2003

This text from 1999 had been written to conceptually define the Plug-In philosophy in link with the haus.0 program in Künstlerhaus. The philosophy continues as it transforms within the configuration of haussite as the new virtual staging and environment of haus.0

1999


Audio, Video and Print libraries

These libraries, as the media 'plug-ins' of haus.0, are each ordered in terms of certain shifts, which aim to reference a fundamental change in the 1980s and 1990s concerning media. Defining each particular media outside of formal medium and in terms of wider social perspective allows for links in terms of artistic practice now. Materials are not collected after thematic categories along the lines of traditional libraries. Specific to each kind of media, participants are asked to suggest organisational outlines for sections in libraries that connect within their projects, as the emphasis is around a set of key overlaps and interlinks focused down to a condensed section. Serving as compass points these sections assist in orienting to the nature of the new program concepts. As well, they address the existing scale and continuity issues of the artist space operating system. One specific perspective on supplying resource and inquiry is addressed through how haus.0 library frameworks draw lines out from the earlier Künstlerhaus operating definitions of the role of media. The character of this is evident by the more inclusive definition of cultural productions, i.e documentary, political, aesthetic inquiry, entertainment, as well as contributing structurally, a parallel to Künstlerhaus early proposal for the first video library in the region.

Computer

The project haus.0 works with the logic of a web browser. The analogy serves to reference anew a fundamental link between culture and identity, while creating a new relation between the changing notions of artistic practice and an art space in transition. haus.0 is planned as an ongoing, independent format, that now works with the given conditions of the 20-year old art space, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. Linking the program of the artistic director to the institution, it creates the possibility to define the space in different terms and expressions. This reflects the emphasis on an open ongoing search in an artist's institution. The necesssity of changing inquiries is woven with the foundation.

The browser consciously integrates the art institution space as the interface for navigation and orientation, stressing the unpredictable, polymorphous identity represented in the web browser's language of links, while concentrating on different search patterns. The browser represents the constant interplay between new frontiers. The space created by that introduces a definition of two existing systems: computer and net. The browser like all innovations works with a situation of transformation by offering a flexible interface between, suggesting any number of possible actions. The character of the browser created through the hypertext logic is an assemblage of interlinked texts present via the monitor as a projection created by electronic signals. haus.0 suggests it can be read as a transforming collection of different layers bridging from mechanical diagrams to the comicstrip, recalling collected memories of pasts and futures creating the frameworks for new contemporary social political narratives.

haus.0 provides on its computer website a selection of periodically updated links including writings which the program often translates into German if required. Each project has a specific webpage, and may include links that develop with the involved participants. The process is continuously shifting further to the web, where projects originate and link up to also develop from there in regard to the actual site of Künstlerhaus/haus.0, as new spatial configurations.



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