Group Photo by Lance Wakeling
The Eternal Internet Brotherhood was conceived in 2012 as an annual creative gathering for like-minded net-souls. The first meeting took place five months after artist Angelo Plessas finalised the idea, and soon after, Hans- Ulrich Obrist guest-posted on the Eternal Brotherhood’s Instagram feed. Plessas is no stranger to producing work based on internet hook-ups. A practitioner who has engaged in net art since the late Nineties, his first monumental union between the online and offline worlds was produced in 2009 in the pyramid sculpture, “Monument to Internet Hook-Ups”, installed in a park in the Athenian suburb of Paleo Faliro during an Athens Pride performance as part of the Second Athens Biennale. With The Eternal Internet Brotherhood, Plessas has approached virtual reality with a certain kind of meta-romanticism. The internet is viewed as an earthly topography, composed of potent forces as vital as the energies of nature and human will.
Interview by Stephanie Bailey
Sleek: How did the idea for the brotherhood form?
Angelo Plessas: I was actually invited to do an interview by Lucky PDF and one of the questions was my idea of a dream project. I already had in mind to make an internet artist’s ashram in India, as I had been thinking about how to change in essence and form how we work with technology today, so I put all these ideas together. I wanted to visit different parts of the world with people to make work – when artists and artist collectives come together they make beautiful things. I also wanted to think about how we could bring a new level to internet art; internet culture is so integrated that it has gone meta. I don’t just see it contained within the borders of the screen. In this project, the physical interaction is always the culmination of an Internet relationship.
So after this interview, I decided to realise the idea, and that the first Eternal Internet Brotherhood gathering would happen in Anafi, an island in Greece, a country where only independent initiatives make a difference now. It happened in August 2012 and took five months to put together: inviting people and setting up a campaign on Indiegogo and finding money to pay some artist expenses.
Can you talk about the second iteration of the Eternal Internet Brotherhood, which took place in summer 2013?
There were around 15 of us and we stayed for one week. It was at this unbelievable surrealist sculpture park in the middle of nowhere in Mexico: Las Pozas, in Xilitla, San Luis Potosí, a seven-hour drive north of Mexico City. The British aristocrat Sir Edward James built these concrete sculptures in the jungle sometime in the late Forties. He was also an art patron and invited Picasso to stay at the guesthouse, and Dalí. It was, and still is, an amazing place. When we arrived in Mexico I learned that this place is really forgotten. It’s not touristy at all and the sculptures are falling apart; maybe this place won’t last forever. But it’s a visual orgasm – you cannot believe it until you go there. The artists were amazed.
How was the gathering programmed in terms of producing performances and responses?
Before Mexico, I asked the artists what they had in mind or what they needed; computers, projectors and so on. Many works were ephemeral. Others now exist online. You had moments like artist Mark Horowitz using this maze in Las Pozas to do a literal reanimation of Ms. Pacman, and Mai Ueda and Mike Calvert’s wedding, in which they performed a Japanese tea ceremony in one of these beautiful structures. We did workshops, performances, discussions, lectures, projections. Everything was organic: a jungle of everyday surprises, like the internet.
So you were brought together in one place and responded to that?
Yes. And there were moments that could have only happened by coincidence. When we arrived we met a young astronomer, Daniel Eksdeman, travelling from Argentina with is trailer to the United States. He did an astronomy workshop at night with this amazing telescope. We could see the planets, and for the first time in my life I saw how Saturn really appears: like an animated gif. You see, we are not only consuming the art market, and it’s open to other disciplines. At the core of this project is to have multi- and meta- experiences, and we will always go remotely.
Angelo Plessas’s “Temple of Play” will be at Frieze London as part of Frieze Projects 2013 October 17 – 20, 2013
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