Primera categoría: Escritura

Interview with Robert Sakrowski, founder director of curatingYouTube

Sakrowski, R., 2013. Interview about CYT and An Acoustic Journey Through YouTube.

Interviewed by Marialaura Ghidini [transcript of Skype conversation] March 24, 2013, 9am GMT, London. (see also 3.2)

M.G: Hi Sakrowski, can we start by talking about your project An Acoustic Journey Through YouTube since it took up different formats of presentations and then we move onto the questions I sent you?

R.S.: The main goal of curatingYouTube, which started in 2007, was to leave the star system, the art business. To me YouTube was a new field to explore, a field where everyone can do art-related activities. I was long-term friends with Brane Zorman, who was one of the founders of radioCona,²³ and with whom, along with the group Bootlap and Peter Daniels, I had many discussions around the relationship between the Internet and radio in terms of freedom but also media transitions. In 2011, Brane invited me to be part of the jury for one of radioCona’s projects, Radio Arts Space, which entailed an exhibition of radio pieces solicited via an open call and presented in their own radio studio as well as in a gallery. I declined the invitation because I did not believe in the idea of having artists to submit radio pieces for a gallery show.

And I proposed an alternative open call related to my work with curatingYouTube, so that artists could submit pieces that were their own remix, more specific to the medium of radio. At that point in time I was working on creating a collaborative tool for curation, the first step toward the Gridr tool of curatingYouTube, so I decided to apply this idea to the Radio Arts Space project. I then built an HTML soundbank, with the idea that anyone could use the tool to do the same and present a mix of material of their choice taken from YouTube along with their own screen capture of the material for the exhibition. With this tool anyone could submit their own remix, and not just artists. But, no one did it! So radioCona asked me to do it and I did, and so I was told that I became an artist!

M.G: How did you promote the show, then?

R.S.: I asked radioCona to send out my open call via their network and mailing list. But it did not work very well. The idea of my open call was that one could use the tool I built to create HTML soundbanks that could be used as tools for DJ sets, and then record them playing as screen recordings in a way that they would also work as audio pieces. Eventually, the whole project was then presented as my artistic project. The organisers of the gallery show for the Radio Arts

23 radioCona, produced by CONA in Ljubljana and launched in 2008, is “a platform that uses the radio frequency space in art contexts. FM frequency is understood as public space, explored from different perspectives and mediated through artworks audiobooks, programming and exhibitions. radioCona is intervention into public space.” (radioCona, 2014)

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Appendix A: Case Studies Space project, Brane Zorman and Irena Pivka, also asked me to show how the tool I developed and the whole project worked, so they invited me to do a workshop and a live performance on the occasion of the exhibition they put on at Škuc Gallery in Ljubljana. From this experience, I became very interested in developing the project further, and this is why I did the Berlin collaboration with CoLaboRadio afterwards.

M.G: Let me try to clarify a few points about An Acoustic Journey Through YouTube. Did this project, which was presented as a series, start as an exhibition platform, as an exhibition device that would enable general users to gather and assemble material taken from YouTube using the tool you had devised – basically the inception of what later became the Gridr?

R.S.: Right... For me YouTube is a huge sound and video archive, a sort of vinyl box, and the soundbank is a synthesiser. In Ljubljana I made many soundbanks of different topics. I

assembled each of them in this huge grid which is An Acoustic Journey Through YouTube, and for the gallery exhibition I played it live. People can actually still play it and record their

performance on their screen.

M.G: For the first instalment of the project, as part of Radio Arts Space, you were the artist because no one submitted works for the exhibition, right? What do you think went wrong there, why did people not respond to the project?

R.S.: Software like the screen-recording tool is not easy to use for everyone. At that time, with the technology I was using, you had to make your own soundbank in HTML, code your own page and record it for broadcast. So people needed to have special skills to do this. I came to the current Gridr tool from here, and Jonas Lund helped me to programme it. And it is much easier to use. I used Gridr for the Berlin series of radio broadcasts on CoLaboRadio. I invited people to make their own sound mix using the tool and then upload it to the CYT YouTube channel. Once uploaded, they would play and record it for the radio broadcast. Each intervention was broadcast along with an interview.

M.G: Would you be OK if someone wanted to use the An Acoustic Journey Through YouTube soundbank for different purposes and contexts?

R.S.: Yeah, no one has ever asked me though… I don't think many people know about the project and I have not been marketing it…

M.G: Can we talk a bit more about the Berlin series of An Acoustic Journey?

R.S: For each of the show with CoLaboRadio I made a soundbank, each of which is to me like an exhibition presented in a form of a grid. It's a Gridr presentation. It’s an exhibition of videos and it gives you the opportunity to mix material and broadcast it live.

M.G: So what is the soundbank for you: a show, a database…?

R.S.: It is not really a database. For me, it is both a show and a tool for making your own sound remix, thus a tool for giving your own presentation and perspective on the material selected (from YouTube).

M.G: Have you ever used artists’ works that you rearranged yourself?

R.S.: For the Ljubljana series I didn’t. For the Berlin series, I did invite artists to present their work. For example the artist LaTurbo Avedon, who was broadcast at CoLaboRadio last year,

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Appendix A: Case Studies produced Club Rothko using her work and found material.

M.G.: How did you commission the artists?

R.S.: I usually contact artists which are close to the vision of curatingYouTube; artists who work with video and sound, who often come from the music field or have a sensibility for it. I invited them personally and asked if they would make a remix for An Acoustic Journey Through YouTube.

M.G.: How do you show the work outside the radio broadcast format?

R.S.: For each artist I make a blog entry on the CYT website. Each entry has the final recording of the mix as an audio file, the screen recording of the video grid playing live, the soundbank on the Gridr and a short description. I also add details of the work, such as the day of broadcast, artist name, title of the work and place of the broadcast (CoLaboRadio for example). You can see this in the blog entry for the musician Dick Whyte,²⁴ whose work was broadcast in February 2012. Each piece was also broadcast at specific times on the radio, where it was accompanied by an interview, which was only presented there and never on the blog.

M.G.: Is your collaboration with CoLaboRadio ongoing?

R.S.: No, it lasted one year and it was a monthly show. I collaborated with them because this project is run by people from the Bootlab, who I have known for a long time, and also because they are a community radio station, so my show was very unique compared to the rest of their schedule.

M.G.: How did you promote this series?

R.S.: It was promoted on their blog and on mine, as well as on Twitter. I have not been very good with promotion… I don't promote things that much.

M.G.: Why don't you do it more?

R.S.: It's personal... I do it for myself mostly... Some people – people like me – need a sort of label, an agency to promote their work I think…

M.G.: Now that you have done few instalments of An Acoustic Journey would you consider the way you archive the project on CYT blog as a sort of exhibition format?

R.S.: I don't consider it as an exhibition format. This is the way I ask people to make their own profile online.

M.G.: So what is it for you, an archive?

R.S.: It is the way I present the material, it is more a documentation of the material. The exhibition is the soundbank on Gridr. So in the case of Dick Whyte, the soundbank on Gridr titled supercollider is the exhibition. You can still see it as it was, and if you wanted to see the artist's perspective on the material you would need to go on the CYT YouTube channel to see its screen recording, which, at the same time, is only a documentation for the broadcast.

M.G.: What is the radio broadcast for you then within this format of presentation? Another way of reaching the audience?

24 See: http://www.curatingyoutube.net/dickwhyte/

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Appendix A: Case Studies R.S.: For me what was interesting was the live element. For example, the live interview was a way of talking to an audience and imagining it in the form of a salon. The interview acts as a contextualisation of the artist's work and intention. And then there was the acoustic presentation part, which for me was like the situation of an old, live orchestra, a moment in which the sound material was mixed, which is something related to my interests in DJ culture. To me, using YouTube is both a way of DJing and storytelling.

M.G.: What do you mean by storytelling?

R.S.: If you watch my pieces you’d see that I usually tell a story, for example in the instalment of An Acoustic Journey I did in Ljubljana.

M.G.: Were the works broadcast on the radio played live?

R.S.: In Ljubljana it was all live, but in Berlin only one was live because it was technically impossible for the radio station to have a technician working at night. Remember that for the artist, the screen recording is the live moment; the moment in which the material comes together in the way they want it to be.

M.G.: Going back to the list of questions I had sent you: why did you start curating online and initiate the project curatingYouTube?

R.S.: As I said at the beginning, I was really fed up with the art world, with the net-dot-art phenomenon. Circa 2003 was the starting point of this post-internet movement that to me represented the commodification of net-dot-art and was about marketing and self-promotion, attitudes driven by an American spirit that was against the utopian ideals of net-dot-art. When I saw Cory Arcangel named as a net.artist I responded: “what?!” I could not follow or be part of this, because to me the net-dot-art movement was all about going outside the structure of the contemporary art world. It was subversive, and I liked it a lot in the nineties. And later it was made into an affirmation of capitalism. As a response to this, I started to think about YouTube. I thought about early net-dot-art artists, such as Olia Lialina, who to me were all working with the form of video art. YouTube was fascinating to me because it created a scene – an Internet scene – in which everyone could be an artist. In there, you have text, small pictures, videos, sound – all at the same time. It is an archive platform, a presentation platform, a platform for discussion, and so on. It is so broad that to me it represented what the Internet could be (in 2006) and a year later I started to use it from an art-historical point of view, to verify if it is true that, as Beyus said, “everyone is an artist”. Is this art? Is this amateur art? Is there a difference between the two? What is professionalisation? These were some of the questions that could be explored through YouTube.

M.G.: So do you see it more as a research project for yourself as an art historian and as a platform to explore some of the possibilities of YouTube for the artists?

R.S.: At the beginning it was a research project to me. In 2010, I claimed the domain name for

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Appendix A: Case Studies the exhibition the 3 hours in one second²⁵ which I organised in a physical space. The research project started with my YouTube channel, ikonoscope, and a few blog posts. After 3 years and with some conclusions reached, I organised this show: I asked net-dot-art artists, old—from the 90s—and new, to participate, using the Gridr tool, in what was to me a way of showing

YouTube content. This is the point at which my research project became a curatorial project.

M.G.: Can you describe the specificities, structurally in terms of platform and conceptually in terms of its mission, of CYT?

R.S.: With CYT I have been trying out different strategies, different ways to understand and put together socio-cultural and economic phenomena arising from YouTube. The website shows the main strategies I have adopted: interviews, exhibitions, proposals and the archiving net-dot-art project.

M.G.: In this regards, can you tell me more about your CYT Box, which is one of the headings of your website?

R.S.: CYT Box²⁶ is a response to the question of how to show works from YouTube in a

physical space. It takes a transparent position within the art world – this is also why the box is a transparent architectural device that would insert itself as a parasite inside a gallery space. In the box, as a viewer, you could control the video exhibition. This is a proposal yet to be built as I have found no one who could build it.

M.G.: Have you ever asked YouTube? Actually, what is your position in relation to YouTube/Google?

R.S.: It's a complex one. I think YouTube exploits us, it exploits our labour, labour for which people should get paid. The algorithms that Google uses should also be transparent. Think of the streets in your everyday life, they are a public infrastructure because they are necessary to everyone. The profits from YouTube should be shared with everyone, with the people who are putting in their labour. I still have no solution for my concerns, we should organise on a more political level. That said, when I presented the project at Transmediale in 2011 the display was actually sponsored by Google! Gansing, the director of Transmediale, got funding from them.

We did not have any other money so we accepted.

M.G.: Is there any money exchange happening with CYT?

R.S.: There is no money involved. I support the project myself and I don't use any form of advertisement. It is a personal project, almost. Everything on the blog is part of the different perspectives I have on the YouTube phenomenon. One of the latest developments of the project, of these different perspectives, is the Gallery Surfing project.

M.G.: Is this the series of interviews you are doing about gallery spaces/exhibitions online?

R.S.: I don't know if you know one of the latest YouTube-induced phenomena, Let's Play…?

25 3 hours in one second was organised at the BASSO Gallery in Berlin in February 2010, originating from the production of web-based works. The participants ranged from artists, curators and scientists, and included: Constant Dullaart (NL), Carlos Leon-Xjimenez (PE), Guthrie Lonergan (U.S.) Sandra Naumann (D), Igor Stromajer (SL), Franz Thalmair (AT)

26 For more information see: http://www.curatingyoutube.net/cyt-box

Curating Web-based Art Exhibitions: Appendix A: Case Studies M.G.: No…

R.S.: It is about people who film themselves playing computer games and they have a huge audience following them. And for me what is interesting about this phenomenon is the empathy created through the exchange. I did one of the interviews with Annett Dekker on the Facebook gallery #0000FF— a non-profit art gallery/space, hosted in its entirety in Facebook. I think that people always talk about net art but no one watches it because it takes too long; at times, it takes an hour to browse a work and half an hour to read a text. Very often people access online projects through secondary material. So the idea behind Gallery Surfing is to watch it. And I have to say that most of the things I watch don't function. We have so many net art pieces coming out every day but no one browses them or reviews them. The YouTube model of playing and watching is what I use to explore this area of work and phenomena.

M.G.: It is so true that there is very little criticism about online exhibitions and projects... and I am included in the bunch of people who should write more about them and do something about this…

R.S.: You have to try net art out to understand it… like Facebook art…

[Long detour on ‘Facebook art’]

Going back to my relationship with Google, I don't know if I will ever accept money from them for a project. I now try to be more engaged with the local scene here in Berlin – the pirate and independent scene – with the hope that there will be some changes occurring through political change; changes related to transparency and to the rights of our digital selves, for example, rather than just the human rights related to our physical bodies. In the Gallery Surfing project we discussed the online exhibition M0N3Y AS AN 3RRROR (mon3y.us), for which I tried to bring emphasise more political aspects, through discussing, for example, the Loophole project by Paolo Cirio.

M.G.: With curatingYouTube you organised a series of shows that took place in offline spaces – I am thinking of the already discussed An Acoustic Journey Through YouTube and 3 hours in one second. We have not discussed the latter and perhaps the way it relates to the online exhibitions of CYT – could you tell me more?

R.S.: In the early stage of the exhibition I discussed the project and YouTube a lot with the artist JODI, as we both were interested in the phenomena related to it. We discussed the meaning of the grid as a format, which is not just a picture but sometimes, because of the way you interact with it, it acts as a painting, revealing hidden textures in the videos. We discussed the CYT grid as a sound piece, as a chronological archive and many other ways in which it can be used to express artistic ideas. We discussed it as a web-based installation too. We then invited people we wanted to work with, such as Constant Dullaart, with whom I also talked a lot about

YouTube. So, the old and new guys of the net-dot-art scene were invited to express their views

YouTube. So, the old and new guys of the net-dot-art scene were invited to express their views