Eva Wohlgemuth and I are presenting our internet project SIBERIAN DEAL
in the Electronic Page section, which is curated by Irina Aktuganova who
is director of Gallery 21 - part of the Pushkin Square art complex.
Also here from Vienna are the group Das Frohliche Wohnzimmer, and Hilus.
We are all busy preparing our symposium presentations for the Mirror
Page symposium. It is really AUTUMN here, leaves fallin like crazy, and
rainy dramatic skies are lit by a special golden light that only St.
Petersburg supports…with its golden buildings and wide streets.

Eva and I are staying at the ship hotel that is full of artists from the
exhibition, young boys who are taking a field trip with their teacher,
and workers from the Southern areas of Russia. We are very near our
exhibition site, the Smolny Cathedral, a beautiful complex of delicate
buildings painted robin's egg blue - an educational center for young
women (not exactly a convent or a religious center). Now, its main
chapel - which hosts an assortment of international artists' works,
performances and meetings is painted white, and is adorned from floor to
ceiling with photos, paintings and sculpture. Alla Mitrofanova, a local
art critic and cyber theoretician, told us that the cathedral was never
used because of a suicide that took place there decades ago….a
forboding thought for the 4th Biennale…well, at least it was for the
Electronic Page, because so far, nothing really works. Our piece –for
example– remains a virtual artwork, as it is not visible, due to no
connectivity at the site. We understand that there are approximately
250 artists being presented here in St. Petersburg, from 70 countries.

Tonight, we are sitting around the various PC terminals at Tetris, a new
venture here in St. Petersburg, a commercial internet cafe that helps
out with some artists' projects, especially live events that bring in
new prospective customers. We are joining the #REFRESH project that was
instigated by Moscow, Rotterdam and Ljubljana. There are pages cycling
in 10 second intervals, in what they call a Multi-Nodal
Web-Surf_Create_Session for an Unspecified Number of pages…with an irc
chat going on alongside between the various participants. As always,
some technical problems interrupted the growth principal of the project
- which was somewhat rhizomatic in principle. The linking structure
gets us out of the loop from time to time, but that can be easily
corrected. In all, the "event" is a coming together of the internet
interested folks at the Biennale, and bottles of vodka have just started
to appear (after all, it is already 10.45 pm). I'd better close for
now, and get a shot..and news of the schedule changes for tomorrow.

More on the Biennale and the Mirror Page Symposium as soon as I can get
back to a reliable internet connection…hopefully, tomorrow!