Arte, pueblo, Comunidad
DOMINGO MESTRE Levante EMV Hace unos días, el Instituto Ramón Llull de Barcelona hacía público el proyecto encargado de representar a Cataluña en la Bienal de Venecia. En él participa el artista valenciano Daniel G. Andújar, pero también el andaluz Pedro G. Romero y los catalanes Elvira Pujol y Joan Vila-Puig. Me alegré mucho, y no sólo por razones de amistad. También me gustó que en el proceso de selección se respetaran las recomendaciones del documento de Buenas Prácticas en Museos y Centros de Arte. Y que el prestigioso jurado haya argumentado con seriedad su veredicto, criticando con firmeza otros aspectos de la política cultural catalana. Pero lo más relevante es el significado simbólico del proyecto, que ha sido concebido, según explica su comisario, Valentín Roma, como «un intento de reflejar la multiplicidad identitaria de Cataluña».
Armed citizen
1998/2006 Website with linked images www.irational.org/tttp/Crypto/armed1.html Presented in the exhibition with large-format DVD slide projection and Folder Presented in the exhibition as an upgrade of almost 100 images, the internet project Armed Citizen shows a series of 17 small arms. No information is given on their origins. Who owns them? Are they being used as criminal evidence? Are they perhaps murder weapons? Who does the ›armed citizen‹ of the title refer to — the police? Or a citizens’ defence group that has taken up arms? Is there some allusion to the liberal firearms laws in the United States, to bloody incidents like the amok shootings that took place in Columbine High School, Colorado, in 1999, or in the Gutenberg Gymnasium in Erfurt in 2002? Armed Citizen is difficult to pin down. But it is safe to assert that it deals with an indeterminate feeling of fear and menace, and, by association, with the growing longing for security in a world felt to be increasingly less safe. The exhibition deliberately groups Armed Citizen in a kind of »security zone« together with Heath Bunting’s CCTV and Rachel Baker and Heath Bunting’s CCTV Sabotag — further irational works pointing to the essential futility of technology —
Interface@metrònom.es
David G. Torres Barcelona, noviembre 1998. Metrònom (Barcelona) www.davidgtorres.net Todos usamos la tecnología: escribimos en ordenador, navegamos por la web y "zapeamos" por los canales de televisión. Damos una orden y cambia el formato de texto o salta un nuevo canal. Daniel García Andújar pone entre interrogantes ese "todos" del principio y nuestra capacidad de dar órdenes, de usar y de interactuar con la tecnología. Y lo hace desde dentro, utilizando sus mismas trampas y engaños. Daniel García Andújar ha dispuesto en la sala central de Metrònom una enorme instalación de aparente sofisticada tecnología. Al entrar, una supuesta máquina –The Body Research Machine– realiza una especie de escáner del espectador, tomando sus coordenadas físicas y composición química. Con esos datos el ordenador procesa un interfaz para que el espectador interactúe con la instalación. Una vez dentro, cámaras, proyecciones, monitores y diferentes sensores parecen dispuestos para que provoquemos no se sabe muy bien qué efectos. El problema es que no provocamos nada. Todo el tiempo se mantiene la sensación de que nosotros, espectadores, hemos ocasionado alguna de las proyecciones, pero no sabemos ni como ni cuando. Sólo está claro que al acercarnos a ver unas imágenes fotográficas a través de unas pequeñas aberturas en la pared, la luz se apaga y se nos niega la imagen. Tampoco el videoproyector lo pone fácil, en ocasiones unos potentes focos traseros tapan totalmente la imagen. Por algún lugar se reproducen las conversaciones grabadas de otros visitantes. ¿Qué es lo que hemos visto? y ¿qué es lo que hemos hecho? Ni idea. La instalación de Daniel García Andújar está llena de trampas y el espectador lejos de ser el sujeto actuante es el objeto o, tal vez, la víctima.
Reservate der Sehnsucht [Zones of Desire]
Reservate der Sehnsucht [Zones of Desire] 21 August- 4 October 1998 Dortmunder U 35 internatinal artists on four floors with more than 4,000 qm of industrial ruins Daniel García Andújar-Siegrun Appelt-John M. Armleder-Peter Bogers-Marie Jose Burki-Diller + Scofidio-Onno Dirker-Stan Douglas-Christoph Draeger-FLATZ-Mark Formanek-Rodney Graham-Johan Grimonprez-ipfo-Christoph Irrgang-Gerald van der Kaap-Kirsten Kaiser-Leuchtstoff-Peter Land-Antoni Muntadas-Walter Niedermayr-Vito Orazem-Tony Oursler-Jose Alejandro Restrepo-Alberto Simon-Jan-Peter ER. Sonntag-Bill Spinhoven-Allan Wexler-Andrea Wolfensberger-Thomas Wrede
Some of My Favourite Web Sites Are Art
Date: 8.6.98 From: alex galloway (alex@rhizome.org) Some of My Favourite Web Sites Are Art http://www.alberta.com/unfamiliarart/ Project: ILLEGAL INTERFERENCE Daniel Garcia Andujar http://www.irational.org/daniel/pirates/Illegal.html The name "web collider" describes web art that remixes material found on the net into a new, ready-made artwork. Illegal Interference takes email from newsgroups and secret hacker communities and mixes them together into a new, "illegal" interference pattern. Like a packet sniffer, the device for eavesdropping on web correspondence without being detected, Illegal Interference intercepts email between hackers as they ask for stolen serial numbers or cracked software. By poking his nose into the back alleys of the web, artist Daniel Garcia Andujar offers a bird's eye view of information as it is exchanged, misdirected, lost and stolen. In another project entitled "Technologies To The People," Andujar states boldly that "Access To Technology is a Human Right!" Forever self-reflexive, much of Andujar's art focuses on how easily commercial forces might exploit such a claim. For Andujar the corporate ownership of words and phrases--trademarks like UPS's "Moving At The Speed Of Business," or Lucent's "We Make The Things That Make Communications Work"--reminds us that language, like technology, is not free. Playing with the commercialization of information, Andujar asks: Who controls information and technology? In Illegal Interference we see the
Some of My Favourite Web Sites Are Art
Date: 8.6.98 From: alex galloway Some of My Favourite Web Sites Are Art http://www.alberta.com/unfamiliarart/ Project: ILLEGAL INTERFERENCE Daniel Garcia Andujar http://www.irational.org/daniel/pirates/Illegal.html The name "web collider" describes web art that remixes material found on the net into a new, ready-made artwork. Illegal Interference takes email from newsgroups and secret hacker communities and mixes them together into a new, "illegal" interference pattern.
RHIZOME_RAW: interview with Daniel Garcia Andujar of TTTP®
Rachel Greene
Rhizome.org, NYC
RHIZOME_RAW: interview with Daniel Garcia Andujar of TTTP®
May 1998
Daniel Garcia Andujar an artist from Valencia, Spain. His current project is Technologies To the People®, though he has worked as an artist in other genres such as video, photography, urban intervention and installation.
http://www.irational.org/daniel/
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RG: Explain Technologies To the People®. Why form an organization?
DGA: I feel like right now there's a real fetishization of the new technologies, but I don't know about the kind of access people really have to them. There's the idea that this is a democratic space and every body comes here onto an equal playing field… I don't see it. I think that Technologies To the People® problematizes and widens the image of technological access, and questions and rethinks the related problems. It's a metaphor -- "all the people are connected" -- while also acting as a public provocation. Today, increasingly, to have access to information and resources, it's necessary to have connectivity. Who has real access to the technology? Will a new division be opened between "inforich" and "infopoor" people? How can we avoid this abyss of separation? Are we at the beginning to a new global colonization? How could it affect us in the future? What can we do to include more "classes of people" in the new information global infrastructure? These are issues that TTTP® tries to make obvious: virtuality, authenticity, copyright, sponsoring, media, power.
TTTP Promotional video
1998 DVD Presented on a monitor » Like every other company Technologies To The People (TTTP) is highly aware of (the value of) its public image and how this image is presented through different media. In this promotional video a number of international tech-economic experts praise the values and ethics of TTTP. However, originally the experts were not hired and paid by TTTP but by its market rivals — global corporations like Dell, Microsoft, and so forth. The promotional video strings together sequences hijacked from corporate PR videos and the abstract concepts they use to deliver ultra-positive descriptions of their companies’ imagined role in the world. Thus, it adopts the language and visuals of business to promote the rival notion of a human-centred and common culture, subtly and humorously confronting the viewer with the question of which of the two cultural economies one wants to define ›freedom‹, ›the future‹, and not least ›access to technology‹. (Jacob Lillemose)
Irational Promotional Video
1998 DVD Presented with DVD Footage of a swinging suspension bridge with a car on it is accompanied by a heavymetal guitar riff. Suddenly the driver is seen to switch off his car stereo, the music stops, as does the swinging of the bridge, and one hears birds singing. All is peace. The guy looks into the camera and with a silly grin on his face says, »Sorry.« The video is a smart piece of advertising, a precise illustration of the way irational rocks our mental and physical infrastructures with a delicate balance of danger and humour. The video was originally used by a corporation dealing with technology. (Jacob Lillemose)
The Manfred and Wilhelm Beutel’s Photo Collection
Daniel García Andújar, E, 1998 CD-ROM, 50 gerahmte digitale Prints Koproduktion: Hartware MedienKunstVerein Reservate der Sehnsucht, Dortmunder U, 1998 Im Rahmen der Ausstellung "Reservate der Sehnsucht" in der ehemaligen Union Brauerei wurde die von Daniel García Andùjar entdeckte Fotosammlung der einstigen Brauereiangestellten Wilhelm und Manfred Beutel präsentiert. Die Sammlung dokumentiert historische Ereignisse aus Dortmund, die im öffentlichen Bewusstsein der Stadt heute nur wenig präsent sind: die Jahre des deutschen Faschismus sowie die fast vollständige Zerstörung der Innenstadt während des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Der wesentliche Beitrag von Andújar bei der Präsentation der Sammlung bestand in einem eigens entwickelten geografischen Informationssystem, kurz GIS, mit dem sich von jedem einzelnen Bild der exakte Zeitpunkt der Aufnahme sowie der Standort des Fotografen ermitteln lässt.