I stand in the middle of the coal excavation site in AMERIKA and shout, “IM NAMEN DER KOHLE” and the Annuntiator translates like in old Rome, “In the Name of Coal.” For a moment my heart stands still. I think “What hell of a glitch.” I speak in German, “Es ist Amerika.” [more in English …]
Ich stehe in AMERIKA in Mitten der Kohle und rufe, „Im Namen der Kohle“ und der Annuntiator ruft, „In the Name of Coal.“ Für einen Moment steht mein Herz still. Ich denke, „What hell of a glitch“ aber ich spreche in Deutsch, „Es ist Amerika. Dort bin ich Zuhause. Ich bewerbe die Amerika.Art und da geht es um Kohle, um Geld und Kohleausstieg. Es geht auch um Traffic, um den letzten Bus nach Amerika, aber “Traffic” ist ein Englisches Wort für Internet-Nutzung, für die Anbindung an einen Server mit dem Kohle gemacht wird. Im Amerikanischen gibt es kein Wort mit dieser Doppeldeutigkeit. Nun Amerika.Art ist ein Kunstevent und so ein glitch, so ein Ausrutscher einer Machine gehört eben dazu wenn es um Immersionskunst geht. „In the Name of Bucks. Does it sound better?“ frägt mich nun der Annuntiator. Bucks steht für Kohle und Hasen. Nun das passt schon besser. „Zuwenig Spirit,“ ist meine Anword. „In the Name of Amerkia!“ Nun das passt doch. Da ist alles drin News und Fake News, Geld, Kohle, Hasen und Hirsche. Und ein Typo, ein Tippfehler, Amerkia statt Amerika, das macht das Ganze zur Granz Großen Kunst — Präsident Trump hat das vorgemacht mit COVFEFE. Ein Typo und die Welt spielte verrückt. Nun es war nicht der erste, also wurde COVFEFE kurzerhand zu Kunst. Die kommerzielle Version des Versprechers, die domain covfefe.com wurde übrigens mehrfach verkauft. Spitzenpreis 80.000 Dollar, nun ist sie für 15.000 Dollar erneut zu haben. War wohl nichts mit dem Spekulieren. Immer weiter, höher, schneller. Bei Kunst ist man da schon besser dran. Zur Covfefe.Art fanden sich schließlich ein paar tausend Besucher ein und manche Künstler machten echt Kohle.
Kohle bedeutet Immersion, Inklusion, steht für
Aufbruch, Abbruch und für Geld, viel Geld.
Nun hoffen die Amerikaner dass etwas von dem
Geld nach Amerika fließt, denn der letzte Bus nach Amerika fuhr am 31. Juli
2020. Wir haben Hiltraud Furkmann eingeladen Amerika zu besuchen, das andere
Amerika, das wozu man einen Avatar braucht. Dann kann Sie dort auch wieder
einkaufen, nicht mit Euro sondern mit Gloebit – aber was ein echter Amerikaner
ist, der kann mit Veränderungen umgehen, nicht wahr?
Über Amerika.Art
Die AMERIKA.ART ist das Resultat von über 5.000 Meldungen zu „I SEE YOU IN AMERKIA.“ AMERIKA ART ist die Interbiennale für Immersionskunst aus Sachsen die weltweit stattfindet. Ein Kunstprojekt der LEIPZIG.ART
AMERIKA.ART happens in AMERIKA. Historically the name AMERIKA comes from “crossing the river.” The art show, which has a teaching component in it “HOW TO CREATE IMMERSIVE ART”, is planned for 2022.
There is more to read about the idea at AMERIKA.ICU
[TEXT in GERMAN …] The art year 2020 is about to collapse. When you look at the list of international art fairs which are still supposed to happen in 2020 then the list becomes shorter and shorter by the day. The latest victim is the Frieze Art Fair London which was cancelled a few days ago. Frieze London was supposed to happen from October 8 to 11. The Frieze Art Fair in New York has already been cancelled. Frieze Art Fair and Frieze Masters made it with over 60,000 visitors to one of the top art exhibitions in the world. The biggest art show, Art Basel, first moved the timeline to September 2020 and finally cancelled it; it is planned to restart in June 2021. MiArt Art Now in Milano, having its focus on photography and moving images, turned the negative message flow and announced to happen September 11 for three days with “an exclusive online” event and opening VIP day two days prior.
Right now, the
homepage for MiArt presents an alphabetically sorted list of galleries where
the partners of MiArt Art Now provide links to their webpages. It seems that
much still has to happen to change MiArt to an immersive interactive art fair,
giving MiArt not an extension, but more of a warp jump. Such a new term for art
going online already exists.
I
would like the word MiaMerse and there is a reason. Italy is the home of
“The Biennale.” We all know it is the Biennale di Venezia. What most
people might not know how it started. The Venice show was compared to other art
shows at this time, like The Salon de Paris, tiny, but it had its scandal which
attracted the masses, a painting by Giacomo Grosso, Il supremo convegno, 1895.
Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto, who later became Pope Pius X, forbid priests to have a look at this sinful painting. Maybe it was pre-immersive?
IMMERSIVENESS
Immersiveness has
become a mass noun, like information, so it needs a specification, it needs a
pointer. Wikipedia specifies it with “uncountable” and asks users of
the word to specify, “The quality or degree of being immersive” and
also for “the immersiveness of virtual reality.”
Three steps have identified by the most successful Santorini Biennale creating the format IMMERSIVIA in pre-Corona times: Immersive, Interactive and Avatar Awareness. In 2016 the immersive art show occurred for the second time by showing the Surreal Cube and in 2018 the Biennale Institute developed the 1Biennale format joining Santorini Biennale on the Greek Island. Both Biennales were curated by myself with the assistance of Juliette Surreal-D. Nevertheless, when it comes to numbers THE WRONG Biennale has set the standard for going digital, by showing this year over 2,300 artists. It became the biggest art show in the world. But numbers aren’t everything, right?
What does immersive art mean? It means art that is embedded in our digital life. It means that the artists and the visitors interact inside the computer via art experiences. Computers are not only PCs with a screen. There are interactive apps, like THE FAKED in THE WRONG, there are Head-Mounted-Displays, there are educational pathways since Google set their cardboard system on opensource. There are walkable worlds where avatars explore the art. The list of these systems is long.
Museo del Metaverso
Hearing
the name Museo del Metaverso one’s mind instantly travels to Rome and when you
dig deeper it travels to Constantinople, the city we know now as Istanbul. So,
occident meets the museum that goes by the short form MdM was designed by Elif
Ayiter in 2015 and is curated once it went online by Rosanna Galvani. Elif
Ayiter is a professor of design at Sabanci University in Istanbul and a pioneer
in immersive art. Rosanna Galvani is an Italian art curator whose mission is to
present art at MdM. It is a search, a step into a new dimension.
Elif Ayiter was well aware when designing the MdM that it cannot have any boundaries, it must be made to be extended at any time. On the other hand, there shall be no heavy luggage needed for an artist to contribute. The MdM has to link to different kinds of artists to visitors also of different types in any manner you might think of. I remember the exhibition “In Search of Balkania” in 2002 in the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria where the curators Roger Conover, Eda Cufer and Peter Weibel wrote an introduction that is worth sharing:
“If on one level
In Search of Balkania is a rendez-vous with a dented landscape full of used
parts and accidental art, where the real still matters and storefront windows
resemble surrealist displays, on another level it is a virtual encounter with a
symbolic geography that will be the 21st century’s most important fold: where
East meets West, where Occident becomes Orient, and where none of the old lines
and myths about identity, self, nation, and other hold. Indeed, if this
exhibition presents a picture different from any picture previously shown in
Europe of the Balkans, it is that there is nothing in Europe but the Balkans.
Balkania is not a world unto itself, but a mirror onto all selves. To recognize
the Balkans is to recognize features and syndromes out of which cities, wars,
experiments, ideas and visions are composed.”
Balkania does not
exist. It was a proposed name for a state, a try to unite the later separated
countries Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro.
Digital Anthropocene
Our world changes
dramatically and Art is the motor, always has been and will always will be.
There is no life outside of algorithms, outside of digital tools. This insight
happens globally now and it is both breathtaking and scary. Are you positive or
negative? We will inform you within 24 hours, keep your smart phone close. Stay
at home until you know. Work digitally. This leads me to the question,
“What art fair will be known as The Immersive Pioneer?”
MiArt Art Now has the
chance, because there is a budget to turn the art world upside down. A wakeup
call is needed. Such a call can come from any place at any time. Corona is not
just a hurricane that passes over and then all goes back to normal.
Corona is Red, Amerika is Blue
Corona is red, not blue or green. It is an alert; it is a game changer. Many who see their home office as an intermission will learn otherwise, their life will become permanently digital. A digital mirror of life might be a fitting expression if one does not jump into Science Fiction and see Avatars as the sole identity makers. Space X promises to bring via Starlink at the end of 2020 internet with 1 GByte/sec and a latency of 25 Milliseconds to everyone in North America and one year later for everyone on earth. Thanks to Starlink the New Rural may become the New Smart. Stay Rural, find places, “… where life is running like a steady flow of bit coins running down the Crater Lake in Oregon.” That’s a quote from the Sand Bible, which deals with digital life and the role of the big players knowing everything, like the NGA. What we have learned by Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok is a call to be disruptive.
AMERIKA I C U
I C U (I see you) in
Amerika is such a call. It is an Art Call, it is surreal, it has to be, but it
carries also a deeper message, like In Search of Balkania. Amerika is a village
in Germany. Amerkia has a train station. What makes Amerika “so
wunderbar” I will tell you right away. Amerika is the German name for the
United States of America so things must be big if you get such a call. If you
look closer to Amerika, the call to Amerika, then you see the train station is
no longer in use. You see the power supply still there is labelled by the local
provider with ZAS Hp. Amerika. Amerika has no town-hall, no mayor. How can
Amerika send a call? A few days ago, a server was installed in Amerika. The
villagers, due to the last census in 2018, says there is a 57 population, and
these people have welcomed this upgrade. Now they have a server under the name
amerika.icu where thousands of artists can be hosted by Blue. Bluehost is a top
provider and number one in content hosting. The question will rise, if they
have exascale supercomputers to host them all, to flood the message that
Rammstein put together in a great video compilation airing the message:
“We’re all living in Amerika. Amerika ist wunderbar.”
About the Call
The Call “I C U
in Amerika” comes from Leipzig Art. Leipzig is listed by NY Times under
the best “52 places to go in 2020.” The distance from Leipzig to
Amerika is less than 40 miles. Quite a jump for “The Kids Cool Town”
(another name NY Times gave Leipzig) to have a server now in Amerika.
Applications for
“I C U in Amerika” are open for 2022. They will be part of
LEIPZIG.ART 2022.
“Your ticket has been roasted.” That’s the CORONA effect, right? Time to start something new. Together with our sales partners we are proud to announce THE INTERBIENNALE 2021 REAL and UNREAL at GALLERY N40, LEIPZIG. Tickets are given on a call. First calls from January 2021 on …
That’s the English version of our press information:
NOT <br>
Kunst Dot wins. The
competition for the poster for the Leipzig Art has been chosen. A 42-member
international jury awarded the work NOT <BR> by the California-based
artist Kunst Dot. The concept was adopted from THE WRONG, the largest art event
in the world. Originally, the jury, Paul Rouney, whose gallery in Manhattan
stands for a multitude of innovations, was to present the award-winning work in
Leipzig, but the Corona travel restrictions put a block in the plan. Even Lana
Newstrom, who became the shooting star of New Media Art due to her invisible
art, could not leave her home in Hollywood. “It doesn’t help if you live at
16 Mullholland Drive and a neighbour of Ray Linden,” joked Reiner
Schneeberger from the organizer of Leipzig Art, who himself is the curator of
the Santorini Biennale for immersive digital art and knows real and virtual art
worlds very well. Kunst Dot does not appear by herself. The work encompasses traces
of the Biennale di Venezia and the Leipzig music artist Paul Kalkbrenner. The reason
of her non-appearance might be in the title, “NOT <br>,” which for
Schneeberger stand in both “Not Binary” and “No pair tag.” Kunst
Dot appears on the Internet as Dot and philosophically adopts her website, stating,
“I am Lorem. I am ipsum. I am dolor. I am Kunst. I am a dot in the universe.
“
Not Binary begins to
establish itself as a collective term for a non-binary gender identity.
<BR> is a tag in the HTML language that does not require a counterpart
(not paired). The tag produces a line break. The HTML standards consortium says,
“<BR> is particularly suitable for writing down addresses and poems.” Kunst
Dot has submitted a poem entitled, “Not Paired” to her work. “This makes
it clear to everyone what “NOT <BR>” stands for,” said Schneeberger,
laughing at the press conference.
If one examines the
layers of the art work, which is transformative art, one finds elements of strong
social impact. Transformative Art “is the
use of artistic activities, such as story-telling, painting, and music-making,
to precipitate constructive individual and social change.” (Wikipedia)
Once you have
recognized the red-black coloured image of Paul Kalkbrenner, the track is laid
and one will look for the person in the background of the picture. Is it a
musician too? The assumption that it is an African American becomes obvious. In
order to clarify, Schneeberger arranged an appointment with his avatar Art Blue
with Kunst Dot, who is currently preparing an exhibition of her work on the
Italian art space Craft-Grid to talk about the award-winning motif. Kunst Dot
said it was indeed a musician and the motif can be found on the signature track
of Westbam feat. She wanted to honor Lil Wayne’s last album, Funeral.
When asked about her
name, Kunst Dot said that she had received it from the artist collective of the
New Slovenian Kunst (NSK) in Ljubljana and that name will now be on her
passport. She has become a passionate advocate for NSK, which at the opening of
the Pavilion of the Republic of Slovenia at the Venice Biennale 2017, the
philosopher Slavoj Žižek described as “the uniqueness of NSK is this idea
of the ‘stateless state’.”
“NOT <BR>” Not
Binary. Not binär. A life as Kunst.
An exhibition by Kunst
Dot. Opening in August 2020. Free tickets via VISIT e.V.
We like to share for our German readers an article published in LEIPZIGER ZEITUNG [also LEIPZIGER INTERNET ZEITUNG]. Just in case — here you find a backup …
This is a copy of the text, so non-German readers are able to translate the article easily:
Auch virtuelle Kunst muss auf Corona-Einschränkungen reagieren
Es hätte ja beinahe geklappt, und Leipzig hätte im September eine „Kunstausstellung“ erlebt, wie sie die Leipziger tatsächlich noch nicht gesehen haben. Aber auch hier sorgt die Corona-Pandemie für eine Verschiebung. Der Veranstalter der LEIPZIG.ART, die Arbeitsgemeinschaft Visit e. V., hat die 1. Interbiennale, die eine Lücke zwischen der 1Biennale und der Santorini Biennale mit einer Werkschau für immersive Konzeptkunst schließen sollte, von September 2020 auf Frühjahr 2021 verschoben. William-Gibson-Leser würden sich sofort angesprochen fühlen. Denn hier wird so langsam jene Digitalkunst sichtbar, die der amerikanische Autor William Gibson 1986 in seinem zweiten Roman der Neuromancer-Trilogie „Count Zero“ (deutsche Ausgabe: „Biochips“) beschrieben hat. Eine digitale Kunst im virtuellen Raum, in dem auch die Geschichten Gibsons spielen, der mit Cyberpunk und Cyperspace schon weit vor der Etablierung des Internets jene virtuellen Welten erlebbar machte, wie sie heute so langsam wirklich Gestalt annehmen. Die Mittel, ganz ähnliche Kunstwerke zu schaffen, wie sie Gibson in „Biochips“ darstellt, mussten erst entwickelt werden.
Und mittlerweile widmen sich immer mehr Künstler/-innen diesen neuen Möglichkeiten, den virtuellen und den realen Raum zu verschmelzen.
Aufgrund der immer stärkeren Digitalisierung hat sich die Immersive Kunst, die William Gibson in seinem Roman „Count Zero“ als Katatonenkunst bezeichnet, zu einem Medienereignis von internationaler Dimension entwickelt. Der Veranstalter hat mit der Ausrichtung der Embassy THE FAKED im Rahmen der Biennale THE WRONG 2019 schon breite Erfahrungen in der Virtualisierung von Kunst gesammelt.
THE FAKED in THE WRONG — A Living Door
„So wurden die ersten immersiven Welten in eine Applikation für Oculus, einem der führenden Hersteller von VR-Brillen, umgesetzt. Auf der World Virtual Best Practice for Education (WVBPE 2020) Konferenz fand die Erstpräsentation in einer kombinierten Schau der Immersionswelt THE VAKED VR sowohl für Android als auch für iPhone in den Welten von Second Life und Opensimulator statt“, berichtet Reiner Schneeberger vom Leipziger Visit e.V.
„Über 20 US-Amerikanische Universitäten waren vertreten. Basierend auf dem millionenfach verkauften VR System Google Cardboard und Oculus Go, beste Voraussetzungen für den Erfolg der LEIPZIG.ART Immersivia.“
Aber leider machte der Coronavirus den Planungen der Leipziger, eine Real-Schau abzuhalten, einen Strich durch die Rechnung.
„Damit wird das Kunsterlebnis wohl bis auf weiteres auf den digitalen Raum beschränkt bleiben“, sagt Schneeberger. „Doch nicht alles, was geplant war, muss dem Virus weichen. Sobald die allgemeinen Ausgangsbeschränkungen in einer Form gelockert sind dass Kulturbetrieb wieder möglich ist soll eine Vorführung im LURU in der Spinnerei Leipzig erfolgen. Es ist der Beitrag der Italienischen Videographerin Alba Roca aka WizardOz Chrome aus Mailand.“
Der Titel: „Zima Blue – The Life of a Virus“, was natürlich direkt zum Coronazeitalter passt. Eine verkürzte Version findet man hier auf Youtube:
Facing the lock-down: On the night of April 28 to 29, 2020 the INTERBIENNALE for conceptual and minimal ART will be launched. Erverything depends on the virus, right? Our sponsors, our flight plans to SFC are on hold, but ON HOLD means that LEIPZIG BIENNALE will run after we all fought the virus, right? Follow on twitter …
We develop and developed various technologies, all set on opensource so everyone can use it and hopefully prevent the idea from getting patented later. One is the dual-sim usage. You sit on one sim on a stick that has its root-prim on a different sim. This said, you can explore a change of the world you are sitting inside (on the stick that was rotated or moved over it).
We made this work in the Grand Opening of 1Biennale on a massive scale. The theory we presented at HIE
