WTi 2.0 – Wasting time on the Internet

WTi 2.0

WTi 2.0 — Exhibition

Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
30 June 2015
7 pm – 10 pm

Aftershow Party
10 pm, Salon des Amateurs

Written Contributions
Kenneth Goldsmith
Angelo Plessas
Internet-TBD
Paul Soulellis
Raffael Dörig
Dirk von Gehlen
Wolfgang Ullrich
Alain Bieber
Annet Dekker

Participants
Joe Hamilton
Florian Kuhlmann
Giulia Bowinkel &
Friedemann Banz
Unità di Crisi
Emilie Gervais
Jaakko Pallasvuo
New Bretagne
Silvio Lorusso
Sebastian Schmieg
!Mediengruppe Bitnik
Nuno Patrício

Introduction

In the past decade the internet has changed from a domain of itself to an essential part of our everyday lives. On- and offline realities do not merely co-exist anymore but influence and enhance one another. Digital devices hold the content, contacts and conversations that lead to our thoughts, meetings and projects. The carriers of our internet connections seem to have become almost as important as our body-parts, connecting our physical and online realities.

Meanwhile we often experience the presence of the internet and our digital devices as a distraction from our daily activities. The endless access to information frequently leads to aimless internet ventures where scrolling and hyperlinks are the modes of navigation while data is created and accumulated.

Kenneth Goldsmith addresses this state of distraction through a creative writing course called Wasting time on the internet that he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. He and his students spend three hours a week wasting time on the internet, sitting silently in a class room, with nothing but their own devices and a WiFi connection. By conceiving web-surfing as a form of self-expression, the negative connotation of wasting time on the internet is called into question by using a state of distraction as a way to assemble raw material that can be used for artistic production. It is a practice that resembles the subconscious approach celebrated by the Surrealists and Situationists. Whereas Guy Debord, one of the key figures of the Situationists, proposed to intentionally move through urban space without intention, for WTi 2.0 artists were asked to use the internet as a space to drift through and get lost in for at least three hours.

The project embraces the impact and input of the internet on our everyday lives, but seeks to question the implications of its influence as well. Now that the internet and its transmitters have become a central part of our lives, it is not only important to reflect upon the ways our daily internet usage is used by others, but to look at other ways to use the internet as well. Next to that, this conception challenges the idea of what “wasting time” means. Does the time we consider “unproductive” bring about new things as well? Did the internet change the notion of “wasting time?” And can this time still be considered a waste – when it results lead to an artwork?

WTi 2.0 will be shown on USB flash drives. The visitors are asked to bring their own computers to plug in the exhibition. This means that, in order to view the exhibition, the audience is dependent on their digital devices or fellow visitors. In a manner this will resemble a LAN-party or Hackathon, the crowd will both collectively and individually be occu- pied with the content on their computers. With no WiFi connection, the focus will shift towards the data and thoughts generated by the artists, gathered on the WTi 2.0 stick. Viewing the exhibition on computers, while sitting together, will call for conversations about our observations. The visitors can decide themselves how to interact with the content, what to watch, what to combine and how to spend their time. Furthermore, the format of the USB flash drive allows the visitors to intervene by altering or adding files to the stick. This interactivity relates to the way we navigate the internet, but with one crucial distinction: the content on the WTi 2.0 stick is limited to the exhibition, while – as WTi 2.0 shows – the content on the internet is endless.

Thomas Artur Spallek
Laura Catania
Yvonique Wellen