Monument to Internet Hookups
A space of open-source unity
My work is positioned in and around the internet. I use the internet to create websites as places where we can imagine meaning and experience objects, the same way we can admire a sculpture in a public space. This becomes particularly urgent at a time when through living part of our lives online, we question and often blur what is private or public. So visiting a website can become as public as visiting a traditional monument. I believe everything we live now is always virtual and always real. At the same time I am fascinated with traditional monuments because as points of glorification for national and religious symbols they engage us with a nostalgic tension.
Now living in the post-internet era of fluid identity and fast social transformation a new kind of sovereignity is being presented with two “monuments” of communication: Facebook and Twitter. So much integrated into our lives, undeniably these 2 networks play an ambiguous anthropocentric role. For some they represent the democratic principles of online activism but also for some are responsible for sabotaging privacy.
Recently these two networks played a victorious role as radical means of local organizing for political change in the Middle East. Since then, freedom over the internet is a big debate and Internet Networks are the new shields against totalitarianism.
Personally I started “living” on different internet networks back in the late 90’s as I was experiencing a new way of communication promoted mostly by the gay subculture. A new term was born “Internet hookups.” Meaning: meetings taking place real time in real place followed by previous online conversation.
One of my favourite essays “Entropy and the new Monuments” by artist Robert Smithson states: "..If time is a place, then innumerable places are possible. This statement maybe justifies my thought of crashing internet reality and “terrestrial” one - if really these networks multiply this importance.
My desire to create a place that collapse borders and walls between people is being presented by the Monument to Internet Hookups. As a project, it started in 2009 to connect people with same ideals on sexuality and human rights. It's first version exists permanently at Flisvos Park after I presented in Athens in collaboration between the city's Pride and Biennale. Since then its designed to be presented in other cities too. For Thessaloniki Biennale, the Monument continues to glorify physical encounters and aims to act as an apparatus of collective participation through impromptu events, readings, etc. This is staged with a skeleton pyramid structure– a popular symbol in internet semiotics too, that stands as an open wifi spot. It is placed in a designated area with a distinct graphic style surrounded by seats at the port of Thessaloniki.
Angelo Plessas
