黑料不打烊

Back in spring 2020, the HeK cooperated with Chronus Art Center and other international partners to jointly develop the online exhibition We=Link: Ten Easy Pieces. We=Link has since become a new platform for presenting art online. With We=Link: Sideways, a further exhibition with a focus on net-based art is launched. The exhibition examines the most current forms of online art and at the same time shows its historical, intellectual and artistic roots. The HeK is represented with two works from its collection - Minds of Concern (2002) by the artists' group Knowbotic Research and TraceNoizer - Disinformation on Demand (2001) by the artists' group LAN. Both historical works demonstrate how the internet has changed and how artists have always been critical of its structures.

This exhibition takes the purported net art鈥檚 鈥渄ead end鈥� as a new starting point to chart a discursive trajectory of the practices since then, in the many manifestations of network-based art. Instead of prescribing it a categorical definition, the exhibition attempts to uncover the variegated developments, diverse strategies, critical positions and aesthetic experiments after the crash of the dot.com bubble, amidst the prevalence of neoliberalism and cognitive capitalism, and the rise of populism and nationalism. Sideways reveals the continuum of the Avant-garde 鈥渘ettitudes鈥� inherent in the works of these net artists.