Five Years of CONT3XT.NET

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Content | Form | Im-material—Five Years of CONT3XT.NET

“[…] Interpretation is an inherent mode of curatorial practice, and CONT3XT.NET must decide, generally in collaboration with the artists but not entirely, how to manifest the form and content of the network recension of any works exhibited. There is not necessarily a correct answer in this process—although there may be wrong ones—but there is a kind of feedback loop between CONT3XT.NET’s interpretive mode and the content of an exhibition, which is both an instantiation of and a theory about their curatorial practice as translation. […]”–Steve Dietz, Introduction

Book launch: Content | Form | Im-material—Five Years of CONT3XT.NET

CONT3XT.NET is a Vienna-based initiative founded in January 2006 by Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl, Birgit Rinagl and Franz Thalmair. Programmatically, this group of artists, curators and authors—their different roles and functions sometimes regarded strictly, sometimes as a fluid continuum—work at the basis of contemporary visual, textual and networked practices. Starting from the idea of the context as the most indecisive and variable but relevant constraint of any situation, the collective reflects upon the spatial, temporal, discursive as well as the institutional framework that conceptual artistic practices (on the Internet and elsewhere) are rooted in today.

artists

Maria Anwander, Anna Artaker, Ruben Aubrecht, Miriam Bajtala, Ryan Barone, Mary-Anne Breeze—aka netwurker, Charles Broskoski, Codemanipulator®, Arend deGryuter-Helfer and Aylor Brown, Gerhard Dirmoser, Aleksandra Domanovic, Reynald Drouhin, Nikolaus Gansterer, Christina Goestl, Jochen Höller, Karl Heinz Jeron and Valie Djordjevic, Michael Kargl, Annja Krautgasser, Miriam Laussegger and Eva Beierheimer, Jan Robert Leegte, Ralo Mayer, Michail Michailov, MTAA—M. River & T. Whid Art Associates, Barbara Musil and Karo Szmit, Jörg Piringer, Lisa Rastl, Arnold Reinthaler, Veronika Schubert, Johanna Tinzl and Stefan Flunger, UBERMORGEN.COM, Martin Wattenberg and Marek Walczak

authors

Josephine Bosma, Mary-Anne Breeze—aka netwurker, Sarah Cook, Steve Dietz, Thomas Dreher, Constant Dullaart, Mark E. Grimm, Jeremy Hight, Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl, Jan Robert Leegte, Mia Makela, Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer, Stefan Nowotny, Les Liens Invisibles, Birgit Rinagl, Franz Thalmair, Pall Thayer, Marius Watz

Kickstart the Veterans Book Project

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"Out of the Garage Into the World," 01SJ Biennial
"Out of the Garage Into the World," 01SJ Biennial
"Out of the Garage Into the World," 01SJ Biennial
"Out of the Garage Into the World," 01SJ Biennial

During the 01SJ Biennial in the 80,000 square foot space of Out of the Garage Into the World, there seemed to be one constant, from early in the morning before almost anyone else had arrived to early in the morning when almost everyone else had left – Monica Haller and her work with local vets on the Veterans Book Project Workshop.

The Veterans Book Project is not just another “relational aesthetics” artwork. It is hard work that relies on determination and trust and probably not a few arguments. And the payoff is not just a scrapbook of memories. With Haller’s flexible book publishing template and dedicated guidance, it is a WORK. Of art.

There are no short cuts, no 20 minute versions of the Veterans Book Project. It takes time – and resources. Kickstart the work today.

At last, a book on site-specific dance!

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For all the intriguing site-specific dance performances, projects, and public explorations in recent history (Don’t you feel it too?, The BodyCartography Project, Catalyst Dance, the 2008 performance of Merce Cunningham’s Ocean, just to name a few Minnesota gems), i have often wondered why there weren’t any books on the subject.  I don’t have an answer to that question, but I have found a solution:

Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces, edited by Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik (University Press of Florida, 2009)

As the first anthology to specifically examine dance in non-traditional performance spaces, this title explores the work that choreographers create for alternative sites and examines the basis for their creative choices. Editors Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik (professors of dance at the University of Calgary and Western Michigan University, respectively) offer a combination of interviews with and essays by some of the most prominent and influential practitioners of site-specific dance, such as Meredith Monk, Joanna Haigood, Stephan Koplowitz, Heidi Duckler, Ann Carlson, Eiko Otake, and Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad of the BodyCartography Project. Site Dance is a significant and timely contribution to the public art canon–a must-read for dancers, choreographers, audiences, and public art administrators alike!

Now available!

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Rethinking Curating - Art After New Media.

Rethinking Curating

Art after New Media
Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook
Foreword by Steve Dietz

“Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media . . .clearly articulates an often obfuscating set of issues, including the internecine debates that too easily divide what Lev Manovich refers to as Turing- land (so- called new media art) and Duchampland (so- called contemporary art). Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook rigorously differentiate and compellingly reintegrate the competing claims of these two camps so that we can focus on what really matters: the art.”

From the Foreword, available for download here.

See also The Art Formerly Known As New Media, which Sarah and I co-curated at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff.