Dates September 25 to October 7, 2001 Location Media Z Lounge at the New Museum of Contemporary Art 583 Broadway, New York 10012 Tel: 212-219-1222 (subway : Prince St. or Broadway-Lafayette St.)

 

Foreword

The exhibition Location/Dislocation, presented at the Media Z Lounge of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, brings together seven recently produced projects by Québecois artists. The selected works investigate notions of site and non-site - a theme at the heart of many Web art productions - and traces links between cyberspace and the "real" spaces that are Québec and the City of New York.

This exhibition was to have been presented within the context of the Québec New York 2001 event, which was cancelled, following the catastrophic events at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It was decided, with the New Museum, to combine our efforts in order to present this project in spite of the almost insurmountable context in which it is now being shown. At this time, and in light of the immense human and psychological impact, we have not had sufficient distance and insight to take these events into account in the conception of this exhibition.

Certainly, all questions touching upon geography, location and displacement now carry a whole new meaning.

We are profoundly saddened by these recent events and our sincere devastation cannot be expressed in these few words. We simply hope that the will to move ahead, shared by our New York colleagues, is a testament to the desire to continue and we hope for more peaceful times.



Valérie Lamontagne & Sylvie Parent
Curators of the exhibition
September 25, 2001

 

 

LOCATION / DISLOCATION

It is somehow ironic that the better part of the summer was spent lugging my laptop from city to city, to country, to quiet studios and noisy cafés - in my myriad journey (or procrastination) towards completing the catalogue texts for Location/Dislocation. In fact, I became to look upon my constant displacements and geographical shifts as endemic- if not even necessary - to my understanding of location, dislocation, space, place and time. As I rode in cars, buses, trains, planes, boats, bicycles and even re-taught myself how to roller-skate (old-school) I was struck by the multifarious ways in which the perception of my environments altered accordingly to my mode of displacements. As cities regressed to tiny specks in the air minutes after takeoff and as specific sidewalks presented unmitigated territory for roller-skating I began to take nothing around me for granted. Indeed - according to Newton's first law of motion: "an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will continue in motion with a constant velocity."1

Jean Baudrillard referencing Roland Barthes likens technology to a vehicle where we navigate within our own individual "bubble", with the dashboard filling in for the console and where the "landscape all around unfolds as a television screen".2 Thus we are made aware at once of the distance separating us from "tangible" reality when interacting with technology as well as the analogy between motion and information culture. It is also as if the very act of participating in technology supposes a constant movement from data, source, points of reference and shifting vectors of information. Slavoj Zizek reverses this logic by likening a motor trip to the cinematic, he observes how "...when we are safely inside the car, behind the closed windows, the external objects are, so to speak, transposed into another mode. They appear to be fundamentally "unreal," as if their reality has been suspended, put in parenthesis - in short, they appear as a kind of cinematic reality projected onto the screen of the windowpane."3 This comparison is symbolic in as much as "technology" is and extension of "reality" and vice versa. Commenting on science fiction representations, Martin Dodge & Rob Kitchin reminds us that "Here, making the distinction between real and virtual becomes more taxing as there is no real space to retreat to; it is not simply a conflation of virtual (online) and real (offline). Every space within which we reside becomes an indeterminate blend of real and virtual. Modernist notions of neutral, objective, measurable space thus dissolves as the systems of knowledge which support such notions collapse. Here, space, in human geographic terms, is meaningful only as spatiality: produced, contested and ephemeral."4

One of the tenets of this exhibition aims at mapping "territories" within cyberspace yet all the while questioning the importance of borders and cultural / national distinctions as experienced through information technologies. However, "Mapping is a process of creating, rather than revealing, knowledge, as a result, decisions are made about what to include and what to exclude, how the map will look, and what that map wants to communicate."5 The "map" proposed in Location/Dislocation is an admixture of the artists working with ideas around location and notions of "being" and "acting" on the Web. It is a map referencing issues which touch us all, such as ecology (Green) and globalization (NeverEndingStories) as well as the places we retreat to in fantasy (Everywhere/toutpartout) and biography (Utopia PKWY). It is also a map pointing towards our collectively overlooked sites such as waiting areas (RESTAREA) or dysfunctional architectures (Silophone). Finally, the map also presents new perspectives on "location" and the city grid especially in what concerns New York City (s(e)izing nyc, 1 : 10 000 : 1).

The Internet is an ever-expanding frontier inhabited by a myriad of beliefs, agendas, memories, messages and the desire to communicate across geographies. For artists, the Internet is an unprecedented medium of production, dissemination and communication. Notes John S. Weber "The Internet is the wild card in contemporary art, and the ultimate expression of a culture addicted to data and drunk on images. It provides visual artists with more power to make, borrow, appropriate, manipulate, and distribute images and ideas than the most utopian fantasies of pre-networked, analog times."6 The geographies (be they the "real" Québec & NYC or the "virtual" Internet) proposed in Location/Dislocation thus aim at dissolving the "bubble" through which we experience technology, culture and ourselves.

Valérie Lamontagne

Notes

1. Raymond A. Serway, Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics, Saunders College Publishing, 1990.
2. Jean Baudrillard, "The Ecstacy of Communication", Semiotext(e), New York, 1988, p. 13.
3. Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, The MIT Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts), 1991, p. 15.
4. Martin Dodge et Rob Kitchin, Mapping Cyberspace, Routledge, Londres et New York, 2001, p. 191.
5. Martin Dodge et Rob Kitchin, op.cit., p. 75.
6. John S. Weber, "Beyond the Saturation Point: the Zeitgeist in the Machine" in 010101: Art in Technological Times, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2001, p. 21.

 

Location and Cyberspace

Exhibitions and Geography

We planned this exhibition for Québec New York, an event that was to comprise an extensive collection of cultural happenings meant to showcase Quebec art. In such a context - where creations issuing from one geographical place are exhibited in another , it seemed appropriate to us to examine the relationships between the physical locations involved in this project (Quebec and New York City) and the allegedly ambiguous place(s) brought into play in cyberspace.

The context in which cultural projects materialize always has an impact on both their inception and their reception. "National" or "regional" cultural events, with their attendant and often considerable promotional efforts, provide a lot of exposure for geographically situated productions. Such events aim to exteriorize the art produced in a particular country, simultaneously putting it to the test and showcasing it, while sometimes also laying some degree of stress on national or local identity. The place of origin - the location - becomes a predominant factor in the reading because these events bring attention to the connection between the creators and designers, on one hand, and geography, on the other, and suggest that this connection has meaning.

Even international exhibitions, however, where the participants' geographical origin is not a fundamental criterion on the conceptual level, generally include an extended selection of local productions. In other words, the contexts of production and dissemination remain significant parameters, whether or not the question of geographical location lies at the heart of the project. For several reasons, then, as surprising as it may first appear, art on the Web is not dissociated from its geographical origin. Indeed, even if the art works or exhibitions conceived for the Web seem to rid themselves of geographic connections, the individuals involved, and therefore their productions, can never be completely free of them.

Geography and the Web

While the Web may be accessible anywhere on the planet - economic and technological conditions permitting (perhaps the most decisive geographic factor in excluding some from cyberspace) -, its content is not necessarily free of connections between the individual and his geographic situation. The most obvious manifestation of the origin of content on the Web is the language used in communicating it, but many other cultural traits also emerge in this space.

"People, their residencies, and their sites of production and consumption are only rendered partially footloose by ICTs; the modernist spatial logic is fundamentally disrupted but it does not dissolve into a logic of 'spaceless'. Geographic space is being supplemented by a virtual space allowing people and organisations to be more flexible in relation to real-space geographies."1 Cyberspace and geographic space are not separate realms, they are interconnected and sustained by the experiences of each other.

One often hears that the Web experience is dislocated, that it gives one the impression of being anywhere, everywhere, and/or nowhere. The means provided by telecommunications technologies like the Web do in fact generate a sense of motion that does not require physical movement. Involvement in cyberspace suspends spatial awareness, to the extent that the point of origin, the destination, and all the network stops in between remain invisible behind the content one seeks. Sometimes, however, location becomes more manifest; we designed this exhibition around such questions.

****

When I look at sites featuring Web exhibitions or art events - http://net.artmadrid.net/, for instance, or http://www.mediamodell.c3.hu/ -, I know very well where I am "situated" and can identify the geographical "relay" taken by these productions. Similarly with http://www.deplacement.qc.ca/. In a very enlightening online text entitled location=yes, Olia Lialina explains the semantic effects of the domain name appearing in the location bar on identification and location, that is, on a sense of belonging. That domain name constitutes a point of access, often already marked by geographic location (by the country domain extension). In turn, engaging with a Web site often brings out the location through other means.

From a down-to-earth point of view, artists and designers probably have more opportunities to come together in the same city, to meet in new media festivals, production centres, or in a café, even if their support is the Web and much of their exchanges occur on the Internet. The fact of spending the greater part of one's time at the computer doesn't exclude this type networking. The electronic arts scene is also built in the physical world, with real people, in flesh and blood.

I believe geography matters; location does have an impact on the production and dissemination of an art said to be immaterial and disembodied. Points of departure and arrival for content on the Web are "located," because the individuals who provide it and those who consult it are situated geographically. Even if the hops taken by the Web pages are numerous, the corridors congested, the bridges busy - to use the metaphors of their movement, tangible analogies to refer to an impalpable circulation of data -, the Web page is destined to find itself on a very material computer, and then on another, located at different points on the planet, set before other geographically located individuals.

The presentation of a Web art exhibition that brings local artists together in another place, another country, another culture, is not altogether different from that of other exhibitions. As much as any other, it requires one to move, to stand back, to be aware of distance and difference, to measure oneself against the other, to be aware of oneself, elsewhere. It also requires one to relocate cyberspace in real space, and vice versa, to confront one space with the other and initiate an exchange between them.

Location / Dislocation

The Media Z Lounge space at the New Museum gave us the opportunity of presenting projects designed for the Web, of displaying these works on plasma screens, and of occupying a physical space. The situation favoured precisely such an encounter between cyberspace and the exhibition space and encouraged an examination of related questions. Thanks to a space-and time-shifting projection device, Atelier in situ's interactive installation, s(e)izing nyc (1:10000:1), made us aware of the spectator's actual and virtual presence, echoing the experience of the Web. Nancy Tobin's RESTAREA, by preventing the visitor's movement, also invites an awareness of self, of the here and now. And Everywhere/tout par tout, by Johnny Ranger and Bill Sullivan, proposes an archeology of identity within real and virtual spaces, leading again to spatial self-awareness.

Yan Breuleux's NeverEndingStories, both in its Web and DVD versions, confronts the visitor with the processes of globalization and homogenization in which telecommunications technologies like the Web take part, leading us to consider the place of the individual and of that which is "local" in this great scheme. For its part, Green, by the AE collective (Stéphane Claude and Gisèle Trudel), invites us to picture our living spaces from another perspective, to invent and redefine them, and to reconsider our relationships with the experience of space. Offering a rich and imaginative universe, the place created in Brad Todd's Utopia PKWY associates the individual with a specific space; it is an invitation to make a place for oneself in cyberspace, to conceive spaces as marked by individuality. Finally, [The User] collective's Silophone convenes us to materialize space by way of time, to appropriate space through participation, inclusion, and difference, and to create bridges between space and cyberspace.

All these projects - and the links woven between them, both in cyberspace and in "real" space -, reveal the relationships between the individual and the places he or she occupies. They probe the experience of dislocation in cyberspace. They invite us to identify the spaces we frequent and the relationships we develop with them, to create connections between cyberspace and real space. They suggest an examination of the experiences of location, dislocation, and relocation, and envisage continuities between them.

Sylvie Parent

Notes

1.Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, Mapping Cyberspace, Routledge, London et New York, 2001, p.15.