(Hamburg, 2011)
http://www.intima.org/expunction

Make Love, Not Art: Die Kunst ist tot, es lebe Kunst!

Number of deleted works: 37
Deleted files: 3,288 files (101.72 MB)

  • Deletion frequency: one (1) work per day
  • Started: 11 May 2011
  • Duration: 37 days (last work deleted on 16 June 2011)
  • Subject: net art works by Igor Štromajer, created between 1996 and 2007 (deleted from the www.intima.org server)

 

Expunction is a project by mobile Internet communicator Igor Štromajer. Between 11 May and 16 June 2011, Štromajer, a pioneer of net art both in Slovenia and worldwide, ritually deleted a number of his classical net art works produced between 1996 and 2007. He expunged one net art project per day, permanently deleting it from his online server, so that the projects are no longer available at the Intima Virtual Base. He deleted 37 net art works altogether, amounting to 3,288 files or 101.72 MB.

Those of Štromajer’s projects that were not on the Intima Virtual Base online server at the time of expunction but are permanently loaded on the servers of the galleries and museums that have acquired them through purchases or donations (Centre Pompidou in Paris, Ars Electronica Lab in Linz, Computer Fine Arts Gallery in New York, MNCA Reina Sofía in Madrid, etc.) were (and still are) inaccessible to the artist for deletion.

The Expunction project broaches the questions of temporality, duration, archiving, and accessibility of (net) art works that automatically change over time as the hardware and software change (browsers, players, applications etc.), slowly but inexorably losing their functionality and consequently also their content. The artist’s basic premise in this project was that whoever creates, programs, and composes art is also entitled to deprogram, deconstruct, and delete it. This is not an act of violence or destruction, but rather the observation of the natural rhythm of birth, life, and death, cyclically repeated and oscillating in natural amplitudes. In a way, Štromajer has erased history, including his own personal history, since he believes our memory serves to deceive us, to misrepresent rather than paint and describe the past. A deceptive memory can be erased without qualms, since it does not portray a real picture of the past it speaks of, but always only a deceptive, distorted image. For this reason the deleted works or their remaining fragments, undeletable once they have been made publicly accessible since the World Wide Web is so widely spread and fragmentary, tell us much more about the originals (original works) than the originals themselves. With its empty slot and precise documentation, a nonexistent work, or rather its absence, points out the ephemerality of a net art work, telling at the same time much more about the deleted work than the so-called actual original could.

 

Net artist, intimate mobile communicator, and virtual performer Igor Štromajer (www.intima.org) has shown his work at numerous exhibitions and festivals worldwide. Comprising over a hundred projects that have been featured in over a hundred exhibitions in sixty countries, Štromajer’s oeuvre has won numerous awards (in Moscow, Hamburg, Dresden, Belfort, Madrid, Maribor). His projects have been purchased by, and are included in the permanent collections of, prestigious art institutions, such as Le Centre national d’art et de Culture Georges Pompidou – Musée national d’art moderne in Paris, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Computerfinearts Gallery – net and media art collection in New York, Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, and the Maribor Art Gallery.