selected press
TRANSCRIPT
Constant Dullaart
Selected Press
Dan Duray, ‘New project boots instagram followers for art world accounts’, Art News, 9 October 2014
same level to stimulate a utopian image of a shared responsibility for equality within aconscious user group, as a mere reminder of painful racial, financial and other socialinequalities so much harder to destroy.”
Dullaart purchased 2.5 million fake followers from a site he described as“buysocialmedia.com,” through eBay, haggling over the price but eventually paying$5,000 for them, $2,000 over the original commission sum. Then began the difficultprocess of deciding which accounts to “equalize.” There were certain accounts he wouldhave loved to bring to 100,000 followers, but it would have been too expensive to do so.Hans Ulrich Obrist, as it happened, was already fairly close to 100,000, which meant hehardly needed it but, Dullaart said, “If I hadn’t included Hans Ulrich Obrist, there wouldbe this single art kingpin who wouldn’t be included in this equalization.” And Jeff Koonshad relatively few followers, but could he leave out Jeff Koons?
The process will continue for the next few weeks. Asked if he was worried about discussinghis project publicly, and thus alerting the authorities at Facebook (which owns Instagram),Dullaart said he didn’t mind if he was somehow shut down. “This is a symbolic gesture,”he said. “It exists within this realm of the poetic gesture.”
For his next project he hopes to clone himself via Instagram followers, by trying to find away to incorporate his own photos into the kinds of bots he’s hired for this current project
Rachel Falconer, 'Jenifa Taught Me', Furtherfield, July 2014
'Bodies that Glitch: Constant Dullaart at Carroll / Fletcher ', The Photographers’ Gallery Blog, 19 July 2014
Paul Carey-Kent, ‘Stringendo, Vanishing Mediators’, Photomonitor, 8 July 2014
Jeppe Ugelvig, ‘Constant Dullaart at Carroll / Fletcher’, DIS, July 2014
Gordon Comstock, ‘Jennifer in paradise: the story of the first -Photoshopped image’, The Guardian, June 2014
Gareth Harris, ‘Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition – absurdity or great art adventure?’, Financial Times, 13 June 2014
O
June 13, 2014 7:05 pm
Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition – absurdity or great artadventure?By Gareth Harris
A wildly ambitious site-specific show on an island off the coast of Costa Rica gathers works by 39contemporary practitioners
nce upon a time, on a lush island off the coast of Costa Rica, a young art curator decided to brave the choppy seas riddled withwhitetip reef sharks and bury treasure in a secret spot. This glittering hoard does not consist of gold and silver but an asset even
more highly prized by some: contemporary artworks by leading artists.
This is no fairytale. Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition is a wildly ambitious site-specific show based on the Isla del Coco in themiddle of the Pacific Ocean. Works by 39 contemporary practitioners, including Marina Abramovic, Olafur Eliasson, Pierre Huyghe, EdRuscha and Angela Bulloch, are concealed in a secret spot on the tropical site: works on paper, sculpture, vinyl LPs, and digital and audiofiles are encased in a compact 80cm-wide, vacuum-sealed steel container designed by New York-based architects Aranda/Lasch.
There are already treasure legends linked to the island, including the saga of the British trader CaptainWilliam Thompson, who supposedly buried ingots, coins and a gold statue of the Virgin Mary on Cocos around 1820. The fabled stash isknown as the Treasure of Lima. Today’s island intervention is spearheaded by Nadim Samman, the curator at Vienna’s TBA21-Academy,an offshoot of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary foundation founded in 2002 by art patron Francesca von Habsburg.
This archduchess is known for pioneering “experimental art programmes”, and this so-called “fellowship organisation”, described as an“itinerant site of cultural production and interdisciplinary exchange”, brings together artists, scientists and thinkers. And on board a 129ftship called Dardanella, Academy fellows can experience “a critical platform for redefining the expedition in the postcolonial era”, says apress statement.
Samman’s account of how they found the burial spot on the Isla del Coco, and the hazards faced,makes an engrossing yarn. “We discovered that a vessel can only be anchored in two of the island’sbays. Following certain paths off these bays meant the island rangers would have a good idea aboutthe location of our buried exhibition. How could we trust them, or even each other, not to reveal thelocation?” Samman asks earnestly.
According to legend, pirates usually killed their companions at the burial site to prevent the secretspilling out. Out of the question, perhaps, “though we did attempt to have our agreement with the[island] national park include a clause in which we would blindfold their appointed biological
©Alex Gruber
The TBA21Academy expedition to Isla del Coco
(Julian Charrier)
First mate of the Dardanella Jacob MacDonald
prepares part of the chest by Aranda/Lasch (Julian
Charrier)
The chest floated ashore (Julian Charrier)
observer,” Samman adds.
Surreptitiousness was everything: the artists must not, for instance, reveal details of their works. “Inorder to maintain secrecy we decided to land our ‘exhibition’ on a wild bit of coast far from humansettlement. This meant floating all the elements of our chest to shore while negotiating some ratherserious swell,” he says.
Samman stresses that “all the artists really embraced theperverse rhetoric of this initiative”. Perverse indeed if theworks are never found or seen again. But fear not: the GPScoordinates of the exhibition location have been logged anddigitally encrypted. These data have been given a 3D “physicalform” by Dutch artist Constant Dullaart, and transformed intoa scroll-like steel cylinder. The physical “map” will be encasedin a second edition of the treasure chest, and consigned toauction later this year. The buyer has to crack the digitalencryption to access the capsule. And the sale proceeds will beearmarked for a sustainable marine protection research projectdevised by TBA21-Academy in collaboration with La FundaciónAmigos de la Isla del Coco, a local conservation group.
But buying the encrypted coordinates will not even guarantee access to the island or the chest –digging for treasure is banned on the island – so it remains to be seen whether contemporary artcollectors will bid on a seemingly unobtainable collection. “This is an art world cocktail with all theright ingredients: a singular collector [Von Habsburg] with jet-set connections and a group of artmarket stars that make spectacular, entertaining art,” says Belgian collector Alain Servais.
For some, a hole in the ground is the best place for prime contemporary works. Bendor Grosvenor,director at the London-based Old Masters dealer Philip Mould, says: “An exhibition of works hardly anyone will ever see, which might aswell not exist, but which, nonetheless, will fetch ‘record’ sums at auction: what better symbol of the more absurd end of the contemporaryart market could there be?”
Such reactions are testament to the project’s potency. Yet Samman, who declined to give project costs, argues that the island endeavourhighlights 21st-century cultural and economic issues.
“It plays with market-defined practices of ownership, it raises questions about the politics ofaccess to art and unspoilt natural sites, and also prompts a debate about collecting.”
German artist Carsten Nicolai, who was part of the 14-strong expedition team, deposited a “hugecollection of messages” in the container. He was overwhelmed by the experience. “It made merealise we should never forget our dreams and imagination . . . it was a real adventure in a classicsense,” he says.
The value of art now, and how we decide what is “precious”, comes under scrutiny through thisbizarre but brilliant art adventure: a fitting fable for today.
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tba21academy.org/projects/treasure-of-lima/
©Julian Charrier
©Julian Charrier
©Julian Charrier
Nadim Samman, ‘Art’s own treasure island: the ‘buried exhibition’ that may never be found’, Guardian, 26 May 2014
The artworks are launched from the Dardanella on a raft and guided by divers to shore – through waters teeming withsharks. Photograph: Julian Charriere
How do you get some of the world's greatest artists to participate in an exhibition? Tellthem you will do everything in your power to make sure no one ever visits the show. Ifyou want them to contribute especially thoughtful works, swear to bury their offeringsunder mossy stones. And if you want a patron to back the project, explain that, insteadof launching the event with champagne and canapes, they might find themselvesstanding kneedeep in mud with a shovel.
Two days' hard sail from the sweltering Costa Rican port of Golfito, Isla del Coco juts upabruptly from the Pacific deep. There is no way to fly in. The island covers just nine ofthe ocean's 64 million square miles, but the shallower waters around it are an importantoasis – shelter and spawning ground for corals, a cornucopia of fish species, and legions
Art's own treasure island: the 'buriedexhibition' that may never be foundCircled by sharks and forbidden to humans, Isla del Coco is one
of the most isolated parts of the planet. Why did the likes of
Marina Abramovic and Ed Ruscha want their art buried there?
Nadim SammanThe Guardian, Monday 26 May 2014
of predators. At any given moment, the island is circled by hundred-strong schools ofhammerheads and a resident population of tiger sharks. It is here, far from the artworld's madding crowd, that I – along with a motley crew led by the Swissphilanthropist Francesca von Habsburg – find myself swimming desperately for land,while the vessel that has brought us, the Dardanella, bobs safely offshore.
As we are taken rather too close to rocks by the churning waves, I wonder how manypirates landed on Coco this way. Perhaps the only place in the world where treasure-hunting is explicitly illegal, the island's jungle interior guards some enticing loot. Storiesabout what is buried here abound. The best known is that of the Treasure of Lima. In1820, with the army of José de San Martín approaching, Peru's viceroy José de la Sernaentrusted the gold from the city's cathedral to a British sea trader named CaptainWilliam Thompson. Instead of remaining in the harbour as instructed, Thompson andhis men slit the throats of the viceroy's men and sailed to Coco. They were laterapprehended and all of the crew bar the captain and his first mate were hanged. Thelucky two were spared only after promising to guide their captors to the hoard – whichincluded a solid gold statue of the Virgin Mary, ingots and coins worth many millionstoday. After arriving on Coco, the pair ran off into the trees, never to be found. Severaltreasure-hunting expeditions would later be mounted on the basis of claims by a mannamed Keating, who was said to have befriended Thompson on his deathbed inNewfoundland. Robert Louis Stevenson read about one such expedition in a SanFrancisco newspaper before writing Treasure Island, and some argue that the map hedrew of his "fictional" isle closely resembles numerous treasure charts of Coco.
Our own expedition – called Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition – aims to contrastall these legends of buried riches with Isla del Coco's real status: as a natural treasureworthy of protection. Works by 39 artists, ranging from Ed Ruscha to MarinaAbramovic and Chicks on Speed, will be interred at a secret location. Then a map thatmay or may not make it possible to find them will be auctioned in aid of sharkconservation. This kind of scheme does not usually get commissioned by culturalorganisations, but ours, TBA21 Academy, has a unique remit – to bring artists andscientists together at sea, to engage with ecological issues, while steering clear ofpicturesque cliches and documentary exposés.
Earlier, my team-mates and I were, literally, thrown in at the deep end – swimming faceto face with the sharks to make sure we understood the ecological aspect of ourendeavour. After a few dives, even the most nervous among us had to concedeadmiration for these magnificent creatures. Now, nearing the shore, we grasp ropesonce we can stand and begin to heave ashore a makeshift raft laden with artworks.When a wave picks it up, we have to pull left quickly, to avoid a crash into cliff face.
The steel chest filledwith more than 30 artworks that has been hidden on Isla del Coco. Photograph: AlexGruber/Aranda/LaschEvery exhibition has its own method of display: ours is a container designed by NewYork architects Aranda/Lasch that looks nothing like wooden treasure chests of old. Itsexterior is polished stainless steel, a truncated tetrahedron that opens to reveal a sphere.This oversized "pearl" is a vacuum-sealed glass vessel that would normally be used toprotect underwater cameras. Instead, ours houses a series of aluminium boxescontaining works on paper, small sculptures, LPs, video and sound files stored on a harddrive (that is as much detail as I can give, as this mystery is part of the concept). Thewhole ensemble looks like a kind of nuclear bomb. As the float carrying it tilts violently,I am worried that it will go off – the raft, that is – and sink to the bottom before we canbury it as planned.
Eventually, we get everything ashore and begin the hike, careful not to place our feet onmossy stones or in the ankle-snapping gaps between, lugging the dead weight past nestsof brown boobys and their excrement. The chest glints like a mirror. It takes more thanan hour before we can deposit everything at the bottom of a wall of basalt. When I lookat our 14-strong team, now catching their breath before the final push, I can't quitebelieve we only received legal permission to go ahead two days ago – when we hadalready set sail.
I watch as the American artist Andrew Ranville climbs the damp rockface before settingup a ropeladder and another line. Piece by piece, the exhibition is hoisted up the cliffand then, finally, we reach our chosen spot. In a muddy grotto fringed by ferns, all theelements are assembled and the chest is locked. It is time to dig. Once buried, will theworks ever be recovered?
Later, the GPS coordinates of our treasure will be digitally encrypted by the Dutch artistConstant Dullaart. The resulting string of code will then be given a physical form (a 3D-printed steel block) and placed in a second, unburied, version of our treasure chest. The
eventual buyer will get this "map" but not the key to decrypt it, while the money raisedwill go to a shark research and conservation project devised by TBA21 Academy incollaboration with La Fundación Amigos de la Isla del Coco (Friends of Isla del Coco)and Misión Tiburón (Shark Mission).
Curator NadimSamman (right) putting the Treasure of Lima artwork treasure chest in its hiding place.Photograph: Julian CharriereWhoever buys the encrypted map may have a better chance than most of reaching theexhibition, but the map does not guarantee possession – legally or practically. By addinga new treasure to Isla del Coco, we are both highlighting and challenging the regulationsby which Costa Rica restricts access to this ecologically sensitive area. For the map-holder or any other treasure-seeker to experience the exhibition at first hand, theprotection laws would have to be abolished (or not enforced). The recovery of thetreasure would thus mean the loss of valuable environmental safeguards. This leaves thebuyer with a moral quandary. They will have legally acquired some of the means bywhich to recover an amazing art collection;; but in order to claim it, they may have tobreak the law. Which treasure matters more to them: the island or the art?
I thrust a shovel into the mud. Soon we're piling on rocks, digging them out of the soilwith our bare hands, pulling them from under tree roots, kicking them down fromhigher ground, picking them up and laying them on. More slop and even bigger stones.It is buried. Francesca produces a plastic water bottle filled with rum and we all takelarge swigs. For the moment, there is nothing left to do but slip into a nearby pool andfinish it off.
• More details: tba21academy.org
Johnny Magdaleno, ‘See The World’s First Photoshopped Photograph In Constant Dullaart’s Newest Exhibition’, The Creators Project, 2 May 2014
Louisa Elderton, ‘Constant Dullaart: Future Gallery & IMPORT Projects’, Frieze, 17 November 2013
Constant Dullaart
Future Gallery & IMPORT Projects
The Dutch artist Constant Dullaart considers contemporarymodes of ac cessing information, exploring the dynamics ofreality as perceived through the transparent computerscreen. Curated and installed across two Berlin spaces,Future Gallery and IMPORT Projects, along with onlinecomponents, Dullaart’s most recent project, ‘Jennifer inParadise’, explored the Internet’s opacity, highlighting theextent to which onscreen data is manipulated and controlled,enhanced or deformed.
The web’s potential to demarcate a wholly democratic,transparent space in which people freely operate is, arguably,naively Utopian. It’s a timely subject, given the ongoingEdward Snowden case. Counter to its promise of being acompletely open platform, the Internet is not onlymonitored, it’s an arena in which information is filtered,distorted and, most cleverly and deceptively, presented asunmediated content.
The show at Future was underpinned by Jennifer in Paradise(all works 2013), a low-resolution print of a woman recliningon a beach in Bora Bora. Another iteration of the image wasemblazoned across the span of the wall at IMPORT,containing an encoded message within its giant pixels.Originally taken in 1987 by John Knoll, the co-creator ofPhotoshop, this photograph was the demonstration image forthe programme’s users to explore and test the software. Itbecame ubiquitous, widely distributed and repeatedlymanipulated by the public. Surprisingly, though, the image isnow almost extinct, nearly nowhere to be found online, asidefrom low-res traces. Restoring the image here, Dullaart actedas archivist, illuminating the genesis of image-doctoringwhile nostalgically suggesting a time when photography’sauthenticity was still conceivable. A letter to ‘Jennifer’ fromthe artist – which Dullaart posted on Rhizome.org, thentweeted to the muse herself – almost reads like a love letter,if not to Jennifer herself then perhaps to a past space inwhich reality was less malleable: ‘Sometimes, when I amanxious about the future of our surveilled, computer-mediated world […] I imagine myself travelling back in time[…] And just sit there with you, watching the tide roll away.’
In both exhibitions, Dullaart explored the relationshipbetween virtual reality and its symbiotic link to our physical,material being. At Future, YouTube as a Sculpture
About this review
Published on 17/11/13By Louisa Elderton
Constant Dullaart, The Death of theURL, 2013, installation view atIMPORT Projects
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(moulding) is a monochromatic, 3D version of the Mac’srainbow spinning pinwheel. Almost indistinguishable fromthe gallery’s own decorative features, the work playfullyreinterprets this familiar icon;; now physically manifest, wecontinue to wait and watch the form, which still wastes timeand leads to nowhere.
A new body of glass works appeared in both venues, thematerial a recurring metaphor for our computers’ myriadwindows (Windows software, the screen’s glass, the Internetas a window to the world). A UV print on glass, Untitled(Lascaux Cows), comprised layers of graffiti-like marks thatpartially reveal cave paintings in Lascaux. Posing questionsabout the filtering of information via the Internet and itspotential to obscure rather than reveal meaning, the imageryfor the piece derives from Dullaart’s 2012 online workhttp://untitledinternet.com/, in which the viewer is directedto Google, only for the subsequent pages to be obscured withrandom mottled brushstrokes that shield the information.Printed onto glass, the images become artefacts: digital filtersobjectified.
Works such as those from the group ‘Thomas Knoll, series’(2013) were both sculptural and painterly, employing thick,variously patterned glass frames that visually distortedappropriated photographs by John Knoll’s brother andPhotoshop co-creator. Colourful images of snow monkeysand soaring bald eagles are perceived through deceptivelydotted or swirled walls of glass. Even the creators ofPhotoshop fall victim to eventual misrepresentation – thepoliticized effects of their own innovation.
In the context of Dullaart’s broader practice, the glass piecesfelt less dynamic and affecting than his performative onlineplatforms or video installations, which employ cannily subtlereferences to non-transparency. One such work is the dual-screen projection of a triple-X domain functioning in realtime, The Death of the URL, which hung centrally in ImportProject’s space. Exploring the rise of the keyword search andsubsequent demise of the URL, a generative algorithm findsand lists browser data histories, as codes of http://xxxxxx (…and so on) continually appear. Here, the URL is powerfullypresented as a sentimental cipher, suggesting a freer Internetfrom the past, where software companies were less involvedin mediating our search habits.
Dullaart’s combined exhibition and online project illuminatesour virtual landscape, whose construction moulds an illusorysense of freedom. These windows are, in fact, semi-permeable. Are we aware enough? With more people lookingat screens on a daily basis than at paintings or out ofwindows onto the physical world, ‘Jennifer in Paradise’encouraged a timely assessment of the material impact ofvirtual control mechanisms.
Louisa Elderton
Constant Dullaart, ‘A Letter to Jennifer Knoll’, Rhizome, 5 September 2014
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A Letter to Jennifer KnollCONSTANT DULLAART | Thu Sep 5th, 2013 9:30 a.m.
Constant Dullaart, Jennifer_in_Paradise (2013). Restored digital image re-distributed online with stenographically encrypted message.
Dear Jennifer,
Sometime in 1987, you were sitting on a beach in Bora Bora, looking at To'opua island, enjoying aholiday with a very serious boyfriend. The serious boyfriend, John, took a photograph of you sittingon the beach, not wearing your bikini top. John later became your husband and father to yourchildren Sarah, Lisa, Alex and Jane.
This photograph of a beautiful moment in your personal history has also become a part of myhistory, and that of many other people;; it has even shaped our outlooks on the world at large.John's image of you became the first image to be publicly altered by the most influential imagemanipulation program ever. Of course, this is why I know the names of your children, and this isalso why I know about the cool things you do trying to get a .green top level domain name topromote environmental sustainability. (Although, personally, I believe that the importance of thedomain name has been reduced to a nostalgic, poetic value).
I still wonder if you felt the world change there on that beach. The fact that reality would be moremoldable, that normal people could change their history, brighten up their past, and put twirleffects on their faces? That holiday image was distributed with the first demo editions of Photoshop,and your intimate beach moment became the reality for many people to play with. Two Jennifers,no Jennifer, less clouds, etc. In essence, it was the very first photoshop meme—but now the imageis nowhere to be found online.
Did John ask you if he could use the image? Did you enjoy seeing yourself on the screen as much
as he did? Did you think you would be the muse that would inspire so much contemporary imagemaking? Did you ever print out the image? Would you be willing to share it with me, and so, theother people for whom it took on such an unexpected significance? Shouldn’t the Smithsonian havethe negative of that image, not to mention digital backups of its endless variations?
All these questions have made me decide to redistribute the image ‘jennifer in paradise’ as well as Ican, somewhat as an artist, somewhat as a digital archeologist, restoring what few traces of it Icould find. It was sad to realize this blurry screen grab was the closest I could get to the image, butbeautiful at the same time. How often do you find an important image that is not online in severaldifferent sizes already?
I have two exhibitions opening this coming Saturday in Berlin, Germany. Both of them arecalled Jennifer in Paradise. And you, or at least your depiction, play a central part in theseexhibitions. A faint, blurry, pixelated focal point. To celebrate the time that you were young, andthe world was young, as it still naïvely believed in the authenticity of the photograph.
Sometimes, when I am anxious about the future of our surveilled, computer-mediated world, whenI worry about cultural imperialism and the politics behind software design, I imagine myselftraveling back in time. just like the Terminator, to that important moment in technological worldhistory, there on the beach in Bora Bora. And just sit there with you, watching the tide roll away.
Sincerely,
Constant Dullaart
Nadja Sayej, ‘Constant Dullaart, URL Killer’, Motherboard, 8 May 2013
Domenico Quaranta, ‘Healing the Media’, Fabio Paris Art Gallery, May 2012
The Dutch artist Constant Dullaart maintains a small collection of web pages -- or "readymades," as he
calls them -- united by their common status as empty corners of the Internet. They are junkyards of
sponsored links, error messages, and domains for sale that no one wants to buy. Dullaart keeps the links to
these pages in one place with Delicious, a Website that lets registered users save bookmarks and tag them
with keywords for easy retrieval. (Dullart setsReadymades apart from the hundreds of links saved on hisaccount by tagging them "readymade.") Delicious is a tool designed to help its users bring order to their
online experience;; Dullaart'sReadymades represent a punk misappropriation of the site to track the chaosof the internet's misfired synapses.
Several of Dullaart's Readymades are "link dumps" -- domains registered with the purpose of aggregatingcheap ads rather than publishing useful content. Some of the services offered through the sponsored links
may be tenuously connected to the search terms brought the user there, or associated with the words in the
URL. For instance, www.baddomainname.com includes links to domain registration services and, less
explicably, to law firms, while the links at www.hopeless.org suggest suicide prevention counseling.
Dullaart's selections also include squatted domains, sites bought for later
resale. www.1nt3rn3t.com and www.theinternets.com have yet to find takers.
Found media are a favorite subject of Internet artists, who often evoke the anarchy of the Web by
sampling oddities from its less traveled paths. Many of Dullaart's peers seek out specimens of "dirt style,"
a term coined by artist Cory Arcangel to describe media that look naïve, crude, or messy. (An early
project in this vein involving the selection and display of entire sites was Alexei Shulgin'sWWWArtAwards, 1995-1997, which the Russian artist bestowed on "web pages that were created not as works ofart but gave us definite ‘art' feeling," i.e. amateur designs whose awkward juxtapositions yielded uncanny
effects.) Dullaart's Readymades, however, demonstrate his interest in what might be called "default" style- the bland tables of sans serif text and soulless stock photography that frame ads for some of the most
common search terms (auto insurance, cheap airline tickets, pornography), baring the underbelly of the
internet's popular use.
But Dullaart¹s Readymades are more than a formalist exploration of the Internet at its most banal. Theyare also a study in the relationship of the index to its referent, an issue that Rosalind Krauss connected to
the readymade in her 1976 essay "Notes on the Index, Part 1." Krauss defines indices as "the traces of a
particular cause, and that cause is the thing to which they refer, the object they signify." She offers
footprints and shadows as examples;; the domain name would be an analogy to such indices in the internet,
since it marks the online location of the site that appears in the browser window below. In Readymades,Dullaart has selected sites where the URL's content occupies the position of the referent, rather than
serving as a place marker. They are domains that someone has staked out as an empty lot, or that generate
a metonymic web of sponsored links. His Readymades are sites where footprints come before the feet.
Brian Droitcour, ‘Constant Dullaart Re-codes the Readymade’, Art in America, 4 March 2009
The Dutch artist Constant Dullaart maintains a small collection of web pages -- or "readymades," as he
calls them -- united by their common status as empty corners of the Internet. They are junkyards of
sponsored links, error messages, and domains for sale that no one wants to buy. Dullaart keeps the links to
these pages in one place with Delicious, a Website that lets registered users save bookmarks and tag them
with keywords for easy retrieval. (Dullart setsReadymades apart from the hundreds of links saved on hisaccount by tagging them "readymade.") Delicious is a tool designed to help its users bring order to their
online experience;; Dullaart'sReadymades represent a punk misappropriation of the site to track the chaosof the internet's misfired synapses.
Several of Dullaart's Readymades are "link dumps" -- domains registered with the purpose of aggregatingcheap ads rather than publishing useful content. Some of the services offered through the sponsored links
may be tenuously connected to the search terms brought the user there, or associated with the words in the
URL. For instance, www.baddomainname.com includes links to domain registration services and, less
explicably, to law firms, while the links at www.hopeless.org suggest suicide prevention counseling.
Dullaart's selections also include squatted domains, sites bought for later
resale. www.1nt3rn3t.com and www.theinternets.com have yet to find takers.
Found media are a favorite subject of Internet artists, who often evoke the anarchy of the Web by
sampling oddities from its less traveled paths. Many of Dullaart's peers seek out specimens of "dirt style,"
a term coined by artist Cory Arcangel to describe media that look naïve, crude, or messy. (An early
project in this vein involving the selection and display of entire sites was Alexei Shulgin'sWWWArtAwards, 1995-1997, which the Russian artist bestowed on "web pages that were created not as works ofart but gave us definite ‘art' feeling," i.e. amateur designs whose awkward juxtapositions yielded uncanny
effects.) Dullaart's Readymades, however, demonstrate his interest in what might be called "default" style- the bland tables of sans serif text and soulless stock photography that frame ads for some of the most
common search terms (auto insurance, cheap airline tickets, pornography), baring the underbelly of the
internet's popular use.
But Dullaart¹s Readymades are more than a formalist exploration of the Internet at its most banal. Theyare also a study in the relationship of the index to its referent, an issue that Rosalind Krauss connected to
the readymade in her 1976 essay "Notes on the Index, Part 1." Krauss defines indices as "the traces of a
particular cause, and that cause is the thing to which they refer, the object they signify." She offers
footprints and shadows as examples;; the domain name would be an analogy to such indices in the internet,
since it marks the online location of the site that appears in the browser window below. In Readymades,Dullaart has selected sites where the URL's content occupies the position of the referent, rather than
serving as a place marker. They are domains that someone has staked out as an empty lot, or that generate
a metonymic web of sponsored links. His Readymades are sites where footprints come before the feet.
In his Readymades Dullaart turns Delicious into a means of display, as many artists have done with other
social media, including blogging platforms and Flickr, the photo sharing site. It's an exceptional use of the
service;; like his internet-savvy colleagues, Dullaart primarily uses Delicious to accumulate sources of
inspiration. "Contemporary Semantics Beta," an exhibition that he has organized at Arti et Amicitae
gallery in Amsterdam, presents Delicious as a studio and sketchpad. It features artists whom Dullaart met
by sharing links on the bookmarking site, and his curatorial strategy of installing works alongside the
images that served as the impetus for their creation is meant to reflect the way that Delicious makes an
artist's interests visible and public. Like Readymades, "Contemporary Semantics Beta" establishes
Dullaart as a persistent investigator of new modes of constructing and relating meaning brought about by
the Internet.