The complete documentation of Kunstradio’s Art’s Birthday 2007 and 100 years of Radio is now available online. Lectures, performances, streamings and audiovisual birthday gifts can be viewed and listened to on http://kunstradio.at/PROJECTS/AB/artsbirthday.php.

Art’s Birthday is an annual exchange-art event celebrated on January 17th by a loose collection of artists and artist organizations around the world. It was first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou.


Filliou suggested that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born. According to Filliou, it happened when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Filliou proposed a public holiday to celebrate the presence of art in our lives. In recent years, the idea has been taken up by a loose network of artists and friends around the world. Each year the Eternal Network evolves to include new partners - working with the ideas of exchange and telecommunications-art.

Artists have celebrated Art’s Birthday with lavish parties and gatherings, correspondence and mailart, and through Telematic networks using SloScan TV, Videophones, music composed for telephone lines, modem-to-modem MIDI connections, early bulletin board and chat systems, and (starting in the mid 1990’s) the Internet.

The website includes links to many of the participants from recent years, and an incomplete chronology of past events.