Internet is procrastinating and I can be considered as a living proof: I'd rather surf on the net for hours with no particular reason before getting anything done. William Gibson, the author who invented the term "cyberspace" back in 1981 had a flair for that as well: in THE NET IS A WASTE OF TIME(1) published in 1996, he compares the act of surfing online to "staring blankly into space" and he says: "[I] enjoy staring blankly into space (which is also the space where novels come from)". Gibson also mentions a lack of understanding experienced between him and his wife, somehow comparable to free-jazz or noise music. Few people can actually understand these genres, but my experience tells there are a good number of people listening and appreciating this kind of music without understanding, like enjoying the stars on the sky at night. Certainly, Gibson prefers to patiently download recordings from a Japanese Beatles fan's bootlegs catalogue, randomly browse through "small patches of virtual real-estate" in front of a computer screen and truly enjoys this experience, while his wife would rather go out and take care of the flowers in the garden.

Meanwhile, Hal Foster writes THE ARCHIVE WITHOUT MUSEUMS(2) the same year. In this article, Foster defines "archive" according to Michel Foucault(3), i.e. "the system that governs the appearances of statements" and raises a set of questions concerning potential ways of displaying information online: "Is there a new dialectics of seeing allowed by electronic information? If, according to Malraux [in THE MUSEUM WITHOUT WALLS, the first version of THE VOICES OF SILENCE(4)], the museum guarantees the status of art and photographic reproduction permits the affinities of style, what might a digital reordering underwrite? Art as image-text, as info-pixel? An archive without museums? If so, will this database be more than a base of data, a repository of the given?"

Some years later, both Foster and Gibson follow (in)directly these reflections on two respective articles.

First, in BROW BEATEN(5) Foster sketches three phases of the culture industry in the last century and criticizes the capitalist economy applied by virtual markets to generate buzz: "One can periodize three phases of this industry in the twentieth century: the first in the 1920s as the radio spread, sound was connected to film, and mechanical reproduction became pervasive (Guy Debord dated the birth of "spectacle" at this moment); the second in the postwar production of consumer society the image world of commodities and celebrities screened by Warhol and others; and a third in our own midst, the digital revolution and dot.capitalism."

Second, in GOD'S LITTLE TOYS(6) Gibson proposes a short introduction to copy-culture (from plagiarism to sampling) mostly in the context of contemporary American culture. He praises the power of participation: "Our culture no longer bothers to use words like "appropriation" or "borrowing" to describe those very activities. Today's audience isn't listening at all - it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today."

Since then, Internet has gone through remarkable changes in regards of social media and digital cultures, shattering traditional human interaction on micro/macro scales. These modifications facilitated interactive collaboration, information sharing and social-networking among other things. Naturally, small patches of virtual real-estate interconnected together to become cities, and inevitably, the cities interconnected together to become a nation. The admission of Internet as a part of this year's Venice Biennial is the perfect example (see Jon Aman's text(7)) and the late emergence of academic research initiatives such as DIGITAL ETHNOGRAPHY are not innocent. The indistinct and passive audience of yesterday (the spectator) became the active and unique contributor of today (the actor). Once considered to be radical, cultural terms such as "bricolage", "mash-up" and "readymade" have been heavily democratized. The static bases of data retrieved by search engines have been extended by the dynamic social networks publishing instant-updates. Virtual markets generated new business models: "15 minutes of fame" is quantified by page views and professional content-providers are tied to their page ranks.

One can wonder if everything written above is correct. Did we really switch from passive objects to active subjects by corporate initiatives? If we go a little back in time to the 1980s and take in consideration THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE by Michel de Certeau, we will notice the audience has never been merely passive receivers, even long before Internet. De Certeau writes: "Once the images broadcast by television and the time spent in front of the TV set have been analyzed, it remains to be asked what the consumer makes of these images and during these hours".(8) Furthermore, he adds: "To assume that [the public is moulded by the products imposed on it] is to misunderstand the act of "consumption". This misunderstanding assumes that "assimilating" necessarily means "becoming similar to" what one absorbs, and not "making something similar" to what one is, making it one's own, appropriating or reappropriating it".(9) Here, de Certeau describes an implicit dichotomy between production and consumption in the pre-Internet era: on the production side, there were the strategic institution who had power, financial resources and an established physical base of operations; on the consumption side, there were tactical users who lacked power but were more mobile than institutions.

If we follow this reflection, we will also notice that the citizen of Internet is a problematic entity. In his article titled COMMODIFY YOUR CONSUMPTION: TACTICAL SURFING / WAKES OF RESISTANCE(10), Curt Cloninger defines the netizen as "a hobbyist user [who] doesn't have the productive agency of an institutional corporation, but has more productive agency than Michel de Certeau's original television viewer. She can't produce Hollywood movies, but she can upload YouTube videos".

Once again, I consider myself to be a good example: indeed, if I were to never create an account on MySpace I would not learn to write CSS/HTML to pimp my profile.

Smart enough, corporate platforms such as MySpace providing space for pre-formatted personal archives are simultaneously controlling the parameters of individual content-production and freely allowing if not constantly encouraging you to customize your profile already. They promote the myth of "originality" in order to maximize revenue (and "originality" sells in the phase of dot.capitalism: MySpace was bought for US$580 million in July 2005 by News Corporation). The tricky question that needs to be arisen is: "How do you hack/resist these corporate platforms, which render radical "resistance" irrelevant? With so many "customizable options" available, how can you "resist"?"

Neither the simple act of creating an account on MySpace, nor learning a bit of coding skills to pimp a profile can be considered as an act of resistance. As you will agree, it is not a very subverting activity and it is definitely not annoying anyone at all. In my opinion, the act of resistance lays in the deployment of these skills. For example, even though I am not a CSS/HTML guru -- because I am not an engineer, I am not interested in learning coding skills for the sake of it and I prefer to learn new skills depending on my needs -- but believe it or not, the skill I have previously acquired while pimping my profile allowed me to build the site you are currently visiting.

Cloninger applies THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE to the contemporary practices of "artistic surfing". These practices are taking place in "surf clubs" (see I LIKE NICE THINGS, LOSHADKA, SPIRIT SURFERS, SUPER CENTRAL, etc.). The artists drift online, collect (predominantly commercial) detritus, recontextualize it via simple techniques (bricolage, remixing, titling, etc.) and post it on the club's blog, where it is further recontextualized and reposted. As he mentions, de Certeau's analysis of reading fits naturally when applied to practices of artistic surfing: "[Consumers are] unrecognized producers, poets of their own affairs, trailblazers in the jungles of functionalist rationality... They trace "indeterminate trajectories" that are apparently meaningless, since they do not cohere with the constructed, written, and prefabricated space through which they move." The production of "artistic surfers" are defined by Cloninger as "surface net art": less worried about the modulations of the network by penetrating into its protological core needing technical skills employed by "deep net art" (see E.TOY, JODI and UBERMORGEN among others), these artists focus more on tweaking readymade media traveling across the surface of the network such as images, animations, videos and human language.

The works displayed on mybiennialisbetterthanyours.com are not subversive because they are trying to deconstruct established systems of dot.capitalism. They are subversive because they are referring to these systems through the use of amateur "original" content production standards set up by meta-producers of online containers, which are radical in their mass popularity and ease of use. As Cloninger mentions: "The "art" of this practice is in qualitative meme modulation rather than deep level technical skills. As with academic research, success depends on the particular sources you choose and the ways in which you choose to contextualize them -- creation via selection, compilation, and enframing. [...] These externalized associative connections transmit tactics of becoming to those who have ears to hear, transmissions that are difficult to decipher by the corporate radar".(11) While these productions spread quickly through different channels, they tend to form an infinite circle as they are publicly displayed online for others to see and eventually to recycle, remix, etc. Oliver Laric's work is a good example: through VERSIONS, Laric provides a powerful statement concerning these practices and the evolution of information available online. On Laric's site, VERSIONS is presented with three other "remixes" or "parallel worlds".

Some of the works displayed here are simply celebrating the joy of surfing. Maybe some of you will see some analogies between the experience of staring blankly into space previously mentioned by Gibson and the works of AIDS-3D, Angelo Plessas or even Math Wrath. Without being mesmerizing, these works invite us either to drift, to stare or watch other people stare blankly into the computer screen. In PORTRAIT AS QTVR FILE, Michelle Ceja uses QuickTime Virtual Reality, a technology commonly used online by sectors needing 3-D imagery such as real estate agencies, to produce an augmented 3-D portrait of the artist. Clode Coulpier, Fanette Muxart and Harm Van Den Dorpel play with the animated .GIF, a popular file format widespread among hobbyist-users. IMAGE RESPIRANTE #06 is an unexpectedly slow, almost indiscernible animation depicting a random winter landscape, whereas #02 is a colorful tribute to random American family pictures found online. Caitlin Denny and Parker Koo Ito are interested in collapsing the relationship between a curatorial pursuit and artistic practice. JSTCHILLIN, the title for their project encapsulates the attitude of the times - to chill is to live in a constant state of multiplicities, a flow of existence between web and physicality. In HOLY TEARS, Petra Cortright uses cheap digital effects to produce what seems to be an amateur video caption recorded through a webcam, with a sensibility I have barely seen over YouTube so far. Tobias Leingruber suggests you to download a Firefox Add-On he has conceived as a tribute to all the pioneers of Internet with a certain of nostalgia. Once activated, it uses the actual syntax of any site and changes it into a beautiful web 1.0 amateur page. Finally, as the title might suggest, Constant Dullaart considers YouTube as a subject in his minimalist animations.

Another part of the works are based on compilation. Raphael Bastide's work is the most clear and frontal proposition vis-a-vis Foster's "dot.capitalism" phase. AUTARKY MUSEUM is an autonomous museum generating revenue from Google AdSense. It displays advertisement related to art masterpieces as framed artworks. SOLDIER ANGEL is another committed work by Abigail Lloyd, who adopted a soldier deployed in Afghanistan through SOLDIERANGELS.ORG. Once you adopt a soldier, you must send monthly "care packages" containing supplies such as groceries, toiletries, clothing, stationary, blankets, or anything else a soldier might request. Lloyd sends a special gift in addition to the usual monthly supplies and documents the process on her blog. DESCENDING is a stair-shaped monument made out of found videos of people falling down stairs. Jacob Broms Engblom's work produces a mise-en-abime between the form and the content. MYSPACE INTRO PLAYLIST is a playlist bringing together MySpace introduction videos shared over YouTube. By decontextualizing these amateur productions, Guthrie Lonergan holds a mirror to the teenage social-networking cultures, which reflects worrying similar qualities. The videos are all simultaneously formatted as "authentic" self expressions and structured advertisements. Other cultures are represented as well. In BOOTYCLIPSE, Dennis Knopf anthologizes moments of absence broadcasted from different private interiors taking place just before the appearance of the amateur "booty dancers" (female users immitating dance moves as seen in music videos) in front of their cameras. In VEHICULE-S, the clever soundtrack modifications by Martin Kohout on YouTube videos turn alpha-males starting their motorcycles with uttermost seriousness and pride into impotent men. THE NATURAL by Nicholas O'Brien juxtaposes the cinematic landscapes of contemporary blockbuster fantasy films and recent panoramic images from nature documentaries in order to investigate the distinctions between the real and the fictional. In their computer-generated sound compositions, Joc Jimenez de Cisneros and Anna Ramos assemble and manipulate large arrays of data for the creation of synth parameter subsets. STUDIES FOR UNTITLED PUNANI SCRAMBLINGS, a collection of 111 text-based exercises freely available to download during the exhibition, extends that practice into constructed language, phonetics and related areas. BITS by Ilia Ovechkin potentially displays amateur information overload by editing very short YouTube videos together.

Other contributors take recontextualization one step further. Peter Nowogrodzki uses the screen caption of the page displaying the search result for "my life" on Wikipedia as his auto-portrait. MY PASSPORT ON EBAY by Nicolas Djandji questions the current meaning of national identity by trying to sell his Egyptian passport. This project presents a double negative, as subversive act of trying to rid oneself of passport ownership is rendered null by presenting the passport as an overpriced commodity on eBay. At the same time, Sarah Weis casts herself into YouTube as an Afro-American, indirectly applying circuit bending philosophy to gender and race. For ONE THING COMES AFTER THE OTHER, Damon Zucconi is appropriating the introduction sequence of the popular TV series LOST to display a personal statement. Aleksandra Domanovic replaces the entire visual layer of ANNIE HALL (a 1977 film by Woody Allen) with stock footage material collected by searching almost each single word in the film script to produce ANHEDONIA. Ludovic Burel and Isabelle Prim gathers found images and animates them in order to introduce a narration based on associative connections and repetition. At last, James Shaeffer uses the placebo effect of web 2.0 as a therapy to rewrite history in EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OK.

I believe this project is important, because it tries show works taking in consideration different technological innovations which (in)directly changed our daily way-of-life. It can be considered as a non-exhaustive compilation of these works produced during the last years. The title of the project might sound like a parody (and even parody turns up to be very useful for surface net art and postmodernism), it is both a tribute to popular culture through music, reminding the song called MILKSHAKE by Kelis, and a reaction in regards of the "guitar-hero" attitude adopted by large-scale art events such as biennials. It seems like these events must be "harder, better, faster, stronger" with each iteration, but I have the feeling that discourse on visual culture, let alone contemporary art, is drifting away slowly -- but I agree this is a completely different subject.

Anyway, I have tried to play the same game with the available means: mybiennialisbetterthanyours.com has been conceived as a large-scale event and has been executed with a total budget of 600€ within 2 months. Most of the budget has been used to mediatize the event through the production of "goodies" simulating the entertainment industry. The only component displayed in the physical context of the biennale is a single poster listing the name of contributors and a link to the project. As it was impossible to pay the contributors and I believe each work deserves something, each contributor will receive a t-shirt reading "I HAVE PARTICIPATED TO THE XTH BIENNALE DE LYON AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT" produced for the event. Flyers will be distributed in different countries to advertise the project. Most of the process have been documented on a blog. If you wish to learn more, click on "OFFICE" on the menu above. This section might get updated during the exhibition, please check the version number you are reading. Finally, if you have further questions concerning a particular work or the general project, please click on "MEDIATION", send me a message and I will answer as soon as I can.

mybiennialisbetterthanyours.com have been produced in the framework of THANKS FOR THE ADD, the ultimate project of ECOLE DU MAGASIN/SESSION 18 taking place in LIVING TOGETHER a section of THE SPECTACLE OF THE EVERYDAY, the XTH BIENNALE DE LYON curated by Hou Hanru.

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References:

01: WILLIAM GIBSON, THE NET IS A WASTE OF TIME, THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, JULY 1996.
02: HAL FOSTER, THE ARCHIVE WITHOUT MUSEUMS, OCTOBER, VOL. 77, SUMMER, 1996, P.108-109.
03: MICHEL FOUCAULT, THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE, HARPER BOOKS, 1976, P. 129.
04: ANDRE MALRAUX, VOICES OF SILENCE, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1978.
05: HAL FOSTER, DESIGN & CRIME (AND OTHER DIATRIBES), BROW BEATEN, VERSO BOOKS, OCTOBER 2003, P.11-12.
06: WILLIAM GIBSON, GOD'S LITTLE TOYS, WIRED, 13.07, JULY 2005.
07: JON AMAN, PADIGLIONE INTERNET, SOME SIMPLE STARTING POINTS, 53. BIENNALE DI VENEZIA, 2009.
08: MICHEL DE CERTEAU, THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 1984, P.31.
09: MICHEL DE CERTEAU, THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 1984, P.66.
10: CURT CLONINGER, COMMODIFY YOUR CONSUMPTION: TACTICAL SURFING / WAKES OF RESISTANCE, BLACK MOUNTAIN, FEBRUARY, 2009.
11: MICHEL DE CERTEAU, THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 1984, P.34.