What happened when the world’s biggest internet pirates invaded one of the world’s biggest art exhibitions? Curator Jan Aman sends us an email about putting together the Venice Biennale’s first virtual art space, the ‘internet Pavilion’... and how web anarchists The Pirate Bay became involved
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Photography Matthew Stone
“ PadiglioneInternet.com is the first ever internet
pavilion for la Biennale di Venezia. Conceived by the
Greek-born artist Miltos Manetas, it is the opposite of
a pavilion being defined by borders and nations.
It will open its virtual doors at the opening of the
53rd Intl Art Exhibition and close down at the end
of the Exhibition as any other pavilion. The event is
curated by Jan Aman.”
Padiglione Internet by Miltos Manetas,
from June 7 to November 22
Re: Padiglione Internet – some simple starting points…
From: Jan Aman, 12/07/09
In 1855, the French artist Gustave Courbet submitted his now-famous painting
“The Artist’s Studio” to the World Exhibition in Paris. Although nobody realised it at
the time, Courbet, the prophet of Realism, was making history by calling his painting
“a real allegory”. Instead of the old symbolic figures, he was painting people from real
life – not just those writers, thinkers and poets that had influenced him (Proudhon,
Baudelaire, Champfleury), but also priests, prostitutes and workers. All of those people
portrayed were based on real, living characters, but also carefully chosen to tell a story
– Courbet wanted his painting to display his thoughts about society at that time…
what were the consequences of this new industrial society? And what could art’s role
be in it? The painting was refused. But, using his own money, Courbet rented a venue
just next to the world fair, and displayed the painting anyway.
Fast-forward to 2009 and our Courbet-inspired “Padiglione Internet” (Internet
Pavilion). It digs into a series of contemporaneous issues – threats of political
restriction, the future of the internet, copyright, the art world itself; of borders,
markets, curators, collectors, city marketing, and artists... the list goes on. It does
so because of the fact that it is a virtual art pavilion, and as such the first of its
kind at the Venice Biennale. All of this was clear to me when my co-curator, Miltos
Manetas, came up with the idea, and it has become more and more evident as the
journey has unfolded.
