Parodų fotodokumentacijos ir kintantis jų vaidmuo

LTStraipsnyje gvildenamas šiuolaikinio meno parodų fotodokumentavimas. Teigiama, kad per pastaruosius kelis dešimtmečius išaugęs parodų atvaizdus skelbiančių internetinių platformų skaičius yra susijęs su pakitusiais legitimavimo mechanizmais, tam tikro, ypač postinternetinio, meno kūrybinėmis strategijomis ir fizinių galerijų vaidmens nuvertėjimu. Aptariant fotografijos kaip ne tik meno kūrinius atspindinčio, bet ir juos steigiančio įrankio svarbą, siekiama parodyti kintančią parodų fotodokumentacijų reikšmę ir šiomis aplinkybėmis vykstantį vizualinės reprezentacijos posūkį, kai iš retrospektyvios ji tampa prospektyvi, t. y. einanti pirma.

ENThe article analyses the phenomenon of installation views (also known as installation shots) of contemporary art exhibitions, focusing on their changing role and influences on artistic practices. The text aims to expose the documentation conventions and reconfigured aesthetic parameters shaped by the virtual international gallery platforms such as Contemporary Art Daily, Artviewer, Tzvetnik, Footnotes on Art and Daily Lazy, as well as the Lithuanian artnews.lt and Echo Gone Wrong (in English), which have gained popularity in the recent decades. The article not only discusses the possibilities of photographic reenactment of an artwork or an exhibition, but also links these trends to post-internet art, influenced by the circulation of digital images. This kind of art is often created not for physical spaces, but rather for online platforms, which imitate the white gallery cube, while artistic work is increasingly obliged to be photogenic. The noticeable direct correlation between these processes testifies to the fact that post-internet art and related art streams are essentially created for online post-production only, while the emergence of works in the physical gallery space is often just a pretext for their conversion into digital photographic evidence. In this way, the direction of representation also changes from retrospective to prospective. The article approaches photographic installation views as equivalent digital versions of exhibitions, which are often more active than physical ones in the art world’s transactions. The online circulation of such exhibition images generates a new value of artworks and takes part in the altered legitimation processes.The evident depreciation of physical exhibition spaces points to a new relationship between the copy and the original, now based on time rather than a concrete location, and prompting a conclusion that the original version of an artwork or an exhibition is the one which the viewer encounters first. In these circumstances, the article seeks to expose a paradoxical process when the reproduction, which once liberated an artwork from a ritualistic context, and its active circulation produce a new cult model based on the aspiration to match the new “global art” canon shaped by international platforms, and to be visible and searchable online.