Art for Networks

In memory of Armin Medosch (1962-2017). You can read Armin's essay from this exhibition's catalogue here: Network 404

Art for networks began life as a production for BBC Online in 2000. I worked with the BBC Wales Online office to shape a series of talks at Chapter in Cardiff (Wales) by artists and theorists associated with net.art. Matthew Fuller interviewed those concerned and we published the results on the BBC website.

This led to a group exhibition that toured the UK in 2002-3, including a conference at Chapter. The exhibition featured in the BBC tv series Art Safari in which the art-sceptical posh-boy Ben Lewis tries to catch out obviously over-paid and obviously pretentious "so-called artists". (I feature for a fleeting moment, looking like a proper oik, caught blissfully unaware about a then little-known text by Nicolas Bourriaud.)

This project featured in a presentation given at CHArt conference at Birkbeck in 2003 – an unpublished paper entitled 'self-historicizing through Art for Networks, taking Stewart Home's idea to heart; it's also been discussed in various papers, including one (I forget which but do let me know if you're the author) that claims that I opted for the obvious examples of participatory/relational artists' work in the exhibition. I guess they didn't know that Stephen Willats was an artist whose work I was fascinated by since my undergraduate days. As I was looking for ways to collapse the partition between net and other contemporary art worlds, his was a strong precedent , Willats having done the same since his days working with cybernetics pioneer Gordon Pask.

Installation Views: Chapter gallery, Cardiff, UK 2002