Gustavo Romano / Portfolio
Pieza privada #1
Net art, 2005
"To access this piece you must purchase it. Access is restricted. When you purchase the piece, you will be sent a user name and password and you will only be able to access through this key. There is only one user enabled, which ensures the private use of the piece and restricts access to other people..." (fragment of the agreement)
The best kept secret of net.art
Text by Eva Grinstein in ARTECONTEXTO 15 (Madrid, 2007)
One of the most conflicting axes around the issue of authorship linked to digital media is the one that concerns the functioning of the art market. The possibility of infinite technical reproduction in the first place, and then even more so the option of unlimited access in the case of works mounted on the structure of the Internet, are irremediably confronted with the needs of an exchange system governed by the parameters of Western capitalism. During the last decade, discussions on how to establish the value of an immaterial piece, what guarantees of authenticity to offer to a hypothetical buyer or how to regulate the circulation of the work once acquired aimed at clarifying in what terms the variable of commercialization could be tested in the net.art universe. Today, after several years of trial and error, some interesting models of patrimonialization are emerging, among other options, closer to the old function of patronage than to the logic of cultural consumption: many museums and collectors have understood that the dematerialized work of art in general escapes the usual market formats, and therefore cannot be treated as objects ready to be bought and sold.
While galleries are considering how to sell these works, in principle more elusive than, say, a painting or a sculpture; while institutions are considering how to store and exhibit their acquisitions of net. art -in many cases, not by showing them in their physical venues but by incorporating them in their web pages-; while viewers come across the works browsing on their personal computers and not in museums or galleries; while we all wonder where the technological revolution is taking us, artists encouraged by the dynamic and open perspective of the Net continue exploring the techniques, the audiences, the freedoms and limitations of a system that still has a long way to go. It is at this point where the figure of Gustavo Romano (Buenos Aires, 1958), an artist close to the new media since his beginnings and considered one of the main Argentinean referents at local and international level, should be placed. With recent presentations at the I Biennial of Singapore, the 80m2 gallery in Lima, the MEIAC in Badajoz and the Cervantes Institute in Vienna, to name just the last ones; winner this year of a Guggenheim Fellowship for his IP Poetry project, represented by Ruth Benzacar, Romano is one of the artists who have best managed to combine the heritage of conceptualism with the possibilities of the electronic arts.
Pieza Privada No. 1 is the title of one of Romano's most recent works, designed to be consumed and eventually purchased over the Internet. As in several of his previous works -the most recognized, Hyperbody and CyberZoo-, in this new piece the artist uses the medium to talk about the medium, covering its more lurid facets, and in particular the one that concerns the copyright/copyleft debate. He does it with humor, without solemnity. And without stridency: it is an almost secret work, which can only be known by entering a web page, and which has hardly circulated in other spaces, physical or virtual. A work that, from the starting point, embodies the paradox of offering itself and at the same time subtracting itself from our reach. The initial file summarizes in a few lines the general description of the proposal: "Title: Pieza Privada #1. Author: Gustavo Romano. Year of realization: 2005. Medium: Net art. Price: € 8.000". Next, a brief text that anticipates and contains almost everything we will know about it: "To access this piece you must purchase it. Admission is restricted. When you purchase the piece, you will be sent a user name and password and you will only be able to access through it. There is only 1 user enabled, which ensures the private use of the work and restricts access to other people. IT IS RECOMMENDED TO READ CAREFULLY THE CONDITIONS OF TRANSFER OF THE WORK".
The conditions of cession ironize with and from the contractual dimension that today proliferates in the circuits of monetarized art. The buyer must commit himself in four aspects; the first and main one consists in "Not to exhibit the work to any other individual or group of individuals. In the event that the acquisition is made by a company, group or private or public institution, it will assign to only one person the right to view the work. This right is linked to the person. It is perpetual, inalienable and imprescriptible.
In case of death, this right may be assigned to another person by testamentary dispositions or by natural succession if there is only one heir. Otherwise, it must be established by common agreement between the successors or judicially who will be the beneficiary of the exclusive right of visualization, and in no case may this right be divided". The buyer may not reproduce the piece either, and must assume the cost of maintaining the domain where it will be hosted. For his part, the author promises to destroy all the files used to create it, to cede to the buyer the keys and the right of administration of the domain that hosts it, not to modify it and "not to reproduce it by digital or analogical means known or to be known", which would guarantee the perpetuity of the closed system that is the basis of the project. The access page, i.e. the one that is in principle available to whoever finds it, is not part of the "secret piece" and therefore the artist will be able to continue to exhibit it publicly.
Within the framework of this game played in all seriousness under strict judicial terms, there is also a clause that adds the possibility for the buyer to resell the piece in the future, but in that case he will also have to ensure confidentiality. A punishment is foreseen for the hypothetical breach by both the author and the buyer: the one who does not comply with the agreement must pay the same amount as the value of the work, € 8,000. Finally, once all the terms of the transfer of the piece have been clarified, the payment options arrive after sending a basic data form. The money transfer can be made in three ways, by credit card, Pay Pal or Western Union. At the time of writing this article the artist confirms that he has received calls from interested people, but that no one has yet taken possession of this work as mysterious as it is real, as exciting as it is elusive. Who will pay for owning, in the end, a critically intelligent and well-told idea? Who will buy this piece signed by Romano, that is, a portion of his prestige, the rights to get to its authorship? Maybe someday we will know, halfway: if no one cheats, the content will remain forever hidden within the limits of a jealous form, guardian of the treasure destined to a single owner on earth.