Can Kenneth Goldsmith do wrong? For his latest endeavor, Museum of Modern Art’s first poet laureate and founding editor of the unstoppable, renegade avant garde media archive UbuWeb wants YOU to print out the entire internet.
The idea is simple: print out as much as of the web as you want — be it one sheet or a truckload — send it to Mexico City, and we’ll display it in the gallery for the duration of the exhibition, which runs from July 26 to August, 2013.
Goldsmith’s Printing the Internet project in conjunction with LABOR and UbuWeb is dedicated to programmer-activist Aaron Swartz who was prosecuted and persecuted for downloading academic articles from JSTOR and charged with “fraud”-type crimes, punishable by a million dollar fine and 35 years in prison (a topic close to Goldsmith’s heart, obviously.) Swartz ended his life earlier this year. Goldsmith explains:
The amount of what he liberated was enormous — we can’t begin to understand the magnitude of his action until we begin to materialize and actualize it. This project tries to bring that point home.
Everything that exists somewhere online that can be printed out and shipped will be accepted and exhibited. Every contributor will be billed a participating artist. No objects. Just paper. They have 500 square meters and 6 meters high. That’s potentially a gigantic point.
Print, pack and send to: LABOR / Francisco Ramírez #5 / Col. Daniel Garza / Del. Miguel Hidalgo / 11830 / México D.F.
Speaking of printing the internet: Read Printed Internet — Daniel Kolitz’s brilliant satire column on ANIMAL and on his Tumblr.
