Conference: Media Art Preservation 2020

THE DEAD WEB – THE END
« Will the Internet end soon? »

The Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art celebrates the Media Art Preservation project in 2020 with a two-day MAPS 2020 conference on 13–14 February 2020. Continuing the work revolved around the conversation and the preservation of media art, started in 2015, involving international conservators, art historians and experts.

Among contemporary art practices some are linked to technological developments and which have been designated, with varying degrees of indistinction, as “media art”, “new media art” or “digital art”.

With an exhibition called “The Dead Web – The End” foregrounds Canadian, Swiss and Hungarian artists whose practices can be situated in media art will start a conservation about the obsolescence of the internet. The project and the exhibition is referred to the possibility of a collapse of the World Wide Web.

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The conference-related exhibition at Ludwig Museum
24 JANUARY – 26 APRIL 2020
«Will the Internet end soon?»

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It all began in May 2015, when an article on lemonde.fr spoke of the possibility of a collapse of the World Wide Web. Although this event is largely hypothetical, several articles have been written on the subject in response to a scientific symposium that the Royal Society organized around the Internet Capacity Crunch.

In a context where the network could collapse even before the end of its “adultescence” – in 2023, the Web as we know it will barely be more than 25 years old – we can try to picture the fall of the Web and the after-world that would ensue: Empty server carcasses and a sea of electronic junk? A digital oblivion on all screens? A digital desert to drift in? Machines imitating the Web? A handcrafted Internet? Rumours and testimony about what was the Internet? A desperate search for a disappeared connection?

In the wake of these reflections, the artistic proposals that echo these considerations have here been gathered. Though the exhibition was initially composed of Québec artists, Hungarian artists were subsequently added to it for the occasion ‑ from a call for proposals, as well as from the Ludwig Museum’s Collection, and of early web-based artworks from the C3 Center for Culture & Communication Foundation archives; in addition to artworks by Swiss artists which were part of The Dead Web exhibition at the last edition of the Mapping Festival. This approach thus provides a particular perspective in which to build and unpack our idea of the Web, and, at the same time, its absence.

Curators: Nathalie Bachand, Kónya Béla Tamás

Artists: Julien BOILY, BORI Bálint, BEÖTHY Balázs, CSONTÓ Lajos, Romain & Simon de DIESBACH, EIKE, FORGÁCS Péter, GERHES Gábor, KOMORÓCZKY Tamás, Frédérique LALIBERTÉ, NAGY Kriszta, NÉMETH Hajnal, PÁL Zsuzsanna Rebeka, Roman ONDAK, Projet EVA (Etienne GRENIER & Simon LAROCHE), Dominique SIROIS & Baron Lanteigne, Société Réaliste, SUGÁR János, SZARKA Péter, SZEGEDY-MASZÁK Zoltán, Julie TREMBLE, Lukas TRUNIGER & Nicola L. HEIN, VÁRNAI Gyula, VÁRNAGY Tibor, ZICS Brigitta

Exhibition coproduced by:
Molior, C³ Center for Culture & Communication Foundation

Supported by:
EMMI, MÜPA, Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the gouvernement du Québec, ProHelvetia, Conseil des arts de Montréal, Les offices jeunesse internationaux du Québec, Goethe-Institut, Samsung