Net as Artwork
Book: Networking. The Net as Artwork. Tatiana Bazzichelli. Digital Aesthetics Research Centre, Aarhus University.
URL = http://www.networkingart.eu/english.html
The book describes the evolution of the Italian hacktivism and net culture from the 1980s till today and it is a reconstruction of the history of artistic networking in Italy and of the Italian hacker community.
Description
"The book describes the evolution of the Italian hacktivism and net culture from the 1980s till today. It builds a reflection on the new role of the artist and author who becomes a networker, operating in collective nets, reconnecting to Neoavant-garde practices of the 1960s (first and foremost Fluxus), but also Mail Art, Neoism and Luther Blissett.
A path which began in BBSes, alternative web platforms spread in Italy through the 1980s even before the Internet even existed, and then moved on to Hackmeetings, to Telestreet and networking art by different artists such as 0100101110101101.ORG, [epidemiC], Jaromil, Giacomo Verde, Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici, Correnti Magnetiche, Candida TV, Tommaso Tozzi, Federico Bucalossi, Massimo Contrasto, Mariano Equizzi, Pigreca, Molleindustria, Guerriglia Marketing, Sexyshock, Phag Off and many others."
Excerpt
From the introduction, by Tatiana Bazzichelli:
"The main research field of this book is Italy, since it is here that networking practices have determined the construction of a network of projects unparalleled in any other country. A scene with a strong identity and with its own artistic, technological and political feeling has been formed in Italy. The forms of artistic activism (artivism) and technological activism (hacktivism) are tightly interconnected in an extensive network diffused throughout the nation. In Italy, the idea of cyberpunk and hacking has taken on a very particular typology, tightly connected with the history of the underground digital network and the radical political movement, something that has not happened in most other countries. In Italy we prefer to use the term hacktivism to define artistic and mass media practices, giving them an artistic and political value, which is not always recognized as such, outside of Italy. In some ways, Italy constitutes a laboratory of underground experimentation that can become a model for many others. At the same time however, it represents a sort of creative “island” that is not always able to export its own creations. The idea that the “Italian scene” has been virtually marginalized comes from here.
Networking Cultures
This book wants to shed light on a series of activities that starting from the 1980s, in and outside of Italy, has transformed the conception of art as object into art as a network of relationships, possibilities of personally and collectively intervening in the creation of an artistic product. The formation of art as networking laid down its theoretical and practical bases a long time ago. The Avant-garde of the 1900s had already shifted its attention from the artistic object to daily life, further tarnishing the notion of “originality”. But it is with the Neo- Avant-garde of the 1960s that the public enters directly into the process of creation of the work with the happening in which everyone is, at least ideally, simultaneously a producer and a consumer of information. In the happenings and in Fluxus, art becomes inter-action, inviting the spectator to eliminate the distance between himself and the artistic product, with the goal of making the dichotomy of artist-spectator obsolete (however, it does in part survive).
It is above all in contexts outside of the gallery and museum circuit that the possibility of experimenting with art as collective inter-action is truly materialized: moving the debate from the artistic realm to daily social reality. This dates back to the 1960s with the mail art network and in the 1970s with the graffiti artists and with the punk movement and is carried through to the counterculture digital networks and the current hacker movement. This network is comprised of activists, artists, and collectives that promote and apply the self-managed use of media in their own actions, defining self-management as the self-organization and self-production of communication media and artistic practices.
Mail art is a network of relationships constructed through the postal circuit, and in practice it is exercised by sending and receiving letters, cards or anything else one wants, from all over the world, establishing “virtual” ties with many other individuals, united simply by the interest in communicating. Mail art, especially because it remains outside of the artistic business circuits, has always been considered the Cinderella of art, but in the end, this was its fortune, because no one ever really historicized it and it has always preserved that character of originality and novelty that today makes it unique and always current. Mail art is a form of art open to all. It does not foresee the selection of the artists and in the few organized shows on this theme the works of all the participants in the various projects have always been displayed. There is an amusing pun in Italian: "mail art = mai l'art" [mail art = never art]. This shows how several mail non-artists have wanted to deliberately keep themselves far removed from the worlds of institutional collecting and museums, such that those who compile fragments of mail art in never-ending archives do so out of pure passion. Despite being recognized by few, or rather by those few who have directly experimented with mail art directly, this form of art is the true mother of networking (Chapter 1, pg. 37).
Hacker Ethics and Shared Networks
In Italy the concept of the hacker developed at the same time as the development of a critical conscience about the use of technology. A hacker is not only someone who uses technology to test its limits, but above all someone who believes in the freedom of information (and let us add, art), within the accessibility of information and in the sharing of knowledge. In this sense, the social component gains a central importance: that is why often in Italy many experiences between the 1980s and the 1990s are defined as social hacking, in which experimentation in technology and in programming code is tied to the idea of sharing resources and knowledge. Following this objective, Italian artists, activists and hackers act concretely in person and on the internet, putting protest practices like Netstrike, into play; constructing counterculture sites and independent magazines, hacker laboratories (Hacklabs) and organizing collective meetings regarding self-teaching and the exchanging of skills. (Hackmeetings).
The Italian underground hacktivist network gave rise to Hackmeetings <www.hackmeeting.org>, an important point of arrival for the collective process of Italian networking, which began in the 1980s with the construction of amateur computer networks and BBSes. The first Hackmeeting came from an initial proposal by the Isole nella Rete collective and took place in Florence, in the CPA Social Centre (5-7 June 1998), at the time risking eviction. The idea was to consider technology as a platform for sharing, a moment of exchange and relationship between people, involving many activists known so far on the web only by their nickname. […] The Italian Hackmeeting is three days of sharing collective information and knowledge about everything that concerns technology, from the computer to the radio, to video, to artistic experimentation, through free courses offered by anyone who wants to share their knowledge, and events that involve everyone whose prime objective is freedom of information and the critical use of technological tools (Chapter 4, pg. 163-164).
The networking scene in Italy has acquired a particular character, and, due to its participation and diffusion, it does not have any equals anywhere. The Italian scene links itself directly with the hacker practices, as evident in the work of the activist Jaromil and, following the Blissettian tradition of the “viral” participation on communication, the works of 0100101110101101.ORG and of [epidemiC], to name those who had major contact with international reality. A criticism of the status quo which overruns, not only the social and political plane, but also the artistic plane, as, for example happens with the episode of the Tirana Conspiracy at the beginning of the 21st century. This event, which few know about, dealt a harsh blow to the Italian system, which is based on commercial dynamics. The Tirana Conspiracy illustrated the inanity of the collector-market-artist system, and showed that the current artistic challenge lies in the invention of new courses of action and new contents.
The Tirana conspiracy shows that making art today is decidedly, and heavily, conditioned by the market, in turn monopolised by traders-collectors who influence the very market, triggering a vicious circle that decides who can be an artist and who can’t. Marcelo Gavotta & Olivier Kamping turn market strategies into aesthetic rules, demonstrating that in today’s art world these latter are equal to nothing, they don’t exist, just like the four imaginary artists proposed for the Tirana Biennial (Chapter 5, pg. 207).
Becoming Media
Between the 1990s and 2000, the culture of networking in Italy developed through the proliferation of collective projects that work critically in media and on the internet, which are by now available to everyone instead of only to a few experts. Many activists, hackers and artists take advantage of the diffusion of low priced technology, from computers to video cameras, to realize far-reaching projects providing a concrete turning-point for the Italian networking culture in terms of its diffusion throughout the nation. Realities are born: such as Indymedia Italia, the Telestreet network, the collective New Global Vision, and the Autistici/Inventati free server, which experiments with computers, video and the Internet with a critical point of view. Many other local projects are tied to these national realities which share these same political and technological objectives. Among these, the collectives: Candida TV, Serpica Naro, Molleindustria and other groups who actively respond to the post neo-economy social problematic, such as ChainWorkers and in the realm of strategic marketing tactics of Guerrigliamarketing.it.
The majority of the above-mentioned projects emerged after the G8 anti-summit in Genoa in 2001; a stage not only for difficult clashes, repression and violence, as the majority of the official media highlighted, but also for an important experience for anyone who constructs grassroots information, with amateur video cameras, underground internet sites or independent radio networks. The three days in Genoa not only dealt a harsh blow to Italian activist groups through violence and repression, but also contributed to rendering a more incisive critical reflection on media, technology and the forms of political activism.
Together with the projects of networking described above, there is a network of people who answer to the strategies of the opposition with a ludic-tactic frivolity, putting one’s own body into play and subverting the idea of political action as “resistance”: which showed its strength as well as its limits in Genoa. In this network, the body becomes a fundamental channel through which to create new openings, to initiate experimentation on the “bordering” - even sexual - territories. There are many projects that aim to form a larger network, commonly described by the term “queer” or “pink”. Among these, the collective Sexyshock in Bologna, Phag-Off in Rome, and the Pornflakes in Milan stand out, whose activity is inserted in a discourse of reflection on sexuality, pornography and artistic experimentation ranging from cyberfeminism to Netporn to indie-porn on the Internet.
The pink block actively enters onto the scene at an international level in the demonstrations which involve a large part of the movement: in Prague (2000), Genoa (2001), Rome, Milan and Bologna (2004), and answers to the strategies of the clash and violence with the détournement of codes, the frivolity tactic, the playful action which is, at the same time, incisive because it is aimed at creatively overturning its symbols and the stronghold of power. Everything takes place characterized by blinding colours. Pink (or shocking pink), therefore substitutes the more "traditional" black of other antagonistic practices proposing a different vision from the nihilistic vision of no future. [..]At the same time, the pink block communicates a different vision of sexuality and of the identity, which refuses every type of label and substitutes the more open queer vision for the g.l.b.t. (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) vision. […] Pink practices live through a processes of politically incorrect theatralization, playful and libertarian jokes and pranks and group mud-fights in which the practice of the struggle becomes a form of ludic contact between the mud-stained bodies, together with colourful actions during a parade, electropunk music nights and videos of radical and hybrid bodies, pornography synonymous with rebellion, openness and cultural criticism. (Chapter 7, pg. 263-264, 283)
The Net as Artwork
The description of the ties that exist in this dynamic Italian network of artistic, technological and political experimentation, intends to show how it is possible to create successful critical and creative routes that involve “alternative” channels, compared to those dominated by the economy of the market, by the politics of control and by commercial information, often presented in Western society as the only possibilities.
The networking projects described in this book act within these spaces, in the social and cultural fractures that are apparently on the margins of daily life, but which in reality constitute an important territory for the re-invention and rewriting of symbolic and expressive codes with which to transform and decode our present. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Internet, with which we all work today is in reality the fruit of connections, battles and relationships which see hackers playing a leading role. Just like it is not surprising that many individuals here mentioned were precursors of different artistic and cultural processes which have contributed to the shaping of the current Italian mass media and technological imagination (Introduction, pg. 24-25).
This book wants to give the proper weight and worth to the many artistic, social and cultural practices which, through their network of political, artistic, technological and affective ties, have contributed to making the instruments with which we interact daily, more fascinating; from the computer to the Internet. With the hope that the experiences written here become a model for all those who would like to continue to work creatively in the spaces and fractures of the everyday, or for those who will fight to ensure that everything comes out in the open, allowing anyone to make it his or her own."
More Information
Author bio at http://person.au.dk/en/[email protected]