Harm van den Dorpel
Some things that work in one decade don’t work in the next, so mark it down as a noble idea that failed.
Wed, 12 Apr 2017, 7 pm
Harm van den Dorpel (*1981, Netherlands) is one of the key players in the so-called „Post-Internet art” movement. One major aspect of his work, which consists of digital and traditional media, can be described as collaboration with algorithms. He has conceived a series of Web-exhibitions, as well as the non linear social network site deli near info. In addition to this, he also runs the blockchain-based online-gallery left gallery.
Harm van den Dorpel will present an artist’s talk about change, disappointment and hope. As a child of the eighties, he grew up with the increasing expectations of the messianic potential of digital technology. All information for all (all of the time and for free), everybody and anybody could be famous and all content would be equally important.
These promises pointing to an increased dematerialisation of daily life (a fluid change of identity), of professional life (the paperless office), and of art (from concept art to net art) did not reach their utopian realisation. Or did we reverse them or did they get reversed to their opposite?
To what extent have these supposed technical liberations been caused and prevented by economic mechanisms? What implicit ideology was at work, disguised as progress?
An edition has been released as part of the exhibition, available exclusively to Kunstverein Freiburg members.