Exhibition
networked art: places-between-places
The first unplace online exhibition was held between 19th June and 19th November of 2015. The digital catalog, both in Portuguese and in English, is available for download here.
Focusing on the idea that "the place is nowhere and everywhere”, this exhibition brought together Internet and web-specific artworks in which the tensions between real and virtual spaces are highlighted through online practices, ranging from geopoetics, fiction and hacktivism to participatory projects in networked environments.
This curatorial project was based on the research work carried out by the unplace team, and it started with an International Call for Projects, in 2014, aiming to find “artistic proposals that challenge the modes of creation and reception of works of art in a purely virtual and networked exhibition space, in a museum without a place” (see bellow).
Artists: Ahmed El Saher (Egypt), Ai Weiwei (China) & Olafur Eliasson (Denmark, Germany), Alfredo Jaar (Chile/USA), Art is Open Source (Italy), Clement Valla (France/USA), Giselle Beiguelman (Brazil), MIIAC-João Paulo Serafim (France/Portugal), JODI (Belgium/Netherlands), John Barber (USA), Paula Levine (Canada/USA), Thomson & Craighead (UK), Wilfredo Prieto (CUB), Perry Bard (Canadá), LiMaC –Sandra Gamarra (Peru/Spain) & Antoine-Henry Jonquères (France/Spain), Hanna Husberg (Finland/Sweden) & Laura McLean (Australia/UK), S.A.R.L. Group (Portugal).
Curators: António Pinto Ribeiro and Rita Xavier Monteiro, with the collaboration of Helena Barranha, Susana S. Martins and Raquel Pereira.
Now closed!
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Open Call: Selected Projects
The jury of the Open Call, composed of António Pinto Ribeiro, Helena Barranha and Susana S. Martins, has selected the following artistic projects to be included on the virtual exhibition promoted by Gulbenkian Next Future Programme (opening in June 2015):
Hanna Husberg and Laura McLean - Contingent Movements Archive
John F. Barber - Radio Nouspace
LiMac [Sandra Gamarra Heshiki and Antoine Henry Jonquères] - Solo Show
Open Call for Artistic Projects
Now closed!
Within the scope of the unplace project, we seek artistic proposals that challenge the modes of creation and reception of works of art in a purely virtual and networked exhibition space, in a museum without a place.
Activist, melancholic, euphoric, nihilist – whatever your profile or artistic heteronym may be, whatever is your genre or privileged languages, you are all invited to submit your proposal for the virtual exhibition that will be developed in the context of the unplace project.
Drawing on the main topics of the conference Uncertain Spaces: Virtual Configurations in Contemporary Art and Museums, we propose to discuss the changes and/or continuities that the Internet has produced in contemporary creation. Is the current transformation in cultural systems reaching a point where we can now refer to a shift from oral cultures to written cultures, and from those to cybercultures? Or is the Internet phenomenon just another innovative working tool?
Currently, the use of internet technologies in contemporary art has prompted significant changes, not only regarding the techné of creation, but also in its ways of production, dissemination and reception. The tactile dimension which is normally present in a substantial part of the visual arts – sculpture or installation, for example – seems to disappear from these new forms of contemporary creation, while a complex intimacy, often associated with networked interactions, is now assuming a decisive preponderance in the fruition modes. But perhaps the most radical aspect of this situation, which inspires the project title, is the absolute displacement in terms of space and time, of both creation and reception, of these artworks without a place.
With this call, we intend to gather artistic proposals for original web specific projects, in order to expand on the themes described in the conference call for papers. Therefore, the selected authors will be timely invited to develop their projects in close dialogue with the curators of the virtual exhibition, to be organized in 2015 by the Next Future Program of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Submissions
Please send an abstract, no later than 15th September 2014 to info@unplace.org, with the following elements (in English):
- Full title of your artistic project;
- Descriptive document of the project (ca. 300 words, with or without some representative images);
- Your name and institutional affiliation (if applicable);
- Postal address and e-mail;
- Short biographical note of the author(s) (100-150 words) with links to previous works of the author(s) in the field of Digital Art and Internet Art;
- Technical description of the project, indicating the requirements for the presentation / virtual exhibition.