Von Naturphänomenen zu digitaler Materie.

(Re-)Inszenierung von Earthworks und Performancekunst in digitalen Räumen

Abstract

This paper proposes an art historical critical review of (re-)staging analog process-based art at the intersection of technology and ecology in digital spaces. It highlights contemporary artistic practices such as experience design and collaborative worldbuilding as strategies of (re-)staging and (re-)documenting process-based art in contemporary video game and social media platforms (par. 1-2). The paper analyzes the role of video games as spaces for cultural practice and protest (par. 3). The focus is put on earthworks and performance art and the process of their transformation from natural phenomena to digital matter (part. 4-5). Shing Yin Khor’s transfer of Robert Smithson’s earthwork icon Spiral Jetty (Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970) into the digital landscape of the video game Animal Crossing. New Horizons in 2020 is looked at closely, as well as Khor’s digital (re-)performance of Marina Abramović’s The Artist is Present (MoMA, New York, 2010). I argue that the (re-)staging of ephemeral process-based art such as earthworks and performances represents an artistic strategy of research and knowledge transfer at the intersection of imagination and memory, which can be made useful for archival and curatorial practices – both in analog and digital spaces.