[artinfo] MBCBFTW. online since 1996 exhibition

[olia lialina]

My Boyfriend Came Back From The War. online since 1996

The exhibition presents works related to Olia Lialina's "MBCBFTW" and 
illuminates the development of the World Wide Web as medium and 
technology.

Artists: Inbal Shirin Anlen, Freya Birren (Jennifer Walshe)  Masha 
Boriskina, Vadim Epstein, Dragan Espenschied, JODI, Olia Lialina, Abe 
Linkoln, Guthrie Lonergan, Armin Medosch, Ignacio Nieto, Anna 
Russett, Tale of Tales a.k.a. Entropy8Zuper!, Mark Wirblich

Russian artist Olia Lialina's "My Boyfriend Came Back From The War" 
(MBCBFTW) is a key work of 1990s  artistic practice on the web, 
marking its 20th anniversary in 2016. It has a pioneering character, 
as an interactive narrative and a work of net art. MBCBFTW presents 
two people who are trying to talk to each other about a war, after 
the fact.

"My Boyfriend Came Back From the War" is a unique case and a 
fascinating example of a work that has inspired artists for 20 years; 
they cite it time and again, they focus on it or reinterpret it 
through remixing. Lialina has collected these works in her private 
archive under the title Last Real Net Art Museum. So far she has 
gathered 27 versions, 13 of which she has chosen for the HeK 
exhibition. Thus the show covers an arc of more than two decades of 
artistic practice on the net. Her collection includes works from the 
pioneering phase of the mid- to late 1990s up to today. With these 
artistic works, the exhibition illuminates 20 years of the World Wide 
Web as medium and technology - from the initial enthusiasm over a new 
medium to its acceptance as an omnipresent technology today. The 
Internet's stages of development will be traced through the structure 
and technical constitution of the projects: from HTML to Flash, from 
dot-com to e-commerce, from the website to the app.

Those shown here will be presented on historical equipment, in order 
to capture their original "look and feel" and demonstrate changes 
within the communications technologies, up to and including today's 
all-encompassing Internet, accessible anytime and anywhere thanks to 
mobile devices.

A publication linked to the exhibition will present both the works 
themselves and key essays on the development of Internet culture. The 
authors include Michael Connor, curator and director of the Internet 
platform Rhizome in New York; Joanne McNeil, freelance curator and 
author; Russian Internet theorist Roman Leibov; and the American 
science fiction author Bruce Sterling.

duration: 21.01.2016 - 20.03.2016
opening: 20.01.2016, 19:00
with the by Talk Bruce Sterling: 18:00
Science fiction writer, journalist and cyberpunk pioneer Bruce 
Sterling is a guest at HeK, discussing 20 years of net-based works.

http://www.hek.ch/en/program/events-en/event/my-boyfriend-came-back-from-the-war-online-since-1996/0/1451862000.html