YOU OWN ME NOW UNTIL YOU FORGET ABOUT ME. with works by Mary-Anne Breeze (mez), Codemanipulator(R), Christina Goestl and clitoressa.net, Karl Heinz Jeron and Valie Djordjevic, carlos katastrofsky, Joerg Piringer, Marek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg :: October 17 - November 10, 2008 :: Opening Reception: October 16, 2008; 7:00 pm :: Galerija Miklova hisa, Skrabcev trg 21, 1310 Ribnica, Slovenia.

“Speech and the ability for meta-reflection on one’s own language are inherent characteristics of human beings. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, language — whether written, spoken, or performed — has become more and more a part of the visual arts in various artistic practices and theoretical approaches, ultimately becoming a constitutive element and the “source” code of digital art. All the projects presented in the exhibition YOU OWN ME NOW UNTIL YOU FORGET ABOUT ME. were originally Internet-based artworks. But the main thing they have in common is that they take as their starting point an exploration of language, with its arbitrary structures and rules, its various functions within society, its absurdities and constraints on the individual. Open processes are inherent to digital artworks, both in their production and in the mnemonic activities that emerge in their reception. Rather than focusing on the isolated — literary / literal — artwork, the exhibition highlights general artistic tendencies toward a discursive process that originates on the Internet and finds its way back to the “virtualities of real life”. [...]

The “open work” (5) manifests itself through mediation and is created individually with each new reception of it. But what happens when the user closes the data file, when the speaking person stops talking? “In the end there is nothing of an object here, just a process, a set of rules that leads you to the point of questioning unicity, ownership, and the object-like nature of digital art works and what you can own is nothing more than the memory of it. (6)“” — Birgit Rinagl, Franz Thalmair / CONT3XT.NET, Curators.