6pm Your Local Time

“Does one have an obligation to view the work first-hand? […] Is it incumbent upon the consumer to bear witness, or can one’s art experience derive from magazines, the Internet, books, and conversation?” – Seth Price, 2002

Launching in the UK on Nov 22, 6 PM YOUR LOCAL TIME (6PM YLT) is a networked, distributed, one night contemporary art event taking place simultaneously in different locations, coordinated from one central venue and documented online via a web application. The locations (institutions, non-profit spaces, commercial galleries, artist’s studios) will address their local audience and, through the dedicated web platform, a global audience.

While visiting your local 6PM YLT event(s) will allow you to experience a single portion first hand, the only way to get the whole picture will be to access its online documentation: all exhibits will be documented and shared in real time by organizers and audience on the dedicated web platform, thanks to a web application aggregating content from different social platforms.

How It Works

Almost every art-addict is now using social networks like Instagram, Twitter, Vine and Facebook to take photographs and short clips during art exhibitions and to share them with their contacts. By suggesting the use of a given #hashtag to all the organizers and audience participants, we can collect and show all this documentation on a dedicated web platform.

Our software will automatically collect all the pictures, tweets, and videos produced about the 6PM YLT event, and will show them on a map (using geographical data) or on a timeline. Before the event we will see the attention and the number of pictures growing, and during the day of the event we will see a massive increase of the content produced.

After the event we will be able to collect all of the content that would have been produced, store it and use it for a publication.

Conceptual Framework

Today, art is mostly experienced through its documentation. Even if globalization made it easier and cheaper to organize exhibitions, ship artworks, invite artists and move audiences to any part of the world, the excess of cultural activity all around the world makes it impossible to be everywhere at the same time.

Additionally, bits are still faster and cheaper than atoms, and we can enjoy them more comfortably on different devices. The border between first hand and second hand experience, reality and media documentation has become increasingly blurred. This, together with an economic crisis that is becoming endemic, invites us to rethink exhibitions as a way to circulate artworks and make a cultural statement.

Why to ship artworks when they can be put on show in your own space, and become part of a global art event through their own documentation? Why to work on a specific node, when you can rely on a network?

An Open Format

6 PM YOUR LOCAL TIME is a format conceived by the Link Art Center and developed in collaboration with Abandon Normal Devices and Gummy Industries. These lead partners will develop the platform and work with a network of artists, galleries and institutions to organize a small “pilot” event, 6PM YLT UK, and a massive launch event, 6PM YLT Europe.

After the launch event, 6PMYLT will become an open format available for anyone to utilise. The lead partners will maintain the platform and support the coordination of events all around the world. Anyone will be able to organize a 6PMYLT event following these simple instructions:

1. Fix a date for your event; 2. Invite your network of museums,institutions, no-profit organizations, commercial galleries and artists to take part in it; 3. Contact the lead partners to get access to the web platform and download the customizable logo.

6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME is a project conceived by Fabio Paris for the Link Center for the Arts of the Information Age, in partnership with Abandon Normal Devices and with support from Gummy Industries. 

6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME is realized in the framework of Masters & Servers, a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugo more (HR), Abandon Normal Devices (UK), Link Art Center (IT) and d-i-n-a / The Influencers (ES).

Up to August 2016, Masters & Servers will explore networked culture in the post-digital age, a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugo more (HR), AND (UK), Link Art Center (IT) and d-i-n-a / The Influencers (ES).

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.