Geocaching as a nontraditional place for presenting contemporary art and passing it along to new finders. The current project of the Hájek & Porcal duo freely relates back to their first geocaching mission which they realized in 2009 in the surroundings of the Gas Station in Slaný. By means of hidden containers (caches) and communities of “seekers” (www.geocaching.com) a new space for confrontations with contemporary art were created. This time, during the Fotograf Festival, the duo thought up two stand-alone plans of how to get the public involved in artistic exchanges.
“We want to offer the community a new form of treasure – of works of contemporary artists via non-violent manipulation, and want to utilize this as a new channel for the communication, presentation and distribution of art. The works will circulate amongst seekers thanks to a thought-out and functioning system of geocaching – the stored data will become the property of the finders. We want to create a meeting point between two independent social networks, between the community of geocachers and the community of artists. We will try to make use of their possibilities, their mutually distinct communicational strategies, in order to create new strategies.”
The goal of the first intervention, inspired by how geocaching works, is to create a simple presentational system in the ArtMap Office in Školská 28. With the help of this system visitors-finders will be able to exchange photographs between one other. The rule for exchanging is the requirement that one must leave in place of the original photo an photo of equal (or higher) quality.
“We are thematizing both the issue of appreciating the value of an object of art, but we are also touching on questions of personal responsibility. As long as all the participants exchange “fairly” we will come to witness the “best possible exchange.” That’s of course a utopia. We suppose that individual appreciations of values, personal tastes and people’s indolence will hinder this. Although it is not clear when and to what extent this will happen. On a second, more personal level we want to enable the participant a closer proximity to “his/her” work, which he/she will achieve by appropriating it. This is the focus of our project and exactly this moment interests us most.”
http://www.lukashajek.net/hajekporcal/