23 Dec 2008

OPEN FRAMES - WORLD WIDE OPENING, 01 Jan. 2009

REGISTER YOUR WORK IN THE LIBRARY : GET YOUR LOGIN HERE : info@open-frames.net


CONCEPT

open-frames.net is an open archive, giving artists the possibility to create an overview of their past and recent projects. By publishing your work on OF a selection and accumulation of works is produced that should naturally grow and interconnect with time.

The site will function as a library of works situated within the realm of performance in the widest sense (not limited to any one format or genre), with the goal of making work and working processes more accessible to other artists working in the field and to other interested parties.

USERS

OF is useful for people who are interested in sharing their work, while contextualizing their projects within a larger community of people working in the field. There is a notion of self-curating as well as making constructive use of name dropping and tagging.

open-frames.net is not meant to be a personal home-page - it is rather a selection that one decides to be a part of in order to share one's working process and results with other artists and interested individuals.

While borrowing from commercial online systems like blogs, you-tube, myspace and facebook accounts, OF is a domain referring and connecting to a specific public interested in and/or working in the field of performance. At the same time, OF proposes a wide definition of this domain (it is in fact up to the users to define it's limits), thus enabling an 'entcounter' between very different types of work.

INTERFACE

open-frames.net provides it's user a simple interface: Every work added to the site has the same presentation module. Each project is displayed in a single window, formatted with a double scrolling frame - The left side can be loaded with video or images, while the right side is reserved for text. The projects archived on the site can be searched by artist or by project title.

OF stresses the fact that work is almost always 'made' by more than just those who sign for the concept : All the names of the people who worked on the project and who are listed in the 'credits' appear in the main listing on the homepage of OF.

OF also emphasizes the fact that contemporary art rarely fits into clear cut categories, in addition to a navigation-system that allows visitors to search the site for projects by title and name, OF uses a tag system, that groups projects under particular headings (architecture, installation, concert, happening, festival, dance, performance, propaganda, etc.)

URLS

It is possible to create direct urls, linking to only 1 project or the project-list of only 1 person, making the archive a quick reference tool for communication about specific projects. These links are generally composed as follows :

www.open-frames.net/projects/your_title

or

www.open-frames.net/people/your_name

PREFERRED BROWSER :

firefox --> http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

get your log-in here :

info@open-frames.net

HISTORY

open-frames.net results from the recent closure of f,r,o,g,s OS, a netwerk of people and works that was active from 2000 until 2008, operating mainly in Brussels, Belgium.

open-frames.net started off as an overview of works connected to f,r,o,g,s OS. Recycling the results of f,r,o,g,s OS into a new project,

Frogs was initiated in 2000 as a pilot project. In 2002 Frogs OS (open source) grew into a structure that supported collaborations between artists from different disciplines, providing workspace through an association with nadine (Brussels), wp Zimmer (Antwerp) and Netwerk (Aalst) and small working budgets through funding from the VGC and eventually from 2004, through a collaboration with Kunst/Werk. From 2000 - 2008 Frogs OS was coordinated by Heike Langsdorf.

Frogs OS thus became a busy network of people and projects: Christoph Ragg, Christophe Meirhans and Heike Langsdorf (now C+H) as well as David Helbich, Shila Anaraki, Koen Nutters, Mette Ingvartsen, Ula Sickle and Michel Yang formed the starting point for what would eventually become a much larger network of collaborators.

The 36 projects created under Frogs OS can be found by searching under www.open-frames.net/people/frogs_OS