Festival "Trash-art" as an art project http://www.da-da-net.ru/TrashArt

Trash-Art festival was initially thought out as an art experiment based on ideological and aesthetical provocation. Creative subversion in regards to three contextual levels makes the ground of this provocation:
1) context of the place of holding of the festival - the Internet;
2) context defining its aesthetical strategy - contemporary art development'
3) ideology and political context.


It should be underlined that though the word 'trash' seems to clearly operate as a definition quality of the content, giving a ready result, worked off or initially non-utilitarian, the main object of attention, and therefore of research, became the process or the mechanism of production of art, in this case digital, net trash. The mere conception of aesthetical trash might be studied as active metaphor, i.e. the problem of use/uselessness of irrational creation of artists in strictly pragmatic context of informational exchange in the Internet space. At the same time, the trash conception might be examined in the functional aspect as artists' research of possibilities of different untargeted use of media technologies including equipment and its devices, software particularly. It was important for us to create maximum conditions for free development of the project to get the most adequate picture of general, subversive in their ground, real art strategies regarding art appropriation of electronic net. In this aspect the trash conception demonstrates its effectiveness since, as it is brightly reflected in Don Delilo's 'White Noise', the trash being uncontrolled production of civilization discovers the disguised and non-appearing life, of ideas and strategies in our case.

Having no preliminary selection, the authors of the project were suggested to register the works of their own according to most popular ideological and art strategies-classification that are as follows: Anarchical project, Ecological, Radical and Conformist. After that the references were automatically sent to the page with general list of festival projects. Each of page visitors could create his own collection-exhibition made up of works he had selected. And the page was saved under his login and was accessible to other viewers in case the author of the collection gave his password for access through discussion list. The exposition opened at the site loading on the home page was mutually generated by jury members and curators. As we've planned, we got much number of non-art or non-net-art projects, for example, sites of organization and on-line galleries. In other words, the authors on their free will considered their activities as trash - Club of Cyberfeminists from Saint Peterstburg presented itself as a trash-art one. Apart from irony, in this targeted washing out of boarders of net-art a rather productive attempt to expose mechanisms of art projecting might be discovered. I.e. in the unstable contextual medium which regenerated within the festival due to disbalance between its strict conception and very various projects, two methodological tactics of net and media art became obviously clear. It is content production on the one hand, and processing or content processing on the other. All pretensions of traditionalists to radicals are based on protest against the aspiration of the latter to build up their strategy on grounds of destruction of values that had been produced and consumed long before. In this regard the tactics of competitive struggle with its popular strategy of information wars turning data into weapon is typical for contemporary methods of political opposition. Meanwhile its consumers that delegated the right to lead this struggle for their own interests, i.e. the people, keeps a passive position and watches the bombs exploding over their heads. It is absolutely clear why interactivity of contemporary media art becomes not so much an instrument of activation of the position of the viewer/consumer but another fictive right to choose of options striving to inevitable result. Dramatism of the situation is that the artists is put into condition of a hostage of institutional programming. His functioning is either restricted by formal representation or he just parasitizing on annihilating subversial relation to this discourse. A productive way-out might become an alternative art projecting and art programming. The net festival 'Trash-Art' was an attempt to realize a similar approach. The subversion here supposes not only criticism or annihilation of regressive tendency in development of new forms of informational exchange. It seemed important to point the most productive and radical methods of system reconstruction developing nowadays through the analysis of functioning of mechanism as a whole.

Part of the projects that were nominated at the festival present destructive attitude towards data as a recycling object. Authors of these projects are parted into those that are targeted on presenting the recycled and thus turned into new quality content ('search collision' by Frederic Madre <http:plein0eau,com/trucs/index.htm> and 'Imperialism' by Ian Campbell <http:www.islandnet.com/cgi-bin/mswianc/imperial>), and those focused on attention to the very recycling mechanism. Amongst the latter Lithuanian artist Mindaugas Gapsevicium who presented a few projects regarded by some of the jury member to the JODI style, follows this strategy. Winners of the festival that got first prizes in three nominations present representative strategies when the localized in the Net art work might be estimated as self-sufficient, being a completed result. Frederic Madre (the best anarchist project studying the problem of pornography in his project 'm.s.t.' >http://plein-peau, com/n7/fred/mst.html> destructurizes the human body and emancipates its components in hyperbolized pictures. The group Intima (the best ecological project) adhering method of minimalist gesture realizes its project 'zvrst3 <http://www2.arnes.si/~kdsbble3/zvrst3/> in the form of transmitted through the RealAudiPlayer declaration 'ask not what you can do for your country - ask what your country can do for you' in the sense of the most typical social works of Guiya Rigvava. The 'Enemy processing system' Namniyas Ashuratova (the best radical conformist project) <http://195.42.131.152/> is an interactive constructor for an image of one's enemy. Meanwhile amongst the winners (special prizes) appeared artists actively exploiting Internet Context or technological specifics of net technologies that had sent a number of projects - Mindaugas Gapsevicius ('fw:[7-11] <http://www.o-o.lit/mi_ga/empty/fw.html>, 'disk defragmenter' <http://www.o-o.lt/mi_ga>), Ian Campbell ('IMPERIALISM' <http://www.islandnet.com/cgi-bin/ms2/ianc/imperial>, 'Dark Meat' <http://freecenter.digiweb.com/arts/popwerks/pdarks.htm>), Alexel Shulguin ('Remedy for Information Disease' <http://www.desk.nl/~you/remedy>, '386 DX Cyberpunk Rockband' <http://www.easylife.org/286dx>).

Thus the results of the festival prove the fact that the Internet as a creative space is available for easy and effective realization and appropriation of any art strategy including curator's. Further comes the natural selection - to trash, to favorites, or to favorites of trash.