Friendship Book

Sat, Sep­tem­ber 5 2015, 12:00 — 19:00 /// 
Inter­net Yami-Ichi, Ars Elec­tron­i­ca Fes­ti­val, PostC­i­ty, Linz ///

The Japan­ese art col­lec­tive and self-pro­claimed secret soci­ety IDPW hosts an Inter­net Yami-Ichi – an inter­net black mar­ket – dur­ing the Ars Elec­tron­i­ca Fes­ti­val 2015 at the Postc­i­ty in Linz. The Inter­net Yami-Ichi is an one-day flea mar­ket to sell prod­ucts from the inter­net face-to-face in real space. Flea mar­kets and the inter­net are con­nect­ed with their pen­chant for chaos, fanati­cism and gor­geous use­less items, says the secret soci­ety IDPW. The Inter­net Yami-Ichi wants to trans­form this essence of the inter­net, the wish­es and desires of the peo­ple which are push­ing it, into real­i­ty. It will be a cel­e­bra­tion on enthu­si­asm and on the ideas of the inter­net – but offline. After IDPW has brought this black mar­ket of punk cap­i­tal­ism to Tokyo, Berlin, Brux­elles and Ams­ter­dam, Linz will be the next station.

qujOchÖ is rep­re­sen­tat­ed at the Inter­net Yami-Ichi by Thomas Philipp, togeth­er with Eva Maria Dreisieb­n­er, with their project FRIENDSHIP BOOK, a rem­i­nis­cence on friend­ship books which have been heav­i­ly used by young peo­ple some years ago. Mean­while per­son­al notes like these have been trans­formed main­ly to social media plat­forms. qujOchÖ makes an attempt on the analo­giza­tion of this dig­i­tal phe­nom­e­non. For this an inge­nious method is used to get data from the vis­i­tors of the fes­ti­val and sell them back as print­ed friend­ship books at a lat­er time.

(Pho­tos: qujOchÖ, Ars Electronica)