A Linking Park could be considered an exhibition without works. To see it you must find yourself standing before the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and you must use a smartphone to scan the twenty QR codes positioned on the building. The QR are minimal codes with content rendered decipherable only through the use of a cellphone that is connected to the internet. Therefore, smartphones are the space that brings A Linking Park to fruition, while the façade of the Fondazione building is the interface and the support for the network of codes.
A Linking Park takes advantage of the logic of the web and information technologies in order to reflect upon the consumption and circulation of data and the adaptability of curatorial practice to the dynamics of the current cultural environment, which is so strongly linked to technological interfaces.
On the façade of the building the QR codes are traces of a long distance dialogue between the ten curators of Campo 12, a residential course supported by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Tracing the immediacy of the “Quick Response” of the codes, the curators have taken turns exchanging a series of links with the only condition being that the materials chosen were already part of a large legitimate collection on the web, or in other words, previously indexed by Google.
At the same time, the selection process of the links has its origins in reflections on specific themes within the evolution of architecture in response to the proliferation of technological interfaces; man as an instrument for the diffusion of images; the statute of works of art digitized and archived online and the legal aspects connected to their use.
The selections chosen by the ten curators included, without distinction, samples from films, videos and songs uploaded from Youtube and Vimeo, sites and web pages created by artists and projects made exclusively for the web.
The “transparent” level of the web, the one that is hyper-regulated by Google and its research systems, has become the content of an unstoppable game of loss of control:
every new response comes out of a personal interpretation of the link that has preceded it and it modifies the journey of A Linking Park in its complexity.
A Linking Park includes the publication of A Linking Book that will be quite the same dimensions as a smartphone. The printed page negates the hypertexuality of writing, opening up a diverse form of investigation making use of theoretical contributions from specialist, artists, writers and web professionals.
The project A Linking Park was created by CAMPO 12, the first edition of the course for Italian curators supported by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, in collaboration with the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna and Contemporanea CRT. The course was held from November 2012 to June 2013.
