STARVANGER, NORWAY.- The Article Biennale 2006 takes plaves through ovember 30. The goal of Article is to promote artforms which don’t merely employ electronic techniques in its production and display, but also actively comment on technology, the ethics and politics of technology and the evolution and dissemination of technology. Article wishes to establish an open arena for artforms which critique and engage social processes and present reflected positions on the expressive qualities and contexts of the media.

With the term «Unstable artforms» we intend to encompass art which is not institutionalised and stabilised by traditional frameworks of production and distribution, art which crosses disciplinary boundaries, which engages unusual contexts and references, or art which is not anchored by permanent, static objects.

Today, this can take the forms of interactive installations and interventions in public spheres or as net-based arts and actions; tomorrow this can be arts employing genetics or nanotechnology. The biannual has ambitions to employ innovative mediation strategies, for example by using public and private spaces as exhibition arenas. Instead of locating the exhibition exclusively within a gallery, we want to broadcast artistic expressions to the people through f.ex TV and mobile media, and use any available public space as an arena for art.

The basic proposition and theme of the project as a whole is the artistic and democratic potential in the use of technology in a socially engaged art practice. Article will give this homeless and experimental art a context, and present it to a local, national and international audience.

Article intends to present productions/work which are site-specific or made for traditional exhibition venues, work which explores and expands the potential of artistic expression in our immediate environment and objects.

In addition to the i/o/lab staff, each biannual will employ new curatorial groups or individuals to formulate themes, invite artists and select projects from received proposals. They will work with the basic theme of the biannual as a starting point, but essentially be free to formulate every biannual exhibition’s theme as they wish.

The Article biannual of 2006 will be the first in the series. We invited three nordic practitioners within the fields of electronic and unstable arts, who we felt would contribute to a broad perspective and profound understanding of the artistic potential in the formulated areas of focus. We encouraged them to bring in specific artists and projects, and we also sent out a general Call for Works to several european and nordic mailinglists.

Selection of works - When the deadline for proposals arrived, we had received over 150 project proposals from more than 120 individual artists. From these we selected a shortlist of 21 projects, projects which stood out in terms of quality and which could coalesce into a set of coherent themes for this years exhibition. From the shortlist we have looked at various configurations and compressed the programme down to a selection of 8 projects.

These projects have a common ground in their situation outside of the traditional gallery space. They share a keen and sincere interest in the potential of artistic expression as an agent for activating broader social contexts and stimulating thinking around the roles of art in society, our personal and cultural positions in a broad sociocultural context, and the potential of new media as instrument and modulator within this framework.

The theme for this years biannual can be extended from this; an examination of how our society is transformed and recast by techno- logies and interfaces which mediate social connections, ideas and cultural expressions across traditional, physical borders.