I WOULD PREFER NOT TO | A love story set in Google images

Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Milan of the Alterazioni Video group. All the works in the exhibition were produced in Alterazioni Video’s three bases in New York, Berlin and Milan between 2008 and 2009.

The relationship, both passioned and obsessive, which the group developed in a daily engagement with the web provides the backdrop of this project. For months the artists lived on Google-images and on different search engines appropriating the experiences and memories of other users with whom they shared a collective imagery in a continuous expansion and which is beyond control. Their exploration led to a reflection on the “web 2.0” aesthetics wich is self-propagating within the world wide web and changing our way of knowing and perceiving the world. The artists have stated about this exhibition that:

“We spent hours surfing the net among thousands of images each day. We began to think that every smile, every glance we encounter might be intentionally dedicated to us. We became aware of living a shared intimacy in which small gestures and memories reproduce themselves ad infinitum and offer themselves to many without losing their freshness. Through the net we become closer to the other without intrusion and we can share with him a visual universe of unimaginable dimensions, a pulsating and vital place with which we are all madly in love”.

The exhibition will feature paintings, sculptures, an installation of slide-projections, and a 16 millimeter film. For the entire duration of the show’s opening, the performance If You Can Read This Thank a Veteran will as well be held.

The project also includes the performance We got There and There Was Only Smoke, produced in collaboration with the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, that will be presented for the first time at Performa09 in November in New York.