THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF IRATIONAL.ORG: Tools, Techniques and Events 1996-2006
Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina
Dunavska 37, Novi Sad, Serbia
Curators: Inke Arns (Dortmund) and Jacob Lillemose (Kopenhagen)
Dates: 28. October – 27. November 2008. from 9-17h, during weekends from 9-14h; Museum is closed on Mondays.
Production:
New Media Center_kuda.org, Novi Sad, http://www.kuda.org
Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, http://www.hmkv.de
Co-producers of the show:
Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, http://www.msuv.org
Institute for Flexible Culture and Technologies – Napon, Novi Sad, http://www.napon.org
Generously supported by:
Province Ministry for Education and Culture
Ministry of Culture of Republic Serbia
Cultural Office of the City of Dortmund in the framework of the twin cities program Dortmund-Novi Sad
Go to the irational exhibition 2006 in the PHOENIX Halle Dortmund
xhibitions&…
Irational is a loose grouping of six international net and media artists who came together around the server irational.org, founded by the British net artist Heath Bunting in 1996, going on to make decisive contribution to early net art from the mid-1990s onward. They include Daniel Garcia Andújar / Technologies to the People (E), Rachel Baker (GB), Kayle Brandon (GB), Heath Bunting (GB), Minerva Cuevas / Mejor Vida Corporation (MEX) and Marcus Valentine (GB).
The exhibition in Novi Sad, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, 2008.
With dry humor and minimal aesthetics, irational commented the Internet hype of the mid-to-late 1990s, competing with the commercialization-euphoria of the new market by developing its own pseudo-ventures. Net art was immediate during this period, neither needing nor enjoying the safety of a mediating space or instance. This is why irational often hit upon humorless trademark attorneys, who wanted to keep irational from using brand names such as 7-11, American Express, Sainsburys and Tesco. These encounters, which the exhibition documents extensively, were little more than a prelude to more recent developments on the field of copyright, intellectual property, and brand protection. Heath Bunting was the first net artist to retire in 1997, putting an end to his exclusive work in the net and turning back to more intensive work in public space, which the Internet has become such an important part of today. If the activities of irational during its “net phase” were dedicated to calling virtual boundaries into question, its members now experiment with interrogating and overcoming economic, political, and social boundaries in real space, producing a great deal of comic relief, among other things.
The exhibition in Novi Sad, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, 2008.
The exhibition in Novi Sad is coming after shows in Glasgow and Dortmund. Never before have so many complex and relevant artworks from around irational.org been shown in such a comprehensive exhibition. Its goal is to use the media of a large-scale presentation, workshops, and a comprehensive documentation to make these artistic-activist pieces more accessible to a general public.
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