| Collection Title: | Documenta:done |
| Identification/URL: | http://ljudmila.org/~vuk/dx/ |
| Creator: | Vuk Ćosić |
| Abstract: | Vuk Ćosić created a stir in the art world and Net communities in 1997 when he created an identical copy of Documenta X’s web site that was to go offline once the exhibition closed. The artistic director of Documenta X, Catherine David, invited Simon Lamuniére, curator of new media at Switzerland’s St. Gervais Genéve Museum, to curate a Web site that would accompany the physical exhibition of Documenta X, hoping to enhance Documenta’s reputation as a showcase for the most daring and innovative artists. The Documenta site–featuring sleek graphic interfaces in a bold red, white, and black color scheme-can now be found at the above address. |
| Acquisition Information: | Courtesy of Vuk Ćosić |
| Conditions Governing Access: | Freely available online |
| Biographical/Historical Information: | Vuk Ćosić, cosmopolitan retired artist with Balkan roots, is one of the pioneers of net.art and a “hacker of ideas”, totally incapable of showing reverence towards the formalities of the art world. For a particular group of artists working in the mid-90s, the possibilities opened up by internet access were just as exciting as the emergence of performance or video art had been to artists working in the 60s. Virtually overnight, they had access to a new medium that could give shape to the weirdest ideas, and the evolution of net.art kept pace with that of the Internet itself. Vuk was one of the motors behind this scene, and the author of such subtle conceptual surgical operations as the theft of the Documenta X web site, a “History of Art for Airports” and the “ASCII Art Ensemble” (which aimed to transform the world into the letters and numbers of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, beginning with “Deep Throat” and other historical fetishes). |
| Subjects: | net.art, archive, appropriation, access |