router.gallery presents:
007 — Public Library | Memory of the World —
curated by Nenad Romic
VERNISSAGE: 29 November 2017 19:00 — open end
AFTER PARTY with Jane D
21:00 – open end
https://soundcloud.com/
CONTEXT
Public Library/Memory of the World is the synergy of two efforts. First, it makes the case for the institution of public library and its principle of universal access to knowledge. Second, it is an exploration and development of distributed internet infrastructure for amateur librarians. A public library one of those almost invisible infrastructures that we start to notice only once they go extinct. A place where all people can get access to all knowledge that can be collected seemed for a long time a dream beyond reach – until the egalitarian impetus of social revolutions, the Enlightenment idea of universality of knowledge, and the exceptional suspension of the commercial barriers of copyright made it possible. The Internet has, as in many other situations, completely changed our expectations and imagination about what is possible. The dream of a catalogue of the world – a universal access to all available knowledge for every member of society – became realizable. A question merely of the meeting of curves on a graph: the point at which the line of global distribution of personal computers meets that of the critical mass of people with access to the Internet. Today nobody lacks the imagination necessary to see public libraries as part of a global infrastructure of universal access to knowledge for literally every member of society. However, the emergence and development of the Internet is taking place precisely at the point at which an institutional crisis — one with traumatic and inconceivable consequences — has also begun.
ABOUT router.gallery
The router is used as an autonomous gallery space to show digital artworks. Artworks are distributed by the router through its local network with NO Internet connection; all exhibitions are accessible at the local site only. Curators present artworks on a small web server included on the router, with access granted through an open WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) over WIFI. The format brings both the intimate character of Net-Art-Activities back to a site-specific relation and opens up new possibilities for a discursive reception in a public situation. The router-gallery-space program for exhibitions installed at Panke in Wedding, Berlin, is presented here, along with event details and information about the artists and curators. The router.gallery is an independent satellite ofPanke.gallery and features exhibitions by guest curators on a monthly basis.