We=Link: Sideways

The works presented in this online exhibition span three decades of net art practice, from arguably the first internet-era artwork of the Thing BBS in 1991 to the most current production continuing to evolve as the exhibition opens. »We=Link: Sideways« features twenty-two works by twenty-eight artists and artist collectives, from the pioneers of net art to millennials.

The exhibition comprises the first artist-run Bulletin Board System that preceded the ensuing popularity of social networks and various expressions of artistic strategies and critical technologies aiming to disrupt a corporate monopoly of the network infrastructure and protocols, to expose the intrinsic logics of network security and surveillance in provocative stances as well as playful innuendos, and to intercept or re-appropriate commercial or institutional modus operandi. At the same time, the experimental nature of net art has continued to develop its varying aesthetic propositions along with the new possibilities and challenges of rapidly changing technologies.

Two works under the auspices of SUNRISE / SUNSET will take over the exhibition website and several partner institutions’ websites at the liminal moments of each day by direct intervention based on local time zone and environmental data, revealing the intrinsic logic of locality in globality, and the disruptiveness and transformative nature of the network.

The exhibition also includes a rare collection of artifacts of early Chinese internet culture during its formative years of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The amateurish enthusiasm and self-propagated autonomy mark a striking similarity with the pioneering spirit of their predecessors.

A series of exhibition-related programs and performances will be organized during the six-month exhibition period.

»We=Link: Sideways« is the second edition of the »We=Link program«, a platform for presenting online art. It was initially conceived by Chronus Art Center in late February of 2020 as a response to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.