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Internet Pavilion, the adventure continues
Interview to Miltos Manetas
Four days ago the 53rd International Art Exhibition, Venice entitled Making Worlds // Fare Mondi // Bantin Duniyan // Weltenmachen // Construire des Mondes // Fazer Mundos…,was opened to the public. Directed by Daniel Birnbaum, the exhibition will remain open until November 22nd in the Giardini and the Arsenale exhibition venues, as well as in various other locations around the city. The vernissage took place on June 4th-6th.
I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what’s going on at the Magazzini del S.A.L.E. and ask the inventor of Venice’s brand new and first-ever Internet Pavilion, artist Miltos Manetas a few questions. He is better known for having launched the new art movement “Neen” in 2000.
Check out the manifesto here.
The relationship between art and technology is a hot issue in Venice now. It was recently addressed by Daniel Birnbaum in a symposium organised by Telecom and Nova24, the video here.
Simona Lodi: How did the project come about?
Miltos Manetas: Frustration is the answer and the reason was the recession, I was invited to make a special project and I was looking for budget to rent a place and host it in Venice, but then I realised that I don’t need any money because I actually don’t need any space other than the Internet.
The Net is in fact, the space I love and where I have worked over the past seven years. It is also the only “country” that I feel I am a citizen, and it is the only country I want to represent in Venice — not Greece, my country of birth, not Italy, where I studied art, not America or Britain where I have live and work. This is how the Internet Pavilion was born. It opened its virtual doors on June 3rd and it operates with one leg in the “official” terrain of the Venice Biennial and one outside of it and into the wildness of the Network.
The Internet Pavilion is highlighting the contrast between the cultural elite and the different creative powers of the Internets.
I should mention here the presence of the PirateBay.org and its project “Embassy of Piracy“.
(Here’s the video of the opening day )
SL: What is the Internet today and how would you like the Internet to be?
MM: Raising this question is very important because we still have the chance to rethink the Internet and decide if its really the type of network we want. We are now fully emerged on what Paul Virilio calls “The Desert of the computer screens“, we are spending too much of our everyday life in front of them opening pages with words, sounds and video, or moving around a sort of doll’s house of virtual reality, interacting with others like puppets.
I this really what we want?
We should also consider the future of this screen empire. I’m afraid that future laws, with the excuse of protecting copyright, intellectual property and ethics, might hinder my movements and make me just an impoverished user of a new type, even more wretched and demented than those who spend their time watching television.
SL: In April you announced your support to the Pirate Bay cause and its participation in the Internet Pavilion. What has happened since then?
MM: As you know, there were rumours around saying that Italian government officials were trying to stop the participation of Pirate Bay in the Venice Biennale. Then things seemed to go fine once S.A.L.E. Docks and Marco Baravalle offered to host the Internet Pavilion and also separately, the Embassy of Piracy. Whenever the Pirate makes a move, an uproar ensues, we like the sounds of that uproar.
SL: Do you always have to struggle for digital freedom and against problems tied to open source, copyright and hacking?
MM: The Pirate says it on its website. But all of us in one way or another are seeking out new ways to defend the ecosystem of the Internet.
Then on Sunday June 8th in the afternoon “the Guardia di Finanza” raided S.A.L.E., one of the venues for “collateral projects” in the official programme of the Venice Biennale, hosting amongst others the Embassy of Piracy. The first words uttered by the cops: “You cannot have The Pirate Bay here”.”
[At the same time, Jack Schofield from The Guardian commented on the extraordinary election result, as “the Pirate Party, which wants to legalise internet file-sharing, has won one of Sweden’s 18 seats in the European parliament. AFP reports that the Pirate Party won 7.1% of votes with ballots in 5,659 constituencies out of 5,664 counted.”]
SL: What does this project express artistically: an art project, a collective work, a sampler of new media art or what?
MM: The Internet Pavilion is many things, a statement, an artist’s project, a cultural operation, a website, a location, something physical. Its an adventure that started during the Biennale and I am simply following it.
In terms of structure, everything is build on 2 websites, PadiglioneInternet.com which hosts the Art statement of the Internet Pavilion, and functions as a kind of medieval Castle (Go to the ART of the Internet Pavilion, a work by Miltos Manetas and Rafael Rozendaal), and Biennale.net the CITY around the Castle, a city made by Internets which is permanently under construction.
Biennale.net is the portal to art projects such as the New Wave show, but also to the Embassy of Piracy and to many other things.
SL: What about NewWave?
MM: “New Wave” is an online show with a physical component featuring Petra Cortright, Martin Hendriks, Harm Van den Dorpel, Sinem Erkas, Elna Frederick, Parker Ito, Oliver Laric, Guthrie Lonergan and Pascual Sisto.
Some of them have a typically NEEN aesthetic others have still a leg into contemporary art.
Then there is the WikepediaArt Embassy hosted by Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, featuring their performance art, which promotes critical analyses of the nature of art, knowledge and Wikipedia. It is not affiliated with Wikipedia in anyway.
There is also the latest work by Aleksandra Domanovic (SL), an online show with Chinese Internet artists. (It will open later this summer)
There is the second updated edition of “Random Rules: A Channel of
Artists’ Selections from YouTube“, curated by Marina Fokidis. (It will open later this autumn)
There is “PAGES” by Christian Wassmann — a piece of architecture that
turns the Internet into space and space into the Internet. Mr. Wassmann will build “PAGES” live, having brought it with him in pieces from NY, at S.A.L.E.
A video explaining Mr. Wassmann’s mental process can be found here.
“Network of Love”, a performance by AIDS-3D (US), was held on June 3rd
at S.A.L.E. And finally, there is the “Book of Si” by Colin Payne and me, a modern “Book of Sand” in the tradition of Borges, where a webpage can be found only once and never again.
SL:. What will happen at the Internet Pavilion once the Biennale is over?
MM: The “Castle” (PadiglioneInternet.com) will close down and it will re-open in the next edition of the Biennale assigned to a different artist. The City (Biennale.net) will stay open and it will follow it’s destiny I suppose.
SL: Why is the Internet Pavilion dedicated to Dr Leonard Kleinrock? Is he your digital hero?
MM: He inspired me a lot during this project. He is the first man who asked from two computers to “talk” to each other from a distance in 1969, the year we went to the Moon.
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