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host of BIG Torino 2002
The decision to choose the internet as the host country for BIG Torino 2002
came about as a result of reflections on artistic/practical and medium/theoretical
considerations. However, the principal inspiration for this choice was the
title 'BIG SOCIAL GAME' proposed by Michelangelo Pistoletto for BIG Torino
2002. Which medium would be best suited to animate this theme?
Which countries are currently most capable of amazing people with their analyses
and artistic productions? Can we really consider artistic relevance in a national
sense? Wouldn't it be better to invite as host, that world which is most widely
cosmopolitan and facilitates connections rather than boundaries? What should
an invitation of this kind mean if not a 'territory' which is currently 'open
and welcoming'?
and where can we locate such a region if, thanks to telecommunications technology,
every geographic concept has become obsolete? It extends over the whole world,
without a beginning or an end and it has a name: The Net. Regardless of the
artistic aims of their projects, artists from all expressive fields require
a medium to achieve them. Some use this medium as a mere tool, others as a
central element which constitutes the essence of their aim. It is becoming
increasingly apparent that a common thinking in terms of a network of open
relations is fast replacing a thinking in terms of territories and established
structures.
bigguest.net wants to show, in both real and virtual spaces, how this 'dialogical
thinking on the net' has extended the meaning of an expansion of the social
sector. This 'network thinking' and 'networking' is what makes the internet
the most obvious choice to be the host country of BIG Torino 2002 and the
BIG SOCIAL GAME. The internet itself could actually be classified as THE "big
social game". Its essence is fundamentally dialogical, communicative,
as well as social and entertaining. The job of bigguest.net is to use art
to give this big social game a form, a temporary but real home and social
relevance.
*bigguest.net
means, in the sense of the play on words, either 'the big guest net', 'the biggest
net' or 'the very big net'. The 'biggest net' is the internet and hints at the
size and abundance of opportunities offered, exactly like those offered by 'The
Net'. The 'big guest net' means the net that is thrown to the guests of the
'host country' for Torino, as well as the network of guests who visit the biennial
which, due to the inherent characteristics of that net become an (inter)active
part of it.
