The Internet Pavilion
This is the story of the Internet Pavilion and its not over yet.
Read some of it at Dazed & Confused Magazine
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But continue to look inside this website and come back often because we are always updating it. Its not that easy to say the story of this Pavilion. It's not that clear. Meanwhile, there are people complaining at Rhizome about it. Writer Brian Droitcour (who would be a genius of an art critic if his blog was really briandroitcour.com) says that the Internet Pavilion "didn't successfully conveyed the idea of the internet as a territory" neither it shown any "sensitivity to the nature of the internet". He maybe right but is he really?
March 20
Here is how it all started. I rent a car and start going all over America searching for something different from what I already knew about the Internet.
Before starting this trip though, I spent a sleepless week in Paris. It was Paris Fashion Week again and I was there because I had absolutely no idea from where else to start the Internet Pavilion. Most people think that Fashion is a stupid occupation but unfortunately they never had the chance to live the somewhat shallow but definitely tragic beauty of the Night during Paris fashion week. (You may have a pick at Purple Diary Olivier's blog. It's just pictures of course still, it conveys some of the atmosphere. And speaking about Internet, Purple Diary is definitely the blog!).
Anyway, this time the shows weren't that interesting. Maybe it was because of the recension but there wasn't anything really memorable except of a few moments at the Margiela's show which was also probably his final because apparently he sold his business and moved out of the game . (check out his pretentious but cool website, it may not last for long.) At some point, I found myself alone at Le Montana's bathroom, thinking between lines of exquisite coke of the urgency to find a good architect who would design the InternetPavilion. Not that we needed any actual building- it was clear from the start that InternetPavilion is something you do on the Web and not in some corner of the Giardini-still, when I imagine webpages I think of Architecture and not web-design.
In urgent need of an Architect, I went back home to the apartment of my very special and smart friend Benjamin Loyaute at Le Marais where I am staying whenever I am in Paris and wake him up asking him if he had any ideas. What about Tadao Ando" he said, I can't really think any other architect than Ando at this hour. Maybe I can put you in touch with him, a friend of mine knows him well.
The day after, I wrote to Mr. Ando.
"Dear Mr. Ando.
As you can imagine, creating and exhibiting an InternetPavilion, posses a number of challenges.
-What's "Internet" in terms of space?
-How do we walk in the Internet how do we even circulate without dying from boredom as unfortunately happens today? And would you please "design" our InternetPavilion? "By design please do not think of complicate Net-architecture, "Avatars", "Virtual Worlds" and the such: that's actually what we want to avoid! We are interested instead for something poetic and influential, something suggestive such as the prints of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux.. "
But Tadao Ando had no time to make the Pavilion. At that point, Jan Aman thought of Mia Hagg and her boyfriend of those days Jean Nouvel. I called Mia and we agreed to meet that Le Fondation Cartier where Nouvel was invited to talk with theorist Paul Virilio.. Somewhat unwillingly, I gave up on the COMME des GARÇONS défilé that I was suppose to attend that evening and went to Le Fondation Cartier. There I found those two speaking in French for two hours and of course I couldn't understand anything apart of a few words. Dazed from the fashion partying, I sit back on my armchair and I start writing subtitles with my imagination, fantasizing on what Nouvel and Virilio were talking about. At that point, a remarkable thing happened: I start feeling as if I knew exactly what they were saying, particularly Virilio. I knew nothing about his ideas, I haven't read any of his books, yet his arguments, his obsessions and his paranoia start parading around me, circulating me up to the point that I start growing uncomfortable with my very own convictions. It was a kind of "psychoanalysis on speed" during which I realized that I have a real problem, that I am somewhat of a victim of computers and that I had become a computer junkie. In addition, my relationship to the Internet wasn't as glamorous as I had convinced myself and others it is. When finally the talk was over, I knew that I was about to build an InternetPavilion but that the Internet that this Pavilion was supposed hosting, wasn't the Internet I wanted. "We need another Internet" I kept repeating to myself a few days later while I was flying to New York. "This isn't Internet enough, this just some kind of "Desert". A Desert of screens as Virilio likes calling it.
(to be continued)
An Embassy of Piracy
Venice Days: The "Internets'
"Pages": architecture for an Internet Pavilion
The Internet has been accepted as part of this year's Venice Biennial but not the Vatican. The Vatican church submitted a request for establishing its own, religion based Pavilion in the Biennial but it was turned down, at least for this year. The Internet was accepted instead via the First Internet Pavilion. (read Jan Aman's text )
This text is the history and the present of the Internet Pavilion. It is written and constantly updated by Miltos Manetas and Jan Aman and it incorporates opinions and ideas expressed via the StupidForum ( find the StupiForum below at this page. Feel free to let your contribution and if you want, your name).
Our intention is to re-define and we-write everything: all terms can be re-newed, all systems can be destroyed and build again.
This Internet is cool but it is also a nightmare: a campus of psychologically enforced work and a "desert of computer screens". We desire a new Internet and we desire to free ourselves from our machines. We want to be able to send an email without computers, Blackberry and other devices. Ultimately, we want to satisfy the 3 Kleinrock complains:
1. We should be able to connect by any device
2. The device should be able to connect from anywhere
3. The device should be invisible, even immaterial.
June 02,09
The Internet is this new cool and free country floating above all the older ones. That's where we go to do many different things, communicate, create, exchange. Sadly, most people go to the Internet only to work and they start hating it and hope that it will just go away. And they are right: computers and new technology are still in the domain of Science and for reasons of manipulation, are advertised as the “World of Tomorrow”. Instead of helping us do what we really want (work less or not at all), they enslave us and now we all work more. This is not the fault of the Internet itself though, but its because it is proposed and accepted as something virtual and futuristic. We now have enough with virtual and futuristic stuff, we want instead a new Internet and even new internets that don't hypnotize us in front of computer screens, that help us destroy the system every time that this is possible and that ultimately are our friends and will never become tools of command and repression.
(to be continued)
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