For immediate release:
Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporânea is launching on November 8th (next
Thursday) LX 2.0 Project's new comission, the project lastwishes by
Vienna-based media artist Carlos Katastrofsky (http://www.lisboa20.pt/
lx20).
Carlos Katastrofsky (1975) has been creating net art pieces that
question both the notion of what an art work is and the notion of
ownership of these processual projects, not defined by physical
properties. Projects such as internet art for poor people (2006),
free interactive readymade (2005) or the original (2005) are just a
few examples of Katastrofsky's interest in exploring alternative ways
of distributing and owning net art, always within the institutional
art world logic and always through a critical, yet playful approach.
His projects are mostly conceptual, not defined by fancy visual
effects or sophisticated programming. There is no "beautiful" or
"poetic" things to be seen on the screen, just the critical use of
massified online tools that he masters in order to achieve his own
agenda.
lastwishes, the project the artist created specially for LX 2.0, is a
great example of the lack of any visual aesthetics in his work. In a
simplistic (yet pretty accurate) way, there is nothing to be seen in
his new project. lastwishes deals solely with the principles of
communication. Mailing lists are popular tools for the exchange of
thoughts and opinions: they make multiple (written) dialogues
possible as well as the archiving for future references. In this work
the mailinglist-software "mailman" is modified to allow only one
single posting from a sender. The user is able to subscribe and to
receive messages endlessly but post only once and by this immediately
get unsubscribed. The idea of "exchange" is thereby turned into
something absurd: one can listen but only talk once. Sending a
message thus requires meaningful content, "chatting" becomes impossible.
The ephemeral quality of this sending-process reminds of zen-
qualities: be quiet and learn to listen but if you really have to say
something meaningful then talk. Above that, the question arises: how
is communication possible when there is a quiet, listening mass and
no one dares to stand up and speak? According to an Austrian
proverb, "talking is silver and being quiet is gold", but being quiet
only makes sense within the process of communication.
Luis Silva
LX 2.0 Project (http://www.lisboa20.pt/lx20)
Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporânea
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