La calle

8 eBay.com is an ecommerce company, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell goods and services worldwide via listings. The listings of eBay are structured around thirty-four categories that range from Antiques to Property and Everything Else.

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 3: Case Studies: Six Web-Based Exhibitions Integrating Offline Formats of Production and Sites

produce an artwork to be auctioned on eBay. The platform format (a database organised around categories), the type of engagement (one-to-one commercial exchanges) and the mode of distribution (international shipments) were some of specificities the artists were invited to reflect upon.

Figure 6: Chris Webber, A Chris Webber Pardon, 2006. In eBayaday, 2006.

Screenshot of eBay listing © the artist and eBayaday, 2015.

The twenty-six artwork-listings were displayed in succession for a week each on the appropriated online venue, giving form to a live process-based exhibition.

The display arrangement was determined by the categories offered by eBay—

Antiquities, Business and Home—that “provided a site-specific context”

(Modrak, A.2.2) and location for the works, operating as the conceptual framework(s) (see fig.6). The artworks were on show as documentation of themselves, adhering to the format of the listing and including: a representative image, a description, details of the auction, as well as a comments and

messages section to communicate with the viewer/prospective buyer. Wide-ranging in form and scope, the artworks spanned from sculptural objects and

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 3: Case Studies: Six Web-Based Exhibitions Integrating Offline Formats of Production and Sites

printed material to sound pieces, yet they shared a strong performative element.

Abishek Harza's Own my voice you can use it for anything was a time-based sound piece listed under the Musical Instruments > Other Instruments eBay category. It offered time-based ownership of Harza’s recorded voice, which could be used “for any purpose” (Modrak, 2006) up to five hours.

Figure 7: Abishek Hazra, Own my voice and use it for anything, 2006. In eBayaday, 2006. Screenshot of eBayaday entry. © the artist and eBayaday, 2015.

Because they were scattered around eBay, the artwork-listings were brought together as an exhibition on another website (see fig.7), eBayaday, created to function as an aggregator. Its format was that of a customised blog, a

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 3: Case Studies: Six Web-Based Exhibitions Integrating Offline Formats of Production and Sites

placeholder for the exhibition and an archive of the auctions, which were updated live at the time of the project. This site, which does not exist anymore because the use of URL was banned by eBay, was simply organised in two main sections: the Navigation, which included information about the project, artists and artwork-listings and the The Live Auction, which visualised the month-long auction calendar. Managed by the curators, eBayaday sustained the audience’s engagement in that it was the most comprehensive entry point to the project. The curators had a key role in mapping the exhibition process

through archiving its transactions and the communication between the artists and buyers/viewers. Because of its procedurality, eBayaday was ‘recorded’ in print. Conceived at the project’s inception, the catalogue, eBayaday: World Travel of Complete Artists Listings, underscored the exchanges that occurred throughout the project.

3.3.2. Migration: Structure, Patterns and Function

The migration of eBayaday to the catalogue not only documented the exhibition process; it also laid out the exchanges and connections established between artists/sellers and visitors/buyers—the commercial and symbolic negotiations.

Mirroring the layout of eBay, the catalogue conformed to the “ephemeral nature”

(Modrak, A.2.2) of the project. An A5 postal box contained: twenty-six unbound cards reproducing the listings; a booklet with essays; a calendar for the auctions and a poster visualising the artworks' shipment, also including the

conversations between artists and visitors (see fig.8). As an extension of the live exhibition, eBayaday: World Travel “articulated the display of the artwork”

(Cook and Graham, 2010) emphasising the processed-based nature of the project. A gallery exhibition, Documents, was organised as a “celebratory moment” (Modrak, A.2.2) to fulfil the agreements with the project funders rather than facilitate further moments of invention. However, the choice of displaying blown-up versions of the material included in the catalogue provided another mode of engaging with the auction-exhibition, emphasising the chronology and the geographical movement of the artworks and conversations.

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 3: Case Studies: Six Web-Based Exhibitions Integrating Offline Formats of Production and Sites

Figure 8: eBayaday: World Travel, 2006. Image of catalogue cards. © Rebekah Modrak and eBayaday, 2015.

Only the artists and buyers experienced the artworks first-hand throughout the migration. Artistic production only occurred for the online exhibition; it was the curators themselves who decided how to re-present the works for the other exhibition components—the catalogue and exhibition. In the migration, the active role of the audience/buyers online became that of browsers and readers of documentation material offline. The online audience was mostly driven by the purpose of searching for items to buy rather than the intention of viewing an artwork. This allowed the curators to evaluate the premises of eBayaday:

investigating artistic production and audience engagement in connection to the workings of a commercial platform where “buyers learn to quickly scan the flow of images, grammar and syntax presented by a particular seller” (Modrak and Denfeld, 2006).

The overall project functioned as a curatorial research tool into e-commerce, its language and type of mediated communication, using eBay as “as a miniature model of the universe with encyclopaedic opportunities for context” and as an experiment with “transitioning practices” (Modrak, A.2.2).

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 3: Case Studies: Six Web-Based Exhibitions Integrating Offline Formats of Production and Sites

Figure 9: eBayaday: Documents, 2005. Installation shot at Work gallery. © Rebekah Mondrak and eBayaday, 2015.

eBayaday occurred at a time where the Web was not widely used to auction or directly sell artworks, an area that has been increasingly explored in very recent years, such as with the Philips/Tumblr Paddle ON! Auction held in New York, 2013, and London, 2014, or platform such as s[edition]. What emerges through comparing the independent model proposed by eBayaday and recent

commercial initiatives is the difference in understanding artistic production: the latter promotes an objectification of digital works, while the former gives

prominence to the fact they are in transition. Another example of appropriating an already existing web-based platform is the project bubblebyte, for which the website of a commercial gallery was used as a venue for an exhibition

functioning as a live web installation.

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Chapter 3: Case Studies: Six Web-Based Exhibitions Integrating Offline Formats of Production and Sites

3.4. bubblebyte: Secondo Anniversario / Casa del divertimento

KEYWORDS   CURATOR’S VIEW   AS…  

Online > Similar to a screen with an extra

Figure 10: Secondo Anniversario / Casa del Divertimento, 2013. Summary table.

(Further details, including analysis table and interview with the curator, in Appendixes A.1.3 and A.2.3)