Rachel Baker, Anna Best, Heath Bunting, Adam Chodzko, Jeremy Deller, Honor Hager with Adam Hyde, Jodi, Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie, James Stevens, Technologies to the People/Daniel G Andujar, Stephen Willats.
Curated by Cardiff-based artist Simon Pope.
‘Art for Networks’ focuses on some of the most exciting international artists producing or using networks through their practice.
On first encounter, net.art seems to be defined by the internet, that most visible and newsworthy of networks. However, there are other networks that also figure in our lives: those of identity, kinship, sociability, authorship and communication.
Artists included in this exhibition investigate, implement or critique these networks, often working at the intersection between them:
RACHEL BAKER’s Platform, is a series of mobile phone SMS (simple messaging system) interventions onboard the Eurostar. The resulting texts reveal the narrative and social structures of this particular route between Paris and London.
ANNA BEST has developed a live art practice based on investigations into the local and specific. For ‘Art for Networks’ she has invited ice cream van owners to a number of meetings and events around the UK, and the documentation is shown in the gallery. In the future the piece will culminate in a mass ice cream van convention somewhere in the UK.
HEATH BUNTING short-circuits the postal network to provide personal courier services. Co-ordinated through a website, Courier will include local pick-ups and deliveries in its list of destinations.
ADAM CHODZKO’s Product Recall reveals a community drawn together by their common ownership of a particular style of Vivienne Westwood jacket. The invisible consumer network is revealed when Chodzko videos a party of proud wearers.
Ryosuke Cohen’s Braincell in an international mail art project that involves printing or pasting received stamps or stickers onto A3 sheets. Cohen then sends a sheet back with a list of addresses to each participant. Published at intervals of 8 – 10 days, the sheets include around 60 people at a time and the A3 posters will be added to during the course of the exhibition.
JEREMY DELLER will work with local prisons, inviting commumication between the general public and inmates through a messaging board system sited in a nearby public buiding.
RADIOQUALIA will show Free Radio Linux, an online and on-air radio station. The sound transmission consists of a computerised reading of the code used to create the operating system, Linux.
JODI map existing networks of artists, institutions and infrastructures to provide us with an online representation of the connections that define the structure of the networked artworld.
NINA POPE & KAREN GUTHRIE use text-based, multi-user software to build a community that collaboratively imagines and describes a virtual island. The artists interpret the online instructions and, at a number of events, can be seen constructing a scale model in the gallery.
JAMES STEVENS’s Talkaoke uses models that can be found in nightclubs, pubs, bars and at festivals. The talkaoke format is simple: a circular table with a compére in the middle with a microphone. Anybody can sit or stand around the table but once they take the mic, they’re the centre of attention. Talkaoke is not ordinary chat; it elicits revealing and unpredictable performances from its participants.
TECHNOLOGIES TO THE PEOPLE and Daniel G. Andujar in collaboration with the Art for Networks team, create an online portal where participants can browse the Art for Networks website; post comments in different languages; join forums; chat; propose new topics and send photos.
STEPHEN WILLATS uses computer network protocols to provide a formal language through which dissimilar groups of citizens may communicate. The exhibition includes photographic and textual documentation of previous works.
Preview: Fri 27 Sept
Chapter gallery is open from Tuesday to Sunday between 11am and 8pm. Admission is free.
Art for Networks will tour to a number of additional UK venues.
Chapter Gallery
Market Road, CF5 1QE
Cardiff
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