+territories+

Rikrit Tiravanija's "Thai Pavilion" was the most network-orientated
piece in this year's Venice Biennale. In many of the conversations and
debates surrounding the Biennale, the dominant theme (outside of the
fact that video installations were *everywhere*) was how tenuous the
nationalistic premise of the Pavilions are in the current political
climate. Tiravanija's intervention was an elegant and witty commentary
on how the pavilions act as solitary islands or embassies - as you walk
around you overhear people saying have you "done" Denmark or "been to"
Romania?

The Thai Pavilion consisted of a platform with the only example of a
rare Thai tree in Europe placed in the centre. A table nearby
distributed posters and postcards celebrating the first "official" Thai
pavilion in the Biennale. In this simple gesture, Tiravanija used the
surrounding network of pavilions and the exoticism of the tree to
subvert the already weakened premise of the rest of the Giardini. Other
pavilions, notably the Danish and French, attempted similar
deconstructionist strategies by mixing artists and curators of different
nationalities, but these seemed like cursory gestures in relation to
Tiravanija's direct and focused intervention. In a festival that had
virtually no high profile net (or network-based) art, except for
Knowbotic Research in the Austrian Pavilion, The "Thai Pavilion" felt
closest to the issues of connectivity, territory, participation and
community that characterise so much on-line work. If the inability to
deal with these issues is the main problem of the exisiting Biennale,
whose to bet on net art being as high-profile in 2001 or 2003 as video
art was this year?

Anyone for a RHIZOME Pavilion?

+communities+

In the debate "Agendas, Agendas, Agendas" held in the basement of the
British Pavilion, Charles Esche (from Glasgow's Modern Institute, and
ex-director of the Tramway) commented that the Biennale could never
represent what he saw as the essential activities of artistic
communities - the "conversations in bars, micro-debates and fleeting
collaborations" that form the supportive and critical infrastructures
for artistic production. As someone who was in Glasgow when Esche was at
the Tramway, I can read this as being a comment on the healthy art scene
that grew around the Art School and galleries like the Tramway, CCA and
Transmission in the early 90's. Without any commercial gallery scene at
all, Glasgow managed to nuture an incredible reputation and support the
work of artists like Roddie Buchanan, Julie Roberts and Douglas Gordon
who have since gone on to major international success. The artistic
community that existed relied predominantly on artist-initiated projects
and the kind of "micro-debates" the Esche mentioned. It's true that,
with the exception of curators like Hans Ulbrich Obrist, this kind of
activity is rarely visible in the mainstream contemporary art world. But
how could these communities represent themselves outside of their own
internal networks? As I left Glasgow in 1995, there was already levels
of resentment about the way that representations of the Glasgow Art
scene outside of the city had come to be dominated by an elite few, with
other stratas of activity forming and reacting to these developments.

At the same time, Esche's comments about finding ways of auditing or
representing these networks of micro-debates made me wonder if he had
ever participated in a mailing-list like RHIZOME or Nettime. Coming back
to the wealth of posts about the "STARRYNIGHT" interface
(http://www.rhizome.org/starrynight) and the management of the RAW list
reminded me how central the concepts of community and representation are
in net art compared to the mainstream art world. STARRYNIGHT is
interesting in that is an attempt to "curate" RHIZOME as a project.
Curating can be like map-making, or it can be a more conscious
theoretical or historical process. STARRYNIGHT is somewhere between a
map and a representation of a community, which are two very different
things. Community representation in the mainstream art world tends to be
relegated to the ghetto of "Public Art," where community networks are
allowed a voice through the filter of established art practise. It would
be harsh to criticise STARRYNIGHT on these grounds, as the RHIZOME
community are (mainly) practitioners themselves, and therefore the
interface does not represent the only vehicle for the voices it
represents. In this way, STARRYNIGHT exists as a single point of light
on the larger constellation of the Internet itself.

+stars+

The British Pavilion this year was offered up to Gary Hume, one of the
brightest stars of the Brit-Art pack. His paintings did looked gorgeous
in the grand surroundings of the pavilion and the flattering Venetian
light, yet not so long ago Hume was showing in dusty warehouses as part
of artist-run shows like "Freeze" and "Modern Medicine." As part of a
group of curators visiting the Biennale from Northern England, it was
obvious that the work we were involved in supporting or promoting would
never be represented at this level unless it had made a similar
progression through the ranks to the heady climate of London Galleries
like White Cube. The progression of these "micro-debates" into the
starry firmament of the international art scene was a discreet parallel
debate to the issues of identity within the territorial and national
boundaries of the pavilions. What does an art-star like Gary Hume mean
in this context? Does he represent the success of that early "Freeze"
generation, or does he look more like a thoroughbred from Jay Jopling's
"White Cube" stable? Is he acting as a metaphor for Britain's makeover
as the locus of all things hip and cool (Pulp did, after all, play at
his Biennale party), or does he represent how this new national identity
is dominated by London at the expense of regional debates? (the launch
of a book documenting the major "Artstranspennine" project in the North
of England was allowed to use the basement space of the British
Pavilion, but was nowhere near as well attended, even by the London Art
Mafia who had turned out to the same venue for Hume's Launch).

As stars glow brighter it becomes harder and harder to identify their
immediate neighbours and their shared histories and territories. One of
the most interesting debates about STARRYNIGHT and the RAW list revolves
around the critical mass of the list and its dialogues, represented on
RAW by the occassional domination of individuals or threads, and in
STARRYNIGHT by the fact that brighter stars inevitably become more
dominant through the simple fact of their visibility.

Again, the tension in STARRYNIGHT between its status as a map and as a
representation of its communities (list members, visitors, readers,
writers), is far more dynamic and interesting than the (lack of) debate
about the relationships between the mainstream art world's disparate
communities. It is in these relationships between the territorial or
social communities in the first, second and third art worlds where
active communication is virtually non-existent. Fortunately, for all
that some list-members may think, dialogue about the identity of the
RHIZOME community, and its territories, communities and stars, is still
far more transparent and open than similar dialogues in more established
communities, even within such a small physical territory as the British
Art community.

What STARRYNIGHT represents though, is a maturation of the concept of
RHIZOME that could lead towards more specific curatorial (or
cartographical) agendas. The interrogation of the interface is a healthy
sign of a robust community, but how will participation alter to react or
conform with the lists occassional representational projects?

This brings me back to the question: What would a RHIZOME pavilion look
like?