Neterotopia is an event that takes place in various spaces on the Net. Eleven artists from different countries have been invited to choose an Internet site and use the spaces usually reserved for advertising: Christophe Bruno on www.liberation.fr, Ghazel on www.sortiraparis.com, Susan Hefuna on http://movies.tenuae.com, Nathalie Hunter on www.google.com, Yuji Oshima on www.arman.fm, Peter Lemmens and Eva Cardon on www.wunderground.com, Adam Vackar on www.inrockutibles.com, Stephen Vitiello on www.villagevoice.com, Luca Vitone on www.viamichelin.it, Version (Gabriela Vanga, Ciprian Muresan and Mircea Cantor) on www.corriere.it, 0100101110101101.ORG on www.film.it.
These spaces are thus transformed into exhibition surfaces and points of access to a pathway branching through the public and virtual space of the Internet, the major node of which is the Neterotropia website.
The project, ideated and curated by Daniele Balit, is simultaneously hosted via web by three European art centers, the site de cration contemporaine Palais Tokyo in Paris, the NICC – New International Cultural Center in Antwerp and the Careof in Milan. Through the stations installed in physical space, the public can see the artworks on-line, and experiment with digit@al, a special device by artist Pierre Mertens that puts a new slant on the rules of chatting.
Neterotopia is the result of works between the NICC and Love Difference /Pistoletto Foundation, and traces the confines of a hybrid space, with a changeable and heterogeneous geography, drawing on Michel Foucaults concept of Heterotopia. As opposed to the non-places of Utopia, Heterotopias (literally: places of difference), are defined by Foucalt as other spaces capable of accepting difference and possibility, while not detaching from the real world. Neterotopias are therefore inserted into the Network system of communication, observing its rules and limits, while giving a new value to these advertising spaces.