MG+MSUM

2005-2015 | Igor Štromajer: intima.org/expunction
Deleting artworks, networked performance, 2011
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Igor Štromajer: intima.org/expunction 

Deleting artworks, networked performance, 2011

 

Between 11 May and 16 June 2011, Štromajer ritually deleted a number of his classical net art works produced between 1996 and 2007. He expunged one net art project per day, permanently deleting it from his online server, so that the projects are no longer available. He deleted 37 net art works altogether, amounting to 3,288 files or 101.72 MB. The Expunction project broaches the questions of temporality, duration, archiving, and accessibility of (net) art works that automatically change over time as the hardware and software change (browsers, players, applications etc.), slowly but inexorably losing their functionality and consequently also their content. The basic premise in this project is that whoever creates and programs art is also entitled to deprogram and delete it. In a way, Štromajer has erased history, including his own personal history, since he believes our memory serves to deceive us, to misrepresent rather than paint and describe the past. A deceptive memory can be erased without qualms, since it does not portray a real picture of the past it speaks of, but always only a deceptive, distorted image. For this reason the deleted works tell us much more about the originals (original works) than the originals themselves. With its empty slot and precise documentation, a nonexistent work, or rather its absence, points out the ephemerality of a net art work, telling at the same time much more about the deleted work than the so-called actual original could.

 

 

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Pseudo-artist and intimate mobile communicator Igor Štromajer – intima.org – has shown his work at numerous exhibitions and festivals worldwide. Comprising over a hundred projects that have been featured in over a hundred exhibitions, Štromajer’s oeuvre has won numerous awards (in Moscow, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dresden, Belfort, Madrid, Maribor). His projects have been purchased by, and are included in the permanent collections of, prestigious art institutions, such as Le Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Computerfinearts Gallery in New York, and the Maribor Art Gallery. In his works, he researches tactical emotional pseudo-artistic actions, intimate guerrilla, and traumatic low-tech communication strategies to overcome political anxiety.

 

Artist's web pageintima.org