artpool.hu: a user's guide

Where Artpool’s self-identification as an “active archive” began in 1979, its virtual presence, artpool.hu, emerged online in 1996. Consistent with the self-generating capacity of the “active archive,” artpool.hu was conceived as more than a repository of digitized ephemera of pre-internet network art practices such as mail art. Instead, artpool.hu is arguably itself a technology through which artistic production becomes the dissemination and exchange of information or, as we would be more likely to say today, data. Artpool’s systematic mode of operation depends on György Galántai’s ongoing request, “please send me information about your activity,” through which multidirectional dialogues have occurred. Exchanges which exemplify this networked method of production have included those with artists such as Ray Johnson (“Please Send to …” and “Please Add to & Return”) and Pete Horobin (DATA: Daily Action Time Archive). This focus on information and data as the currency of exchange, systems, and networks suggest Artpool was always primarily digital in conceptual – if not initially material – terms, and in being so augured the ubiquitous digital conditions of cultural production relevant today. Questions concerning the future ontology of artpool.hu are therefore quite distinct from those related to the passing of Artpool’s physical holdings into the Museum. This paper will provide an outline historical, critical and philosophical “sitemap” of artpool.hu to identify its core properties, position within the field of contemporary network art practice and discuss issues and implications of its potential futures.