HTTP Gallery, London
12 February – 20 March 2010
Open Thursday – Saturday, 12-5pm
Private view and performances: Friday, 12 February 2010, 6:30-9pm
Free admission to exhibition and events.
http://www.http.uk.net/exhibitions/ifnotyounotme/index.shtml
Annie Abrahams (b. NL 1954 , lives and works FR) is an internationally regarded pioneer of networked performance art. ‘If not you not me’ at HTTP Gallery in London is the first exhibition of her work in the UK. Where social networking sites make us think of communication as clean and transparent, Annie Abrahams creates an Internet of feeling – of agitation, collusion, ardour and apprehension. Working with simple interfaces, carefully crafted instructions and disruptions in data-flow, Abrahams sensitises participants and audiences to glitches in communication and invites them to experience and reflect on different ways of being together in a machine-mediated world. The exhibition asks how we deal with the tensions of collaboration and physical separation as we negotiate relationships through video imagery, computer software and digital networks.
Abrahams has created three new works for ‘If not you not me’ at HTTP Gallery, inviting collaboration from visitors to the gallery and others around the world. Shared Still Life / Nature Morte Partagée, a telematic still life for mixed media and LED message board, asks visitors to HTTP Gallery and Kawenga – territoires numériques in Montpellier, France to communicate with one another by arranging objects in the still life and sending messages to one another, with the results visible in a projection in both galleries.
The exhibition’s private view also includes two new collaborative performances to be documented and shown in the exhibition. On Collaboration Graffiti Wall, a collective text and speech performance, draws on reflections around the nature and problems of online collaboration collected via a website.
Huis Clos / No Exit – Jam involves four women artists sitting before webcams in different locations around the world. They will try to organise a unified sound performance, working with and around the inevitable delays that result from the international live feed. In addition to the new works, the exhibition presents documentation of recent networked performances created and curated by Abrahams.
If not you not me is co-produced by Furtherfield.org and HTTP Gallery, London, and bram.org and Kawenga – territoires numériques, Montpellier, France. Furtherfield.org supports experimental practices at the intersections of art, technology and social change. This exhibition was conceived in connection with Furtherfield.org’s Rich Networking project interrogating the transparency of communication, artistic collaboration and sociability through digital networks. This is the fourth event in Furtherfield.org’s three-year Media Art Ecologies programme which foregrounds practices sharing an ecological approach – an interest in the interrelation of technological and natural processes: beings and things, individuals and multitudes, matter and patterns.
Events
======
Private view and performances: Friday, 12 February 2010, 6:30-9pm, HTTP Gallery
7pm: On Collaboration Graffiti Wall – Collective text and speech performance at gallery.
To contribute or view texts to be used during the performance visit http://bram.org/collaboration/index.php.
8pm: Shared Still Life / Nature Morte Partagée goes live – telematic still Life installation at HTTP Gallery and Kawenga – territoires numériques, Montpellier, France.
8:30pm: Huis Clos / No Exit – Jam – Telematic performance projected at HTTP Gallery, featuring Anteye Greie (Hailuoto, FI), Pascale Gustin (Paris, FR), Helen Varley Jamieson (Wellington, NZ), and Maja Kalogera (Madrid, ES).
More Information
Annie Abrahams – http://aabrahams.wordpress.com
Bram.org – http://bram.org
Kawenga – territoires numériques – http://www.kawenga.org
Furtherfield.org’s Media Art Ecologies programme – http://www.furtherfield.org/mediaartecologies.php
HTTP Gallery
Unit A2, Arena Design Centre,
71 Ashfield Rd, London N4 1NY.
http://www.http.uk.net
HTTP Gallery is Furtherfield.org’s dedicated space for media art.
Furtherfield.org and HTTP Gallery are supported by Arts Council England, London.
Contact:
Lauren Wright, HTTP Gallery
info [at] furtherfield.org