<nettime> living on the net

[Casa das Rosas - IMMANENCE <rosas37@dialdata.com.br>]

web+event: IMMANENCE
casa das rosas - sao paulo - brazil


Immanence is the inherent quality of a certain animate or inanimate
subject that have no effect outside it, nor receives any outside action.
It is in the immanent quality of being (inherent to the subject without
any external action) that is the foundation of the exhibition. 


THE BODY BEYOND ITS LIMITS

A group of people is willing to stretch their limits and find out their
abilities to keep their concentration within a complete secluded
environment. What is the relationship between such an experience and
Internet? What does the computer web have in common with the alternation
of moods inflicted by this kind of experience? 

The whole experience. Today, the web sites are part of people's
relationship with the rest of the world. Recently, the word
"cyber-perception" has been created as a consequence of sensorial
translation of that stimulus provoked by the web. Everything is a matter
of immersion: the navigation can be similar to the state of "trance". The
web is increasingly becoming an environment where intellectual
considerations, unusual state of cognition, even intimate contact,
sleepiness, ecstasy, depression, anguish, perversity, different kinds of
seizures in larger or smaller degree take place. There are also some new
interpretations of the human existence, some mechanism of broadcasting
"spiritualism", there are some on-line confessions of faith, some
proteases to enhance people's vanity, all in all, there is the need to
redefine all its potentials. 

In Immanence, the artist and the piece of art are the same thing. The
"immanent artists" reinvent themselves as if they were their own piece of
art. Their body replaces their work and compensates for the presumptuous
space of an Art Gallery. The private space is now public, and it can even
become obscene - desired and shared by sensorial means. 

In this experience, I see the association of reality and virtuality. 
That's when the reality collapses (here, in a great effort towards its own
denial) to give place to the virtuality, which gains status of real life.
They both blend into one, getting from each other paradigms that despite
being well known they are not widely experienced. Yes, bye bye
Baudrillard, life does pulse. Simulated sensation is real sensation,
whether at distance or not. 

We must state: each immanent person and each room are here a stage -
without acting up or even role-playing. They are pieces of antennae
receiving raw feelings and sensations. While they are isolated from
external stimulus, they catalyze and irradiate images they have in mind.
We share with them the oscillation lived by a lonely body - being tested -
and the strangeness before this simultaneous existence, reality and
virtuality. 

Once again, one emerges to transform and transgress all limits. And,
likewise we learned from the cyber-perception theoreticians (thanks again
Roy Ascott!) we tried to maximize the interaction with the environment,
both visible and invisible interaction. 

These experiences aim at opening some gaps for later filling them up with
the subjectivity. This exercise highlights people's existence. I mean: I
understand that the lack of signification, the absence of meaning, or
incompleteness of things (of a movie, a painting, a picture, work, life)
demand an effort to reach fulfillment. And as you don't know how to do it,
you complete those gaps with yourselves, you put the best or the worse of
yourself - those feelings that are so deep and typical in one's existence
(sometimes a vault of carefully hidden, but wonderful stories) 


For the "immanent artists" there will be no way to rescue the lost naïveté
after this exercise. The self-exhibition is conceptually planetary. Those
tentacles (the web, the eyes from all over the world) seek an absolute way
to interact with the life flow, by means of cooperative process. The
cyber-watcher will know how to see through the gaps of the web-cams - the
treats of feelings (that's it!). Sometimes, there will be some daydreaming
or there will be the pure expression of desires that may not be translated
or uttered but can be understood in several different languages. 


I ask myself: what kind of virtuality is this? What kind of perception
deceives us all the time? As I speak, I realize that we say things that
are supported by our ignorance rather than by our knowledge. With the web,
even that naïf speech has a place to stand up. Therefore, many other
voices take the floor as they wish. And more words show up in this
alphabet of limited expression. 

The experience brings up some old questions: who am I, how am I, and how
do I express myself? Do I do it by subtraction or multiplication?  By
excess or exceeding moderation? In order to make feasible this extendable
work, Casa das Rosas made available a channel to the web for all immanent
artists. You can see it in different ways: a protease, a gadget to stretch
the feeling, eyeglasses, a periscope, a breathing equipment, a monocular
telescope, an interface to multiply the "selves" or simply mirror. 

The invitation is just another issue: what are the sensations - whether
subtle or not - passed on by the modem? How to translate them? That's to
say, what kind of information goes throughout hyper-cortex and reaches the
roots of your hair, the muscles of the face, the pupil of the eye, the
extension of the fingers? 


Again, this is perception against conception. There is this promise that
we will shortly have our bodies (obsolete?) linked physically,
biologically, neurologically to the web, and everything will be even more
confused. 

lucas bambozzi
curator & on-line conductor


Casa das Rosas
Av. Paulista, 37
01311-902 - Sao Paulo SP - Brazil
rosas37@dialdata.com.br
http://www.dialdata.com.br/casadasrosas


---------------------------------------------------------------------
*this is part of a first contact - we are planning to feed the
discussion with different stuff, including critical
articles [not only positive views but also negative ones
- colaborations, comments and criticism are welcome!].



#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net