Connecting The Public Domain to the Artworld

Art-Domains, by Peter Luining, is a project that brings internet domain trade to an art context, thus penetrating the space of the white cube with one of the most lucrative virtual money making businesses, that of selling domainnames. For this particular project Peter Luining did over one year of research and became a domain broker himself. He bought and sold domain names to get the knowledge of how this trade works and also to get the best art related names available. Over the last year Luining aquired domain names like clementgreenberg.com, artcriticism.org, marcelduchamp.info, whitecube.us, etc. The Art-Domains stand Luining will present at Art Frankfurt will connect virtual to real space and the public domain of trade to the artworld. At the moment Luining owns about 200 art related domain names that will be offered for the first time for sale at Art Frankfurt. Starting April 29th, art names will be offered for auction at eBay.

For his presentation of Art-Domains Luining uses Mel Bochner’s “Working Drawings And Other Visible Things On Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed As Art.” (1966) as a basis. Bochner’s presentation used photocopies and contained ephemeri of “non- art” sources, which were put in identical ring binders and displayed on standard white plinths. Whereas Bochner used new materials to display the creative process over it’s results, Luining uses Bochner’s classical presentation method (use of standard office techniques i.e. laser prints of webpages) to connect virtual selling strategies with the institutional artworld in a low tech manner.