Magda Tyżlik - Carver
Distributed art of invisible networks
Notes on network politics
The function of critical art according to Rancière (who, however, never talks about network art), is not only to create a situation in which it is possible to see the true nature of things behind their appearance, by arranging the ways and relations between art and life. But it is also a way in which a spectator responds to the knowledge or understanding produced by that relation with the artwork and how this knowledge is taken into the realm of the society. In contemporary critical art, Rancière distinguishes four main forms and “mystery” is one of them [2006b]. Mystery, as “specific way of putting heterogeneous elements together”, creates a certain relation between them which establishes the familiarity. This relation is rooted in poetry and the use of metaphors “where heterogeneous realities are woven in the same fabric and can always be related to one another”. What the use of mystery produces is the realisation of our co-existence and the strangeness of the world we inhabit.
Glorious Ninth ( HYPERLINK "" www.gloriousninth.net) is a collaboration between new media artist Kate Southworth and sound artist Patrick Simons. Their collaboration started in the context of the net.art aesthetics with many works created particularly between 2001 and 2004. They are often interactive works which mix together text, visual and aural elements placed within the frame of a computer screen and within the context of Internet.
love_potion s a distributed artwork by Glorious Ninth which has been developed since 2005 and it is defined by the artists as a “durational performance artwork in three phases” (love_potion a). It juxtaposes heterogeneous elements together such as growing borage plants from seeds, scents and magic spells, gardening tips on how to grow borage, DIY installations and sound and visual works created by Glorious Ninth which are freely available for download. And it is this conjunction that is arranged over time into three stages within or through which the quality of the public/audience/participants’ presence is subtly organised.
In its formative structure love_potion could be considered a distributed, networked happening. All the elements needed for performing love_potion are given on the site and we are invited to “join the invisible network of tactical gardeners” [Southworth 2007]. This invitation is where the complexity of this work is articulated. It negotiates many levels of engagement by placing heterogeneous elements in the mysterious relations expressed through metaphors which I will explore. My reading is that the “invisible network” can be understood as the common; “tactical gardeners” are the audience/people/participants and magic potion could be read as participation. If we follow this kind of poetic reading of love_potion this piece then becomes a ritual of participation in the performance. Through its distributed nature it manages to eliminate the audience as called for by Allan Kaprow [1966] and creates participants who “have a clear idea of what they are to do” and also are “willing and committed” declared in their decision to perform love_potion. They are the tactical gardeners who plant the borage and when it is ready use it in preparing the magic drink and with frankincense cleanse the space chosen for the performance. The heterogeneous elements here are put together to strengthen the “potential for invisible network of love to co-emerge” [love_potion a].
love_potion: animated part
love_potionis a space and the time of the common. Everyone who performed the ritual shares the experience with the others regardless of the fact that they don’t know about each other. The common is established through ritual of going through each or at least one phase of love_potion, and realised through the very fact of its execution. The invisible network of tactical gardeners is the realisation, the object of the common that cannot be seen but can only be felt, experienced or imagined. Common is defined through shared habits in the community, the so called ethos which in love_potion exists in the activities of those following the prescribed steps in each of work’s phases. It is represented by dispersed (in time and space) rather then distributed actions of invisible network of people, repetitive activities turned into ritual, seeds and herbs, and audio-visuals, which all are organised by the mediative function of love_potion. It is this double mediation which turns the everyday chores into a work of art, a ritual, a performance and then takes them back again to the ‘real life’.