CONTAIN[ERA]
Materialized information transfer in the post-Internet era.
The conflict between information reality and virtuality, sharing and obtaining
information, global versus local and site-specific versus non site-specific - these
are the themes of the international exhibition project Contain[era], to be held
during the second half of 2015 in eight EU countries. Freight containers will be
turned into mobile galleries, with each container providing space for a
multimedia exhibition by an emerging artist from one of the participating
countries. Eight exhibitions, each focused on the depiction of national cultural
heritage and the transfer of information as a key theme in the post-Internet age,
will gradually travel to all participating cities, presenting pure information
undistorted by local influences, embodying the principle of world-wide web in
physical reality. At the end of the tour all the containers and participants will
come together in the coordinating city, Prague, to form one large combined
exhibition, and a symposium will be held, bringing together members of
international professional public. A platform will be established for dialog about
gained experiences as well as theoretical topics of the project. The third and final
part of the project will be individual exhibitions of participating foreign artists at
local participating galleries. The outcomes of those and the joint exhibition with
symposium held before, will form the basis for the theoretical part of the project
– specialist texts, methodological outcomes, documentaries, exhibition catalogue,
and more. But most importantly, the project will set basis for a net of
international personal connections founded on the core of our society, European
culture, unique and united in its diversity.
Transfer, crossing national boundaries, time, and cultures, is the world's
heartbeat, and has become a modern-day "beat to keep". Sharing makes us tick.
The past's hierarchy of arteries and borders is gradually giving way to a
labyrinth of connections, as we enter a new democracy of information equality. A
new humanistic ideal is emerging – the ultimately clued-up individual,
acquainted with absolutely everything possible.
Images are constantly transmitted, not only physically, as part of travelling
exhibitions and biennial shows and in the white-gloved hands of auctioneers'
assistants, but even more so virtually. They are uprooted countless times from
their original location and transplanted into blogs, social networking site
updates and other websites. The Contain[era] project is based on this a simple
principle of out time – interconnectivity. It's not by accident that the first direct
predecessor of computers was a “program” for weaving loom. We're all part of a
global network that interweaves present actuality. Globalization is lived
everyday. Most of this unrelenting sharing and connecting takes place in so
called virtual reality. Many feel a harsh conflict between the two notional worlds
- "reality" and "virtuality". With virtuality being a shadow of our “real” lives, a
half-true world, a state of slumber. The Contain[era]..project aims to step over
this fabricated threshold. Better, to futuristicly sketch a bridge that could span
the gap by embodying the principles of the Internet in “real life”.
It is not an unprecedent way. For a while now there is a movement on the
international art scene usually called post-Internet art. Unlike net art it
assimilated completely new technologies and inhabited virtual reality. There
new territories are explored and by bringing the systems of the Internet into
physical reality it merges the two worlds.
Why is such materialization seminal? The Internet and its society are products of
our time. They operate on progressive, revolutionary yet elaborated principles.
What they propose – and with them the Contain[era] project as well – is
internationalization without loss of individuality, sharing of know-how without
borders.
Despite these attempts, our world is much fragmented and indeterminate.
Certainly, globalization connected the furthest corners but it also made us
painfully aware of the immeasurable depths of human differences and of the
billion possible way to live. We're in need of basis, of cement. What is it that has
always kept fragmented Europe together? The only thing that has succeeded in
building long-term bridges, and which the European Union is now attempting to
achieve, is unity in diversity above all visible in culture and art. Globalization is a
double-edged sword for this. Again, in virtual reality the "global" versus "local"
was able to maintain its integrity, even in such surroundings without limits. We
learn from this and "mobilize" individual cultures. In the project local exists
inside global and vice versa without one suppressing the other.
There the site-specific aspect of the installations represents pure local
environment. By taking it away from its place of origin and implementing it
elsewhere one can examine the influence of environment as well as demonstrate
the universal information value art has. Indeed the arrival of the containers to
foreign cities creates a unique situation – an exhibition that has been unaffected
by the influence of a new host institution. It will provide information that is
minimally distorted, so neatly uprooted that it is not possible to assume false
contexts, only create new ones. Moreover, the Contain[era] project bring this
“information capsule” to viewers' doorsteps, just as they expect it nowadays. The
overall dream of an ultimately clued-up individual can be achieved."Here is
always somewhere else."
Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelová project curator