Anthology of Art

2002

Jochen Gerz (DE) (FR)

The Anthology of Art offers an Internet-based platform for dialogue between artists and art theorists from all over the world. The project focuses on current visions of art and the relationship of art to theoretical discourse.

Contemporary art reflects the conditions of its production and promotion. The appropriation of art by art history and theory proves that art and the discourse about art are interconnected, in other words that an equal emphasis is placed on theoretical reflection as on the work of art itself.

The Anthology of Art investigates and demonstrates the connection between art production and art theory instead of presuming it. The project shows how traditional relationships within the international art world are changing through the global medium of the Internet. It is an online experiment that provides new insight about the contemporary artistic process, with artists, theorists, and institutions now interacting via the World Wide Web.

To launch the project, six artists and six theorists were invited to make contributions to the Anthology of Art website: www.anthology-of-art.net. Artists chose one of their own images and theorists wrote a short text (one to three pages) in their native language or in English, all answering the same question: 'In the context of contemporary art, what is your vision of a yet unknown art?'

Each of the original twelve participants was asked to invite one artist or theorist of their choice to follow suit. Since September 2001, twelve different artists and theorists have made new contributions every other week. The website has been updated every two weeks so that no more than twelve contributions appear at any given time. The objective is to accumulate a total of 312 independent textual and visual contributions — 156 images and 156 texts — to create a pluralistic artwork whose content and contributors are unpredictable. The self-selection process and the diversity of the contributions create the possibility to expose a new form of art.

Beyond compiling a representative collection of contemporary theory, the intention is to investigate a production process in dialogue form, without interference or influence by the project initiators. It may be assumed that today art itself is no longer being questioned. On the contrary, every word about art tends to transform itself into art as well. The Anthology of Art tests the limits of this tendency: Can a pluralistic work by a large number of independent authors be produced? And will this form of production reflect a global society more adequately than traditional curated models of art presentation?

The rotation of contributions will continue until November 15t, 2002. At the end of the project, the complete archive of contributions will be accessible online. The Anthology of Art is scheduled to be exhibited in 2004 at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. The publication of a catalogue containing all 312 contributions will coincide with the Berlin exhibition.

The overall objective of this work in progress is to forge a new dialogue between art and theory. Members of a international community will be the authors and curators of the Anthology of Art. Existing contacts will be nurtured; unexpected relationships will be formed.

The claim of an international and interdisciplinary contemporary art has often been taken for granted. It will now be questioned by the simultaneous, ephemeral and aleatoric confrontations between people in different regions of the world connected through the Internet—no longer from privileged centres or isolated peripheries and no longer from naive or informed perspectives.

Organisation
Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig (School of Fine Arts Braunschweig), Germany
Project Team
Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, Prof. Horant Fassbinder, and students; Université Rennes 2, Haute Bretagne, Département des Arts plastiques, Dr. Marion Hohlfeldt, and students; Dr. Sigrid Pawelke (Paris); Heike Wetzig (Brauenschweig).
Partners
Lettre International, Berlin; Fondation Evens, Antwerp; Universität Karlsruhe (TU), Virtuelle Bibliothek der UB.
Funder Stiftung Niedersachsen, Germany (www.stnds.de); Dispositif pour la Création Artistique Multimédia, Paris; 'Kultur 2000' Europäische Kommission, Brüssel.