Mark Amerika: Unreal Time :: until January 3, 2010 :: National Museum of Contemporary Art, Building of the Athens Conservatory, Vas. Georgiou Β 17 -19 & Rigillis street, Athens.

The National Museum of Contemporary Art presents for the first time in Greece, a retrospective exhibition of the American artist and pioneer in the media arts field, Mark Amerika. The first presentation of his work in Greece took place in the framework of EMST’s online exhibition titlted e-critures (2008).

By emphasizing the construction of new digital identities and fictional personas, as well as the cross-correlation of new histories and mythologies in website, Amerika investigates the ways by which the somatic-sensory experience evolves into a new “Life Style Practice”. He perceives the networked and interconnected digital space as an inventive remix machine, a multimedia network publishing platform, an exhibition space, a performance venue, a conceptual art canvas, a computer supported collaborative research lab and an an experiential design playground. His work, therefore, work is a critical reflection of the different sides of today’s digital culture offering an opportunity to speculate on the ways our lives are changing in the contemporary realm.

Amerika describes himself as a “thoughtographer”, an “artist-medium”, a “fictional philosopher”, a “remixologist”, a “network conductor”, a wonderer who constantly changes identities and roles in a fragmentary world where time acquires an a-synchronic and non real dimension. By trying to express the complexity and the interest of contemporary digital reality, he delves into different aspects of himself and draws on elements and traits that he transfers to the characters of his works, by using the media the technological platforms of our time. Developing projects on the net, filming with mobile phones, remixing common moments and figures of today`s culture in an VJ-like audiovisual rhythm, Amerika redifines the characteristics of today’s culture and opens up the possibilities for new interpretations and thoughts from the audience itself.

Having been characterized as a “Time Magazine 100 Innovator” between the most influential artists, scientists, entertainers and philosophers of the 21st century, and having been acknowledged by museums, art-centers and festivals with solo exhibitions and presentations around the world, Amerika is an example not only of an important artist but of a multi dimensional personality. This becomes apparent not only from his work but also from his lifestyle, which is directly interwoven with digital culture.

Mark Amerika is a net artist, a published novelist, an experimental essayist and a Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In addition to his artistic work, Amerika also gives performances, lectures, and workshops on new media culture, electronic literature, web publishing, Internet art and theory, live audio/visual and VJ performance, hypertext, hactivism, and Web 2.0. He is also the author of many books, including the published collection of artist writings META/DATA: A digital poetics (The MIT press, 2007).

Curated by: Daphne Dragona

With the support of the U.S. Embassy in Athens.