Panoply, Please


Panoplie.org is a French "web magazine" which, true to its name displays a great diversity of projects. The site is run by a collective of artists and "aims to be a platform for exchange between artists and Net surfers." The group highlights emergent, risk-taking practices while also collaborating with art institutions and galleries to broaden the horizons of "traditional art" discourse reflected on the site and, in turn, presented in these spaces. Panoplie is particularly interested in internet-based work and has recently been commissioning online performances that challenge the artists and push the medium. The organizers kindly leave the question of archiving webstreams of live works to the artists, in an effort to free them up and give them permission to fail, but recent works by MTAA, Igor Stromajer, and Anne Laforet are all preserved online. Up next is Helen Varley Jamieson's piece, "a gesture through the flames." On Monday January 28 at 8pm (Paris local time), the Australian writer, theater practitioner, and digital artist will begin broadcasting a performance that "will touch on the impossibility of having a frank conversation about loneliness with the dead." That sounds challenging, indeed! The piece is the last installment in Breaking Solitude, a project of artist and Panoplie co-organizer Annie Abrahams. - Marisa Olson




Image: MTAA, Still from web performance "Frank (Again)", 2008