After having started using the Internet in 1993, ever since 1995 I have entertained some web presence or other, to serve as a reference to my work as an artist, for long periods of time even being the only work that I made. Like from 1998 to 2005, when the web publication Notes, Quotes, Provocations and Other Fair Use was the only conduit and display for my visual and textual production — ‘NQPaOFU’ actually remaining my only ‘piece’ from those years. Whatever spin-off has resulted from it, it all was native to that one work, to which only small changes and additions have been performed since.

On hold

The end of the NQPaOFU work in progress was inevitable from the start but has happened largely unnoticed. No vernissage was organized to make it shine and it does not fit the common definition of a ‘finished’ work, nor can it be considered ‘unfinished’. It has never been documented, does not appear in any catalogues, though it has been written about while it was in full progress. I like to think of it as ‘on hold’. Meanwhile it has technically moved from being an independently served domain to being a folder in the joukekleerebezem.com hierarchy, leaving no mistake about its status. Here it sits with other web publications ‘on hold’, being material for future posts here.

When I recently changed my plan at the hosting provider I obtained the possibility of unlimited subdomains. Previously, with only limited possibilities for subdomains, for a new publication I decided mostly for a new folder in the joukekleerebezem.com architecture, now I can conceptualize the differences between folders and subdomains. I will dedicate separate posts to distinct features of the handling of the domain and the publications that it allows. I need to find out how the Internet and web serve my work best, with all the different possibilities of display and publicity that have developed since two decades.

Operation

The subject of this weblog is the detailed operation of reconceptualising what the Internet-domain-bearing-part-of-my-first-and-full-family-name (which’s postponed registration posed no problem at all, for obvious reasons…) can provide, both to myself and to my audiences, and how it will be built. What will be its architecture, its interface, its editorial grain of voice, how will it relate to other media that I apply in my work. How will I operate it and how will it operate me?

We have quickly familiarized with the recent form of representation, which is the medium of the personal website. The artist’s name, either nom de plume or natural, with the dotcom TLD is no exception for an address. Whether ambitious in true to the person-by-the-same-name honesty or straightforward in brand brutality, our names are easier dropped in the web than in any other medium.