Page 62 - The Black Box Book

T H E S PR I N G O F 20 20 :
PARALYSIS OF ART INSTITUTIONS?
The locally anchored Black Box project, which the chapter has been ex-
ploring so far, is set in a specific geographical, ideological, and institutional
framework of one particular gallery, which awoke to the new and unprec-
edented conditions of the spring of 2020 in the same way as perhaps
most of cultural and artistic institutions around the world. As in the case of
the Brno-based Galerie TIC, the lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandem-
ic forced them to lock their doors and to (re-)examine their well-established
methods for displaying and distributing art. Traditional art institutions are
entering the online space at the beginning of 2020, which they have until
then mostly used as a practical and pragmatic tool to share information
about their own activities or programs. Until that moment, the web has
primarily been the territory of online art communities, web-based art, net
Figure 6: Johana Merta (2020). Neboj se
a neplač (Don’t be Afraid and Don’t Cry). Recording
of the event. Author’s archive
62
art or transformed curatorial projects, evolving in the web environment
14
gradually since the late 1980s . This circumstance necessitated that
the categories of curating, creation, and distribution of art, as institutions
had utilized them before this period, had to be revised and modified for
this ´new world´. The methods of relocating or translating exhibitions from
the physical spaces of galleries and museums to the online environment
had to be re-considered, as well as the user, functional, and aesthetic as-
pects that the web space may provide. But the situation, which appeared
problematic in many respects at first, also brought with it a liberating
aspect that contemporary cultural production on the Internet contains. It
might be, for instance, the “organizational aesthetics” (Goriunova, 2012)
of the web environment, which does not refer to art as we know it, but
14 See Ghidini, M. & Tedone, G. & Dekker, A. (2021). The Broken Timeline.
Retrieved from https://thebrokentimeline.valiz-makingpublic.net/About
Figure 7: Johana Merta (2020). Neboj se
a neplač (Don’t be Afraid and Don’t Cry). Recording
of the event. Author’s archive
63