Deinstitution

Can we think of the institution from a poetic standpoint?
Can a poetic-visual experience (de)activate an idea about the institution?

des- (prefix): derived from Latin dis-. Denotes negation or inversion of the meaning of the simple word to which it is prefixed.
institution: A public or private organization that has been founded to carry out a specific cultural, scientific, political, or social task.

Net.art

The web, in its hypertextuality, is an immense collection of electronic data that continues to grow, a virtual space in which we can easily get lost. Typically, our way of using the web is based on a series of search engine indexes and links on pages that connect content.

Our way of navigating and interacting with the network and the internet is a path designed through clicks and hyper-studied and predictable behaviors. The backstage of the web, the constantly functioning programming code, ensures that we visually interpret objects, colors, and lines in a certain way. Conceptually, they direct our perception of the graphical interface, keeping us confined to its access, oblivious to what this virtual space may truly imply.

Using programming code to create websites that defy expectations when accessed is in itself a subversive act for our habitation-navigation of the internet. Therefore, in the current hyperconnected world, the creation of counter-navigation on the internet is urgently needed. This means being able to access sites that are not what we expected, perhaps revisiting the approaches that net.art explored in the 1990s, experimenting with pieces that break language, code, and expectations, in order to create a space for potential, to pause data consumption, and to reflect.

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Deinstitution is an imaginary and immaterial exercise that invites dialogue on the screen through a website. The proposal involves the fragmentation and deconstruction of the word “institution” through clicks. While waiting for something new to form, what actually happens is that the structure becomes chaotic, and the initial nodes forming the word turn into a tangle of illegible and imprecise letters through clicks. What is the meaning? Confusion takes up space as a text begins to type on the screen, narrating a particular vision about institutions. The act of writing this text gives meaning to the piece, while waiting time imposes itself to obtain all the information.

The interface is a sort of millennial interactive metaphor and visual poetry. The web format and programming languages make it accessible from any device, with no further pretension than that of re-deconstructing and conceptually making visible the idea that when the meaning (institution) is broken, the presence of an interconnected network emerges that makes it possible and sustains it.

Deinstitution will be created through a network matrix.

The subversive power that resides in the institution is only possible through its dismantling.

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“In the societies of the 21st century, art will not be exhibited. It will be disseminated.”

La Société Anonyme.