PRESS RELEASE
Exhibition: CRAC ‚ Creative Room for Art and Computing
Time: 9 September - 1 October 2000
Venue: Liljevalchs Gallery, Stockholm
Project leader: Peter Hagdahl
CRAC Exhibition Co-ordinator: Ulla West
CRAC Participating artists: Lotta Antonsson, Anders Boqvist, Jon Brunberg, Nils Claesson, Peter Hagdahl, Karin Hansson, Annika von Hausswolff, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Mats Hjelm, Henrik Håkansson, Arijana Kajfes, Ulrika Karlsson, Anita Malmqvist, Tore Nilsson, Gunnel Pettersson, Ann Sofie Sidén, Ingvar Sjöberg and Sven Westerlund.
About the exhibition: CRAC (Creative Room for Art and Computing) began as a discussion between several dedicated artists who were seeking solutions to the acute practical and economic problems facing those working with contemporary art. Digitally based Contemporary art involves the purchasing of some very expensive equipment and individual artists often find the costs prohibitive. The solution to this collective problem is simply co-operation, sharing equipment and costs. This resulted in the founding of CRAC in 1997, with economic funding from the Bildkonstnärsfonden, the Stiftelsen Framtidens Kultur, the KK-Stiftelsen and several other interested parties. An association of artists, comprising of some 350 members, now runs the operation. CRAC currently has one of the most well equipped media laboratories in Europe, where research, artistic development and artistic production take place in the largely uncharted boarder country between the worlds of technology and art. CRAC has without doubt been of paramount importance to the area of Swedish contemporary art that uses digital technology. The digital media, with its specific characteristics, has resulted in a new wave of interest and participation from the general public, which has advanced the frontiers for the exhibition media¼s interactivity, without making the technology itself the end product. The inclusion of both artistic and social questions continues to be a central aspect of the agenda in digital art. It is this unique combination of technical skill, together with a commitment to content, which has formed the basis of the enormous success that Swedish art has had globally. CRAC¼s exhibition at Liljevalchs Gallery is the first public presentation of the collected experience of the operation, as well as the first great manifestation in Sweden of art making use of the new media. Catalogue: CRAC will present a catalogue of the exhibition on the net: www.crac.org/katalog on the 6th of September.
See also: Disjunction (and nowhere to turn to)