Page 63 - The Black Box Book

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

Figure 6: Johana Merta (2020). Neboj se Figure 7: Johana Merta (2020). Neboj se
a neplač (Don’t be Afraid and Don’t Cry). Recording a neplač (Don’t be Afraid and Don’t Cry). Recording
of the event. Author’s archive of the event. Author’s archive

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