oneacre.online (2017–)

“oneacre.online is an experimental publishing and distribution project that utilises an online platform to seed unprintable text-based works by emerging artists. The project explores the possibilities of hyper-publishing in a series of commissioned publications. Thematically the first four place themselves in the online world of constant updates and refresh buttons that, as theorist Wendy Chun observes, “exist at the bleeding edge of obsolescence. We thus forever try to catch up, updating to remain the same”. The publications use the omnidirectional online terrain and actions that are native to it — such as refreshing, instantly available to edit, easily erasable, highlighting, copy-pasting and non linear navigation — to explore and critically evaluate visions and versions of power systems by tracing the politics of technological infrastructures. Hidden in places as traditional as archives, as often used as smart phone applications, omnipresent and inescapable as the financial market and as quiet and evasive as the transfer of information in narrative structures.

The series showcased in December 2017 Poetics and Politics of Erasure by Yun Ingrid Eel, a multidisciplinary research paper on the aesthetics and politics of erasure. In March 2018, Artificial Intelligence Never Has a Headache by Karina Zavidova, a long-form about the fear of AI spread by the media, and the market of productivity-enhancing tools it has fuelled. In July 2018 Radio, Techno, Fossil by Eline Benjaminsen & Sophie Dyer, the story of a radio-image as it traverses the bounds of the Earth’s surfaces, atmospheres and techno-geographies. And in September 2018, Meaning Seeking Animals by Lisa van Casand, a subjective collection of a wide range of perspectives on the transfer of information.”

Made by Stef Kors, Titus Knegtel, Victoria Douka-Doukopoulou
Published 2017-2018

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Eintritt in ein Lebewesen. Von der sozialen Skulptur zum Plattform-Kapitalismus / Journey Into a Living Being: From Social Sculpture to Platform Capitalism (2020) [German/English]

“In 1977, Joseph Beuys presented his installation Honey Machine at the Workplace at documenta 6, in which tubes ran into the exhibition rooms, through which honey was pumped. The work symbolized Beuys’ idea of the expanded concept of art and of social sculpture. “Everyone is an artist” is his famous motto –not because everyone can paint, dance or make music, but because we all contribute through our productivity to a collective creativity that can be weighed as real capital and societal potential, to which Beuys ascribed the formula “art = capital.” Honey as the “spiritual nutrition of the cosmos” (Beuys) is the embodiment of this collective creativity.

These days, we deliver our creative “honey” voluntarily to internet companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok or Amazon. Computers and smartphones, online speakers and fitness wristbands upload a large portion of our data to these companies’ servers. Even rental bikes and e-scooters collect our location data. Our every click, every Like, every photo posted and every online comment is fuel for the companies of “surveillance capitalism” (Shoshana Zuboff). They use our data to sell advertising, predict our behavior, optimize their algorithms and AI, and to keep competing companies out of the market as much as possible.

The exhibition Journey Into a Living Being takes its name from a lecture Beuys gave on social sculpture at documenta. It traces the conceptual trajectory to the present, in which the internet and social media are replete with offers of creative services, but where only few reap the financial rewards. It brings together artworks spanning forty years with the aim of deciphering what has come to pass between the development of social sculpture and the rise of platform capitalism and the gig economy, and how this process is reflected in art.”

Edited by Tilman Baumgärtel
Publisher Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, 2020
ISBN 9783000652608, 3000652604
111 pages

Exhibition (18.5-16.8.2020)
WorldCat

PDF (6 MB)

Tilman Baumgärtel: net.art 2.0. Neue Materialien zur Netzkunst / New Materials on Art on the Internet (2001) [German/English]

“This follow-up to the first net art book documents developments in net art at the turn of the millenium. A large portion of the book consists of interviews with artists such as Julia Scher, Peter Halley, Blank & Jeron, Jodi, etoy and Lisa Jevbratt, who have created major projects using the internet. The conversations are supplemented by a documentary appendix and an essay by Tilman Baumgärtel describing the specifics of net art and its place in artistic discourse. Interspersed with the text components are images of more than 130 net-based works.”

Translated by David Hudson
Publisher Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nürnberg, 2001
ISBN 3933096669, 9783933096661
263 pages

Review: Lutz Nitsche (MedienWissenschaft, 2002, DE).

Author (archived)
Publisher (archived)
WorldCat

PDF (15 MB)