“The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics”

Home / “The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics”

January 16, 2020 – March 1, 2020

Opening Reception January 16th from 5-8PM

“The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics” presents sixteen artworks selected from Net Art Anthology (anthology.rhizome.org), a major online exhibition charting the history of net art through one hundred key works. Organized by the New Museum’s affiliate Rhizome, “The Art Happens Here” culminates this two-year research and preservation initiative.

More than just the creative use of the internet, net art involves diverse practices that “happen” via encounters among users and machines on and through networks. Its live, performative quality means that questions regarding its archival status often emerge—at the point of a work’s creation, when it is taken up by an institution, or in response to changing technological circumstances. How can net art be made to last without losing its variability? How can it be reperformed and recirculated as network contexts change? How can we note its absence or loss?

This exhibition brings together works in a variety of mediums—including websites, software, sculpture, graphics, books, and merchandise—that map out possible responses to these questions. Including archival gestures by artists and restorations by Rhizome’s internationally renowned digital preservation team, the exhibition underlines the importance of rehearsing aspects of network culture that might otherwise recede from view. In doing so, “The Art Happens Here” suggests that by engaging poetically with net art’s past, we can better reckon with the challenges and contradictions of a rapidly changing network culture.

Featuring Artists:

  • Shu Lea Cheang
  • Melanie Hoff
  • Morehshin Allahyari
  • Eduardo Kac
  • Entropy8Zuper!
  • Alexei Shulgin
  • Alex Galloway
  • Mark Tribe
  • Martin Wattenberg
  • Miao Ying
  • Aleksandra Domanovic Grobari
  • Wolfgang Staehle
  • Olia Lialina
  • Bogosi Sekhukhuni
  • Brian Mackern
  • Siebren Versteeg

Find more information and articles about “The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics” by using these links:

https://rhizome.org

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/21/18254786/net-art-anthology-happens-here-new-museum-exhibit-mtaa

https://bombmagazine.org/articles/the-art-happens-here-net-arts-archival-poetics/