Day: February 26, 2008
Notes on Borna Sammak Curating Himself into the New Museum
...as explained here. Shorthand version: he used the "Net Art" display terminals in the "Unmonumental" show to surf to his own page and then documented it.
1. I had found the "exit link" on Jessica Ciocci's page but wouldn't have thought of using Google that way--cutting and pasting letters from the 404 page into the search bar.
2. The exit link made me realize the browser had been customized and the address bar removed-- creating a kind of Internet Lite for the exhibit. That's inauthentic to the medium (porosity, randomness, and inclusiveness being among the qualities differentiating internet art from other forms) but one supposes it's better than MOMA, which just bans the Web altogether.
3. Sammak posts a video of a museum staffer telling him he can't photograph the artwork (even though it's his own). Overweening concern for "intellectual property" is a disease slowly eating New York's brain.