From Context to Content: On the Preservation of Net-based Art

Texts
Domenico Quaranta: From Context to Content

“From Context to Content: On the Preservation of Net-based Art” is a text commissioned for and published in Science and Art: The Contemporary Painted Surface, edited by Antonio Sgamellotti, Brunetto Giovanni Brunetti, Costanza Miliani and published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2020. Science and Art: The Contemporary Painted Surface consists of a series of chapters written together by scientists, art historians, conservators, curators and artists dedicated to conservation, execution techniques, languages and conceptual topics. The book largely covers execution techniques, material’s conservation and languages of artists, representative of twelve different countries, all protagonists of the development of innovative significant techniques and methodologies.

Science and Art. The contemporary painted surface

Science and Art: The Contemporary Painted Surface is available on Amazon and other bookstores. Alternatively, you can buy single chapters of the book here. Below you can find an abstract of my contribution, that can be bought in full following this link.

Net Art Anthology

Texts

Michael Connor, Aria Dean, Dragan Espenschied (eds), The Art Happens Here: Net Art Anthology, Rhizome, New York 2019. Image courtesy Rhizome

A long review I wrote about Rhizome’s Net Art Anthology, that takes off from the online initiative to consider the New Museum exhibition and the publication as well, is out in Camera Austria: Domenico Quaranta, “Net Art Anthology”, in Camera Austria International, Issue 146, pp. 81 – 82. Download pdf

In a recent comment about his ten years old project Post Internet, Los Angeles based author Gene McHugh says: “What was so vital then, often appears dated now. That fact, it’s becoming more and more clear, is the ontological condition of post-internet art. Most of it is an art of the right now and quickly becomes dead, at best a historical example. That sounds disparaging, but I don’t exactly mean it that way. At the time it mattered more than anything.” [1] Post Internet was a blog project started on December 2009, thanks to a grant of the Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program. Using one of WordPress’ default templates, from December 29, 2009 to September 5, 2010, McHugh posted – sometimes on a daily basis, sometimes less frequently – his notes about the online practices of a generation of artists he felt akin to, often gathering around online communities they called “surfing clubs”, that – following the definition suggested by artist and Rhizome’s curator Marisa Olson [2] – he described as Post Internet artists (a definition that would later become viral).