“WHY A WEBSITE ?” (500 WORDS FOR ARTFORUM.COM)
APRIL 2011
I decided to make a website to inform about my work “Crystal of Resistance”. I want
to offer material about this new work and I want to propose an inside-view––from
myself––about my work for the Venice Biennale. My website is not an artwork of mine
but stands along side the artwork “Crystal of Resistance”. I want to show how I proceed
in working. I want to explain where my inspiration, my references, my influence and
my input––for this biennale work––are coming from. Beyond this, my website wants
to assert my artistic-project in general, my work-position and my ambition as an
artist. Furthermore I want to assert my belief in art and why I believe in art. I
made this website to express: Where do I stand? What do I want? And also to say that
I am the art-worker, that I am the art-soldier, that I am the one who is doing the
artwork! I want to speak in my own words––beyond journalism––about my convictions,
about my will to give form through my work and only through my work, and I want to
insist with my own terms of art. I do not have an artist-homepage or a blog, I do
not use “Facebook” or “Twitter.” In 2009 I already made a time-limited website for
my work "The Bijlmer Spinoza Festival" in Amsterdam. This is my second website.
My work “Crystal of Resistance” will resist––as all artworks do. My site is not the
artwork and my website is not part of my artwork. The site is an assertion; it is
pure assertion coming from myself––directly––without mediation or commentaries. No
“press-texts” are needed. My site is meant as a toolbox, it’s a free and open toolbox
and I hope it will work as a toolbox. My website is also an information source for
someone who cannot travel to Venice and cannot see my work there. My website functions
as a complementary fixing-point during the exhibition, beside the catalogue “Establishing
a Critical Corpus” which concerns previous works and specific aspects of my work
in general and that will come out for the Biennale. I hope this website can create
the conditions for a confrontation or a dialogue by establishing a "Critical Corpus"
with my work and by including the “non-exclusive audience.”
The site is a time-limited website––as announced––I will end it two months after
the closing of the biennale. It will be online during ten months altogether. It is
good to renew and make space for new works.