2012-01-10T15:57:00.000-08:00

NOW: Pierre Bismuth - "An ocean of Lemonade - Or the trouble with Living in times of fulfilled utopias" (27 novembre 2011 - 5 février 2012 / SMART Project Space, Amsterdam)

with special guests: Cory Arcangel, Cyprien Gaillard, Ceel Mogami de Haas, Matias Faldbakken, Matthijs Bouw, Aaron Schuster, John Snijders.

2012-01-10T15:47:00.000-08:00

(click on the project titles below to access information)

2012-01-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

New Work

2009-12-22T09:57:00.001-08:00

In Reverse Proportion

2009-12-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

Encycloplasticity

2009-12-22T09:54:00.000-08:00

Compendium of a Compendium

2009-12-22T09:29:00.000-08:00

Walk and Talk -#1 -#2

2009-12-22T09:22:00.001-08:00

Drift-Draft

2009-12-22T09:21:00.000-08:00

Stroom Uit

2009-12-22T09:20:00.000-08:00

The Measure Of All Things

2009-12-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

Le fil de la lecture

2009-12-22T09:11:00.000-08:00

Summary of current ongoing artistic research :

2009-12-22T09:10:00.000-08:00

«Nobody believes anymore an encyclopaedia can reconstruct the world for us; in fact, a writer like J.L. Borges can make fun of projects aiming at encompassing all knowledgeable things. Perhaps this is the reason why we still use encyclopaedias: not for knowledge but for information; we can read an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica without asking ourselves if we are looking at a leaf of the tree of knowledge[1]».

My work today[2] is essentially dealing with both notions of knowledge and experience and shares the ambitious scope of encyclopaedism –in its broad meaning.

The research I have been conducting is tending towards different more specific problematics; one of them, the most audacious and actual, is setting about a defacement of Wikipedia[3].

The project as such assumes many aspects and so to say many artistic forms. It is seeking a polemical status in several negative domains that Wikipedia (and the internet concept in general) engendered, but it is not a mere denunciation as it rests as well on many positive sides of the online encyclopaedia.

My main aim here in any ways is to develop a coherent set of parameters that could represent my obsessions and concerns with the entire history and practice of encyclopaedism, and to link it to a more actual and contemporary patrimony, that is to say digital encyclopaedias and more specifically Wikipedia. According to that I ask questions such as: When can we say it is knowledge? When can we say it is information?

I achieve this by generating a multilayered and diverse body of art works that ranges from installations to conferences, that uses edition (I am the editor of an experimental random encyclopaedia) and computer programs, that resurfaces on many mediums such as video art, photography or sculpture (My current project is to conceptualize and construct a New Encyclopaedic Tree in the tradition of classical tree iconography in knowledge representation). I have coined that ensemble of projects: Encyclopasticity, a neologism that adds I believe to the unity of the works.

As for the theoretical production (within that context of working) I concentrate on writing about the works of artists such as Armand Schulthess and his encyclopaedia-garden or about philosophers such as Novalis and his Allgemeine Brouillon. I have produced texts on the history of encyclopaedism (cf. Conference at the NICC Antwerp), and as I said I am the editor of an experimental random encyclopaedia that is accompanied and supported by a whole array of theoretical texts on knowledge consultation and criticism on traditional encyclopaedic systematic.

[1] Paolo Cherchi in Encyclopedism from Pliny to Borges, University of Chicago Library, 1990.

[2] I have side projects that would require their own dissertation but one can get an idea by looking at the documentation material.

[3] Wikipedia is here being considered as end of the line of a long tradition of encyclopaedic projects.

2009-12-22T08:40:00.000-08:00

John Latham - Britannica

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