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SMAK.ORG
short manifesto
SMAK.ORG is a virtual
museum squat. Like "real life" squatters, we want to draw necessary attention
to a situation of neglection in the public sphere - attention to interesting,
rather marginal but publicly available online artwork and other relevant
networked and digital projects that are not or insufficiently noticed
and documented by the regular media and art world. So, we are doing the
homework the 'real' S.M.A.K. has forgotten or neglected - not only the
S.M.A.K., but also other 'technophobic' art institutions, and even those
digital art venues and events that propagate a specific, mainstream-elitist,
uncritical, politically correct and/or rather corporate technohype agenda.
SMAK.ORG wants
to pursue an active policy of creating an open, bottom-up and sometimes
(un)didactic platform for showcasing creative digital initiatives to an
interested, uninitiated, unsuspecting or even unwilling audience. We are
looking for suggestions, ideas and collaborations of any kind.
SMAK.ORG favors
living work over the conservation of obsolete classics; and prefers freely
available small scale projects to hyped pay-per-view or prestigious funded
artworks.
SMAK.ORG is also
trying to raise a debate about the role of media, museums and the art
world in a networked society. We are worried about the fact that very
few people, for example, seem to be questioning the media hype surrounding
this new generation of contemporary art museums - it seems politically
correct to applaud any effort to propagate historically grown and established
20th century artwork, and mainstream media are very eager to contribute
to this politically correct image - but it might be a good idea to analyze
and question these mechanisms, and to develop a more complex viewpoint
on the construction of these specific (art) histories, events, personalities
and institutions - often enough the results of political, corporate or
nationalist agendas. We are not anti-art, but we like to ask questions
and want to present alternative views.
SMAK.ORG is created
by a very small group of volunteers ('You Can Do This Too'! ;), and as
a no-budget project it is a cheerful tribute to those other 'heroic' small
scale initiatives maintaining their own optimistic policy of self-sustainability,
modesty and independence.
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