Observatoire des nouveaux médias

Présentation par Stéphane Degoutin
Observatoire des nouveaux médias
EnsAD 31 rue d’Ulm 75005 Paris

Mercredi 4 janvier 2012, 18h 30, amphi Rodin

Paolo Cirio : Sculpting Information Power

L’activité artistique de Paolo Cirio (né en 1979 en Italie) s’étend aux domaines du net art, du street art, de l’art vidéo, de l’art public, du marketing art et du storytelling expérimental. Il enquête sur la perception et la création des réalités politiques et économiques manipulées par de nouveaux modes de contrôle sur le pouvoir de l’information. Ainsi, en 2011, il vole un million de profils sur Facebook.com et les republie, classés en fonction de leur expression faciale, sur un faux site de rencontres. En 2010, il fait fabriquer et distribue des milliers de cartes de crédit produisant de l’argent virtuel, de manière à introduire une redistribution des richesses grâce à un modèle économique visionnaire. En 2006, il pirate et vole des livres numériques sur Amazon.com et les redistribue gratuitement. En 2005, il crée de faux réseaux de robots pour frauder le service AD Sense de Google.com.

Extraits du statement de l’artiste :

My aim is to use information as a malleable material for creating stimulating structures.
I will explore information as a magmatic material that can be shaped. I will sculpt information flow by fabricating narratives, processing data and contextualizing contents. I will create unusual sculptural structures of information, in which the complex layers of the media are composed organically, in order to discourse critically and reveal unexpected forms.
Through researching methodologies for manipulating information, my artwork will become active agents, able to influence the depicted subject. This by employing unusual reconfigurations of the power of information. I intend to discuss the information’s power by investigating content, distribution and modes of media.
Nowadays, data fluxes regulate the organization of humanity and its relationship with physical reality. In the Information Age, media can be seen as instrumental to the ordering of the world. Seeing control over the design of information as a prominent cause and cure for most human plights, media unavoidably become the urgent concern of my artistic research.
Taking a provocative and edifying approach, I will extend my research beyond a single media and focus on the informational environment created by data flows. Languages and devices employed by the media enter my research as strategies and tactics to explore how the arrangement of information create realities and narratives that design societies and human beings.
In conclusion, through manipulation of media, information and communication, my work aspires to educate, inform, investigate, organize and influence contemporary society. This critical approach often breaks the boundaries of representation and questions: what art is, how it should be and what it is needed for – matters that will further the contemporary art discourse.

© Paolo Cirio : http://www.paolocirio.net/

•
Enregistrement vidéo de la conférence de Paolo Cirio


1/4
Présentation rapide de Paolo Cirio par Stéphane Degoutin. Paolo Cirio dresse les lignes directrices de sa pratique artistique en quelques écrans powerpoint et l’énoncé de ses pièces artistiques consultables sur son site et qu’il commente.
Citation. «Investigating into perception and creation of cultural, political and economic realities manipulated by new modes of control over information’s power»

Pièce présentée:
Open Society Structures – Algorithms Triptych.
2009. Serigraph (digital) print on Plexiglass. 54x39cm each.
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/open_democracy_structures/open_society_structures.php

Citation.
Paul Watzlawick. The language of change. There is not a reality, but only images of reality. Language to cure people, psychologically and physically. Manipulation is not always bad and you cannot avoid it, we are all influenced from everyone else. Paul Watzlawick is a constructivist. Radical constructivism breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an objective ontological reality. We construct reality.»
Noam Chomsky. Language is a process of creation. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation. Acquisition of vocabulary is guided by a rich and invariant conceptual system which is prior to any experience.
Construction as a form of sculpture. Media become everything today. Your lifetime is a media very broad. Language forms message which are driven by media. The raw information is shapped by all these agents. Information as raw material and it can be manipulated through manipulation of language, message and media. Today, we have an enormous number of media and a huge account of information flowing through them.
Reality is fragmented, speeded up often dysfunctional. We live in a new informational environment constituted by all the informational entities broadcasted by multiform and diffused media. Power of information became more influential and it plays a major role in our society and our livres.

Pièce présentée:
Face to Facebook – Hacking Monopolism Trilogy. 2011
http://www.paolocirio.net/work.php
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/face-to-facebook/face-to-facebook.php
•
•

2/4
Sculptural Performance Art: «My works are sculpture but are also performance.»
Bodies of abstraction.
Devices to attract attention of a general audience to transform it by involving them into the artwork and in the performance.  New media and flow information are so ephemeral, artworks with them can be only live performance act.
Basic elements of a performance: time, space, the performer’s body, or presence in the medium and a relationship betwee, performer and audience. « Living sculpture », performance of Gilbert and George. Joseph Beuys created the term « Social Sculpture » to illustrate art’s potential to transform society. The central idea of a social sculpture is an artist who creates structures in society using language, thought, action and object.

Pièce présentée:
P2P Gift Credit Card – Gift Finance.
2010. Mixed Media, dimensions variable.
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/gift-finance/p2p_gift_credit_card.php

Pièce présentée:
In veritas.net
http://www.inveritas.net

Pièce présentée:
People Quote People – The Death of the Author 2.0.
2007. Engraved white marble. 30x19x4cm each.
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/death_author/death_author.php

Pièce présentée:
Hacking Monopolism Trilogy.
2005-2011. Mixed Media, dimensions variables.
Face to Facebook, Amazon Noir, Google Will Eat Itself.
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/hacking-monopolism-trilogy/hacking-monopolism-trilogy.php

Paolo montre successivement:

Amazon Noir – Hacking Monopolism Trilogy.
2006. Mixed Media. dimensions variables.
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/amazon-noir/amazon-noir.php

Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI) – Hacking Monopolism Trilogy
2005. Mixed Media, dimensions variables.
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/gwei/gwei.php
•
•

3/4
«Just eat information is not enough. Narrative is recombinating fiction. The power of art.
Paul Watzlawick suggested that to change the image of reality it’s needed to talk to the subconscious and through storytelling. Nonsense, irrationalness and tales effectively change reality […] In others terms it is about Sculpting New Realities by orchestrating and arranging information into narrations which the public captured by or immersed in.

«Recombinant Fiction»
Theoretical Paper and Manifesto.  2008 – 2010.
http://www.paolocirio.net/press/recombinant-fiction.php#intro

Pièce présentée:
The Big Plot.
2009. Mixed Media, dimensions variable.
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/the_big_plot/the_big_plot.php

Brian Steiger’s Blog an expert on the emotional life of the office and the mental problems of middle managers
http://briansteiger.wordpress.com/
http://www.youtube.com/briansteiger71

Vanessa Pinney’s Blog
http://vanessapinney.wordpress.com/
‪Vanessa Pinney hates Brian Steiger [episode AV6]‬
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nJ-38ghsDg&feature=related

Global Conscience revolution
http://www.global-conscience.net/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Conscience/57540418057

Dylon Hammer loves Vanessa Pinney‬
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up6FPyNHEjE
•
Pièce présentée:
Drowning NYC.
2010. Mixed Media, dimensions variable.
http://www.paolocirio.net/work/drowning_nyc/drowning-nyc.php
http://www.drowning-nyc.net/

Michael Meyer, CEO, Future Water Proof Corporation
http://www.futurewaterproofcorp.com/

Sea Level Rise Opportunities – Future Water Proof Corp. – Corporate Video‬
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTzwMsVi0Cw&feature=player_embedded

Climate Change Fighters NYC
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Climate-Change-Fighters-NYC/116705608386337?sk=info
•
•

4/4
Questions: une telle pratique artistique prend un aspect de combat de David contre Goliath? l’art politique à la manière des Yes Men? la question de l’exposition et de ses lieux institutionnels?