Archive for April, 2010

Esse, Nosse, Posse
Common Wealth for Common People

On-line exhibition: www.emst.gr/commonwealth
Curated by: Daphne Dragona

The network society and especially the internet culture of the last twenty years has changed our mode of working, communicating and living. The numerous and continuously evolving digital networks of people, institutions, movements and organisatations have been based on the new possibilities of technology but have also given birth to new forms of economy and value that fit into the immaterial time and space of flows. The elements of collaboration, collective intelligence, free and common knowledge have now become principal and have empowered a multitude of people that believe in the new potentialities given in the networked reality. This digital multitude, the new contemporary creative working class, surpassed the borders between work and leisure, driven by a desire to learn, to share, to collaborate. The notions of the attention economy, the gift economy, the common wealth, the immaterial, affective but also precarious labour are frequenty used to describe the phenomena of our era. But, what is the meaning of these new features of economy in times of global financial crisis?

What role do the networks really play? Can the offer alternative and sustainable models of collaboration and production? Or they are a contemporary illusion that contributes to the difficulties and adversities that the contemporary multitude needs to face?

The new online exhibition hosted in the website of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, aims to focus on the new forms of labor as well as on the new values and costs emerging in the new connected reality and it therefore presents:

-artists’ projects and critical perspectives commenting on the new forms of internet economy,
-initiatives and open platforms by independent creators who encourage the use of free and open software, the exchange of knowledge and experience,
-texts by critics and media theorists on networks, economy and the arts.

Contributing artists and theorists: Burak Arikan (Τurkey), Samuel Bianchini (France), Michael Bielicky, Kamila B. Richter (Chech Republic/ Germany), Marcelo Expósito (Spain), Furtherfield (UK), Pat Kane (UK), Carlos Katastrofsky (Austria), Dmytri Kleiner (Germany) , Nicholas Knouf (USA), Tobias Leingruber (Germany)/ Jamie Wilkinson (USA)/ Greg Leuch (USA), Aarton Koblin & Daniel Massey (USA), Geert Lovink (Netherlands), MediaShed & Eyebeam (UK/ USA), Molleindustria (Italy) Ge Jin aka Jingle (China), Matteo Pasquinelli (Italy), Platoniq.net (Spain), Juan Martin Prada (Spain), Kate Rich (UK), Stephanie Rotenberg & Jeff Crouse (USA), Trebor Scholz (USA), Anders Weberg (Sweden)