Curating the Network-as-Artwork after Globalisation

This paper looks at George Brecht and Robert Filliou’s co-creation of ‘The Eternal Network’ (1968) as a starting point to discuss how certain networks can function as artworks in themselves, the grounds on which to determine their success or failure, and the role curating may have in these respects. This analysis will identify how production, distribution and reception are closely integrated in the creative process of the network-artwork. The attractiveness of network-artworks will be argued to be political as well as aesthetic given their function as decentralised or distributed environments bypassing institutional curatorial spaces. This extends to a discussion of how Robert Filliou, in particular, embeds curatorial strategies within his practice, evidenced in works such as ‘La Galerie Légitime’ (1961-72) and ‘Hand Show’ (1962). Considering the challenge of exhibiting such work in a solo retrospective at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, contemporary developments in new media art and curatorial practice are discussed as benefiting a historical analysis of Filliou’s network-artwork practice. Such an analysis will be applied in particular to Filliou’s video works, notably Video Breakfasting with Roy Kiyooka (1979). In considering new media curating in response to the paradoxes of the network-artwork, the further problem of possible contemporary dependence upon the internet, which has been argued to be ‘the most material and visible sign of globalisation’ (Manovich 2001, 6), will be explored.