2022-2023
alternative archive, net-art work
with artist Mark Fridvalszki
HOME PAGE is an alternative archive, based on the net-art collection of C3 Foundation, Hungary. It aims to promote a free and utopic vision for the internet that originates in early net-art works.
Access Home Page here: www.homepage.c3.hu
Introductory video: https://youtu.be/QRMaDh0kXZ8?si=lLYt-L0djxycF6e2
In the second half of the 1990s, websites offered an experimental platform for artistic experimentation. Structure and design principles were not written in stone yet and therefore the artistic freedom to shape the internet motivated many creators to produce exciting and unique work. Writing Html was accessible, DIY and it had a promise to become something bigger. Resident artists and collaborators of the C3 Foundation often chose this medium, most of the net art collection of the foundation originates from the mid-nineties.
C3 Foundation has a small but significant net-art collection. Some of them are up-to-date, some of them have parts that are not functional. Some of the early websites were created with different intentions and were not recognised as artworks, however, we believe that they help us understand the context of early web design. The websites that were made for artistic purposes had various agendas. Some acted as platforms for documentation or reflection, others aimed to communicate differently with the world but some were also a platform for voicing concerns for the increasingly computerised world. Their warnings weren’t uncalled for. As it developed, the internet became more and more schematic and a lot more commercial.
Looking at the collection nowadays, with the web becoming more and more advanced, many platforms and solutions are regarded as outdated. A lot of the websites, or parts of them aren’t even available to explore anymore. However, there is artistic value to be preserved in these early works, especially as a backdrop to the accelerating digital content production nowadays.
Therefore, the aim of this project is the systematic re-visiting of net-based works from the initial stages of internet art in Hungary and around (1993-2001). Artist Mark Fridvalszki and curator Anna Tudos developed a new net-art piece, Home Page to document their artistic research processes. Their work is also a reflection on the impossibility of such artworks in collections to go through a conservation process, as the questions around the restoration of net art are endless and resources are scarce. This site operates on similar principles as the early net art works, expropriates their characteristics, and proposes a time travel to their origins through its maze of information. This way, the essence, the element of freedom in early net art, and the power of graphic design in a utopian moment, at the dawn of the internet, is preserved. Juxtaposing existing net-based artworks with writings by Ferenc Kömlődi (Cathedral of Light, 1999), the website offers a place for contemplation and a deeper understanding of the Zeitgeist and logic of these artworks.
This project was developed in the framework of NEW MEDIA MUSEUMS: Creating Framework for Preserving and Collecting Media Arts in V4 2021-2022
http://cead.space/Detail/projects/3797
Home Page was presented in Budapest at FKSE (Studio of Young Artists’ Association) in the framework of a screening and roundtable discussion on the 15th of June 2023.
Discussion participants included: art historian Flóra Barkóczi, Miklós Peternák, director of C3 Foundation, visual artist Márk Fridvalszki and curator Anna Tüdős
Home Page was also presented in the framework of the exhibition ‘Home Page – Why you should care about early net art from Hungary‘ at /rosa gallery, in collaboration with the Zentrum für Netzkunst in Berlin in April 2023.
https://netzkunst.berlin/rosa/
