Technoromantisme	Galerie	Gallery	Rien de spécial	Nothing special	projets & pdf	DVDREMIX	DVDREMIX en		Theorie	Theory	Contact

 

The Fax, a new medium, arouses new concepts

ARTSPEAK - New York - Vol. XI N°5 - November 1, 1989

 

No sooner does the Fax make its appearance in business offices than the artists, looking for new expressions in communication, make use of-it. Stéphan Barron and Sylvia Hansmann employed this new medium last September during their journey along the Greenwich meridian, from Villers-sur-mer (France) to Castillon de la Plana (Spain). While taking this path, they sent, thanks to a Fax in their car,data and images to places of art in Europe, such as the French Institute in Cologne and the galerie Alain Oudin in Paris (47 rue Quimcanpoix).

The messages sent by Fax do not have the quality of a photograph or a drawing sent by the post. On the other hand, Fax offers the astonishing advantage of reintroducing the theatrical dimension of the instant in the place where it is being sent, the artistic message that can come at any given moment. The Fax reopens the door to the urgency of emotion and, as its immediate originator the artist is –potentially– in permanent and spontaneous contact with the visitor, the ‘receiver’, at the gallery: The artistic experiment of Stéphan Barron and Sylvia Hansmann, supported by the Minister of Culture, France Telecom, EGT, and IGN, constitutes in a double sense, a delocalizing and a centralizing of creativity. On the one hand, the works of Barron and Hansmann, gifted with ubiquity, can appear simultaneously in several places in France, Spain, and Germany. In another sense, the gallery becomes an artist’s studio, a place of construction and producing the definitive image: at galerie Alain Oudin, the connection of the Fax machine crosses the floor, in order to allow the exhibit to continue on the floor below.

Theo Barbu