This is the second part of WHAT HAPPENED TO ART AT THE DAWN OF THE INTERNET? A Revision of Net Art from the 1990s to 2000s
Early Net Art in Latinamerica
In general, access to the internet in Latinamerica was firstly made available by universities or public institutions dedicated to research and science during the 1980s, but its broader commercialization didn’t take place until mid 1990s with the advent of the World Wide Web in the USA. Uruguay was one of the firsts countries in the region to make it widely available (through the adinet service) but it was not an accessible and stable service in terms of its costs and speed. Widespread access to the internet in Latinamerica had a much slower development than in Taiwan. Only by 2015, 54.4% of the inhabitants of the region had access to internet connection. [1] As to understand the general context of the region it is also important to consider that many countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Perú, Uruguay among others) had suffered military dictatorships from the 1960s onwards, in some cases even until the 1990s. [2] This brought social and economic crises and a consequent isolation among the countries. The first net art experiments in the region did not have a political or activist approach, instead net artists’ preoccupation at that time was the endogamic conditions of the art system and this new practice allowed new ways of exhibition, alternative circulation channels and opened the possibilities of relating with the audiences. Artists focused on the possibilities of interactivity as a way to expand the concept of artwork and the possibilities of the “spectator” in the reception process transforming them into co-authors in some cases.
Differently to how net art had developed in other regions, net artists from the Latinamerican region never achieved to create a “local community.” As already mentioned, access to the internet was slow, expensive and there was a lack of a powerful social infrastructure necessary for the development of a strong institutional context or a relevant research and critical production. Artist Brian Mackern (Uruguay) stated that it was easier for them to find information about European artists than to know what artists from their own or neighbouring countries were doing. This situation led him to develop an archiving and distribution project of net art from Latinamerica, the net.art_latino database (visit Brian Mackern’s interview to know more.) [3] The database can be considered as a political statement in the gestures of archiving and recopilation of the net artworks, in making the artworks accessible as to foster a regional and international engagement and visibility. Similar to the situation mentioned for Taiwan, the majority of links archived in the database are now broken. In relation to that condition, Mackern and Nilo Casares (curator of the net.art_latino database book) express that far from leaving the broken links as a nostalgic gesture, “we must not forget that the internet is a dynamic system, where things are, and cease to be just as street signs and building façade colours change from day to day. For this reason, we cannot ignore that we are now witnessing an impossible attempt to pin down the movements of an era whose only survivors are those who resist giving up what they once were.” [4]
Focusing on the work Mi deseo es tu deseo [My desire is your desire] (1996-1997) by artist Gustavo Romano (Argentina) may contribute to exemplifying the online experiments which took place in this period. Romano is part of the Fin del mundo collective and he is also the creator and curator of Netescopio (digital art archive developed within the MEIAC, Spain.) [5] [6] [7] The artwork consists of two character’s simulated profiles which the artist uploaded in various Usenet forums. [8] Their portraits had been composed of synthesized digital images. Users could leave messages to each character. The work is the compilation of the e-mails received. It was exhibited in two offline exhibitions in Buenos Aires and Mexico. It is still possible to access all the messages that the virtual identities received at the time. Mi deseo tu deseo can be considered as an incipient experiment of dating apps. Also, its title could be read as critical interpretation or an anticipated warning of the risks of online exposure and navigation (information recopilation, and algorithmic targeting for advertising or political campaigns) as the fictitious characters appear to have a completely passive attitude and can only desire what the users want them to desire. The artworks mentioned, Brandon and Mi deseo es tu deseo, share the user participation aspect. However, Shu Lea Cheang’s work created a very clear invitation to political action and engagement while Gustavo Romano’s work appears as a more ludic or romantic participation. Considered together, they both clearly point to the mutual influence of our online and offline ways of relating which corresponds to Bosma’s perspective on net art existing outside the ‘net.’ This leads to the potentiality of political resistance in the network society.
At the user level, it is possible to consider these artworks as very clear presentation of the varied ways of using networks, be it for romantic socialization, for political action, research or any kind of engagement which, in our present has been centralized and conventionalized in a few social media platforms — be it Twitter, dating apps, Facebook or Instagram — with predetermined and limited possibilities.
Conclusion
The will to contribute to the histories of net art which differ from the hegemonic ones does not come without many challenges. The two compared “regions” have had a different development regarding wide access to the internet but shared similar political and social developments as well as a lack of institutional infrastructure to work towards the preservation, circulation and theorization of net artworks. Accessibility to many of these artworks is still possible thanks to western initiatives such as Net art Anthology (launched in 2016 by Rhizome under the artistic direction of Micheal Connor.)
It is our hope to develop further research on the history of net art in different and especially marginalized regions in the context of social infrastructure and technological mechanisms while taking the regional digital divide, accessibility of the internet and the world politics behind it into consideration.
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Daniela Ruiz Moreno (Argentina / Uruguay) is an independent curator and art historian focused on interdisciplinary practices that combine video, performance, sound and participatory art. She has coordinated the Artist-in-Residence International Program of the Fundación ‘ace para el Arte Contemporáneo (Argentina) and has been a curator in residence at various institutions such as Delfina Foundation (London), demolición/construcción (Argentina), Guanlan Printmaking Base (Shenzhen) and Shanghai Curators Lab (Shanghai). In 2019 she received the Brooks International Fellowship and was part of the Tate Exchange team at Tate Modern. Currently she is based in Madrid and is working with projects supported by institutions as Fundación “la Caixa” and Espacio de todos.
Hsiang-Yun Huang (Taiwan) is a visual artist and researcher of contemporary art theory based in Taiwan and the Netherlands. Her art critiques about philosophy of time, internet arts and curating the digital were given grants by the National Art and Culture Foundation (TW) in 2018-2019 and 2021-2022. In 2020, she initiated a webinar/performance program Embodied Interface （Latin America, Japan, the Netherlands, Slovenia). In the same year, she and Chen Jhen co-created the exhibition Uchronia (interactive website about post-colonialism) both as an online exhibition and offline exhibition in Taiwan.
As a curatorial collective: They focus on internet art from the perspective of post-colonialism and the global south. With a process driven co-creation approach, their curatorial methodology articulates academic research and art practice. They have launched the project EMBODIED INTERFACE in 2020 and they are currently researching the issue of post-truth in the context of digital globalization.
[1] Official figure provided by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2016. See more information about the report: https://www.cepal.org/es/comunicados/cepal-aumenta-fuertemente-uso-acceso-internet-america-latina-caribe
[2] During 1971-73 in Chile, with president Salvador Allende, the project Cybersyn had started to develop. This project aimed at constructing a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy using available telecommunications such as Telex. Although it was a project for industrial management, it was later considered as an alternative possibility to the Internet as we know it today. The project was cancelled after the advent of the military dictatorship of Pinochet.
[3] Brian ‘s interview, http://www.onscreentoday.com/conversation/2022-04-28-brian-mackern-a-perspective-on-net-art-from-south-america.
[4] CASARES, Nilo & MACKERN, Brian, The netart latino database, p.10, 2010.
[5] The link of artwork My desire is your desire (1996-1997) http://findelmundo.com.ar/romano/mdtd/data.htm.
[6] The link of the collective Fin del mundo: http://findelmundo.com.ar/intro21.htm.
[7] The link of digital archive Netescopio: http://netescopio.meiac.es/index.php
[8] Usenet was an early non-centralized computer network for the discussion of particular topics and the sharing of files via newsgroups.
