[artinfo] The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age

[Domenico Quaranta]

Collect the WWWorld. The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age

Curated by: Domenico Quaranta
Produced by: LINK Center for the Arts of the Information Age

Spazio Contemporanea
Corsetto Sant'Agata, 22 - Brescia

September 24 - October 15, 2011, 3.00 - 7.00 PM

Artists: Alterazioni Video (IT), Kari Altmann 
(US), Cory Arcangel (US), Gazira Babeli (IT), 
Kevin Bewersdorf (US), Luca Bolognesi (IT), 
Natalie Bookchin (US), Petra Cortright (US), 
Aleksandra Domanovic (DE), Harm van den Dorpel 
(NL), Constant Dullaart (NL), Hans Peter Feldmann 
(DE), Elisa Giardina Papa (IT), Travis Hallenbeck 
(US), Jodi (NL), Oliver Laric (DE), Olia Lialina 
& Dragan Espenshied (DE), Guthrie Lonergan (US), 
Eva and Franco Mattes (IT), Seth Price (US), Jon 
Rafman (US), Claudia Rossini (IT), Evan Roth 
(US), Travess Smalley (US), Ryan Trecartin (US).

On occasion of the Settimana dell'Arte in Brescia 
(September 24 - October 1, 2011), the LINK Center 
for the Arts of the Information Age is proud to 
present the group show Collect the WWWorld. The 
Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age, curated 
by Domenico Quaranta. The show brings together 26 
artists from all around the world, and will be 
accompanied by a rich programme of related 
events: presentations, conferences and workshops.

The last decade has witnessed an incredible 
growth in the production and distribution of 
images. The availability of inexpensive 
production tools has seen an exponential rise in 
amateur creativity, while the Internet provides a 
new distribution platform for this kind of 
production, which previously remained private.

What is the impact of this process on art 
practices and the artist - in the past, the sole, 
hallowed depositary of the creative gesture? What 
kind of dialogue is there between amateur 
practices and codified languages?

Collect the WWWorld. The Artist as Archivist in 
the Internet Age sets out to demonstrate how the 
Internet generation is implementing and 
developing a practice started in the Sixties by 
Conceptual Art, and further developed in 
subsequent decades in the forms of Appropriation 
Art and postproduction: the practice of 
exploring, collecting, archiving, manipulating 
and reusing huge amounts of visual material 
produced by popular culture and advertising. 
Collect the WWWorld is an attempt to show how art 
responds to the information society.

The research work around the show can be followed 
on the blog http://collectheworld.tumblr.com.

LINK Editions

A catalogue will be published for the show, with 
essays by Josephine Bosma, Gene McHugh, Joanne 
McNeil and Domenico Quaranta and presentations of 
all the artists on show. The catalogue (colour, 
160 pp.) will be available at the show, but can 
already be bought or downloaded free from the 
LINK Center website: an open approach that 
highlights the center's belief in the 
accessibility and free circulation of knowledge.
Together with the catalogue, the LINK Center will 
also publish - in the same way - the book Post 
Internet by the New York based art critic Gene 
McHugh. Edited by the author, the book is a 
selection of posts published on his blog Post 
Internet, which was developed between December 
2009 and September 2010 with the support of the 
Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts 
Writers Grant Program. It offers an overview of 
the art of the Internet Age; namely art capable 
of acknowledging the presence and impact of this 
unprecedented medium of distribution and 
dissemination.

Domenico Quaranta (ed.), Collect the WWWorld. The 
Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age, 
exhibition catalogue, 160 pp., colour, Italian / 
English. 46 ¤, LINK Editions, September 2011, 
ISBN 978-1-4478-3949-1. With texts by Josephine 
Bosma, Gene McHugh, Joanne McNeil.

Gene McHugh, Post Internet, 274 pp., English. 14 
¤, LINK Editions, September 2011, ISBN 
978-1-4478-0389-8.

More info: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/linkeditions