranta, “Content Awareness”, in Enrico Boccioletti – Content Aware, exhibition brochure, Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia, January 2012. English | Italian (downloadable pdf)