Page 65 - The Black Box Book

offers opportunities for insight into difference and contemplation that
liberate us from the closed debates about form and content and direct us
instead towards paths of experimentation, invention, humour, or collapse.
(Goriunova, 2012, p. 17)
The challenge for traditional art institutions in the spring of 2020
was to create online exhibitions that might not just be seen as a means
of promoting or sharing work that would otherwise be seen in a physical
gallery but as a diverse set of cultural practices that are both connected
to and distinct from traditional exhibition. In this context, Michael Connor
notes in early 2020 that an “online exhibition can be more than a space
of simulation, documentation, promotion, and access.” (Connor, 2020)
The transformation of the physical program into the online environment
had not always been fortunate, particularly in the early days of lockdown,
when the formerly physical, walkable, and locally restricted exhibition
spaces were frequently replaced by digital, non-walkable, and globally
accessible exhibitions. We have witnessed a surplus of online walkthroughs
of physical exhibitions installed in galleries, live-streamed events, online
lectures, workshops, or guided tours of exhibitions that have become tem-
porarily inaccessible in the physical space. Dekker (2021) observes that
the physical and digital in museum and gallery production have blended,
with web-based displays increasingly becoming digital reflections of exhi-
bitions installed in physical museums and galleries. The result was virtual
simulations of physical space enabled by various software, with static pho-
tographs of artworks, whose presentation on the web was accompanied
by their descriptions, as if we were leafing through a catalogue. However,
curating on the web means more than just “ browsing the catalogue with Figure 8: Ladislav Mirvald.
a new interface”. (Dekker, 2021, p. 19) (2020). Ticha (Silences).
A traditional physical gallery Upstream Gallery in Amsterdam, Photo: Eva Rybářová. Archive of
the Netherlands, responded to the changed conditions of the transition Galerie TIC
to the online environment quickly after the lockdown was announced
and already on the 10th of April, 2020 launched their first exhibition in “For this exhibition, no works have to be shipped. No one has to leave
the new online gallery WWW.UPSTREAM.GALLERY. The exhibition entitled their house. And best of all: the works can be experienced in full glory.
QUIET, CALMS, STARING , curated by Rafaël Rozendaal, was a selection The only thing you will need is an internet connection. So sit back
15
of thirteen artists who use the web as their artistic medium. By setting and enjoy!” (Upstream Gallery Amsterdam. The New Outside. 2020)
up this online gallery, Upstream Gallery drew attention to the difference in
organizing exhibitions (including digital art) in physical and online spaces. The gallery has thus practically tested the extensive theoretical research
In the curatorial text for the next online show, THE NEW OUTSIDE, which carried out in the past decades, which thematises the issues of the pres-
opened in May 2020, the gallery stated: entation of (digital) art online and in physical space. (Schleiner, 2003;
Krysa, 2006, 2008; Paul, 2007, 2008, 2009; Cook, 2008, 2010, 2013;
Ghidini, 2015, 2019, 2021; Tedone, 2019, 2021; Dekker, 2021; and others).
15 Upstream Gallery Amsterdam. (2020). QUIET, CALM, STARING. In the studies in question, it is often said that from the perspective of
April 10–26, 2020. Curated by Rafaël Rozendaal. Retrieved from
https://www.upstreamgallery.nl/exhibitions/172/quiet-calm-staring online curating, the presentation of art can hardly ignore the specificities
of its environment and has to deal with these changing contexts.
Similarly to the exhibition, the process of curating an online exhibition
takes place in the non-locality of a distributed network. Unlike curating
a physical gallery exhibition, curating on the web requires the creation
of an operational framework and structure - a website - to which the cu-
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