Electronic Village Galleries is an experimental platform that supports arts communities to host new media arts events in their local village halls. Collections of internationally recognised art works have been specially devised for the platform by a diverse range of curators all working within new media art contexts. Artists based in Cornwall will programme events based on the collections at three venues - Penryn, Zennor and Liskeard - during April and May 2011.

Artists and curators have long been interested in finding ways that local communities in local places can actively engage with international artworks and the ideas informing them. In 1968 the writer, activist and curator Lucy Lippard was in Argentina trying to organise an exhibition of dematerialised art in which all the exhibits fitted into a suitcase: the idea being that suitcase would be taken from country to country by ‘idea artists’ using free airline tickets. In some ways Lippard’s version of portable art that can be accessed in diverse geographical locations easily and relatively cheaply has been superseded by the online distribution and exchange of network art through social platforms.

Since the 1990s distributed networks such as the internet have been used as creative spaces for art making. Frustrated with the centralised and hierarchical organisational structures of established art institutions, artists quickly realised that the internet was conducive to the development of distributed models of cultural production, dissemination and consumption. The internet enables open, many-to-many exchanges in which all work ‘posted’ is accessible to other users of the network. Network artists have pioneered models of participation and online community exchange that are now an integral part of much contemporary culture.

Valuable as these online exchanges undoubtedly are, perhaps something of the specificity of the local is being lost in the process. Can another version of Lippard’s concept of portable exhibitions and events be imagined and realised: one in which artworks are distributed globally and enacted locally? What does it mean if an artwork is distributed? What does it mean if it is ‘enacted’ locally? What form does the work take and which aspects of it are portable?

Extending the notion of online platforms to take account of the specificity of the local, The Electronic Village Galleries is a pilot research project undertaken by Kate Southworth and funded by Arts Council England. It aims to develop a distributed platform that links together local art communities within Cornwall and South West England with networked and new media art and its communities.

Kate Southworth, Introduction to Electronic Village Galleries Modular Catalogue, 2011

Collections

Democracy 2.0 curated by Kurator

Artworks:
Oliver Ressler, 2009: What is Democracy?
UBERMORGEN.COM 2000-2006 [V]oteauction
Les Liens Invisibles, 2010: Repetitionr.com

Free Yourself? curated by Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett (Furtherfield.org)

Artworks:
Roby Myers, 2011: Urinal
Moddr, 2009: Web 2.0 Suicide Machine
Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev 2011: Newstweek
Karen Blissett, 2010: Being Multiple

Time Landscapes curated by Beryl Graham

Artworks:
Susan Collins, 2008-9: Harewood
Ecoarttech, 2009: Eclipse
Rachel Reupke, 2003: Pico Mirador
Thomson & Craighead, 2005: Weatherguage

Three Radios curated by Patrick Simons

Artworks:
Soundart Radio
Abelian Live Natural Radio Streams
Resonance104.fm

DVblog curated by Michael Szpakowski and Doron Golan

Artworks:
Martha Deed, 2011: Snow Haiku
Millie Niss, 2009: Skyway
Robert Croma 2009: Night improptu
Jim Punk, 2010: Tr1p [I don’t have the necessary symbol keys on my keyboard to title this work correctly. Sincere apologies]
Sam Renseiw, 2008: Moves and Shadows
Donna Kuhn, 2010: Please don’t look like a pear
Morrisa Maltz, 2010: Girl Space
Eddie Whelan, 2010: Whats Ahead
Rupert Howe, 2007: Anarchy in the UK
Giles Perkins, 2006: British Beach Hut Miscellany
Nathaniel Stern, 2001-2004: itown - from the odys series
Liz Sterry, 2010: Borders
Alan Sondheim, 2009: Sondheim in Second Life
Steven Ball, 2006: Snow Factory
Kerry Baldry, 2010: Applause