(curatorial statement)
Carlos Katastrofsky (1975) has been creating net art pieces that question both the notion of what an art work is and the notion of ownership of these processual projects, not defined by physical properties. Projects such as internet art for poor people (2006), free interactive readymade (2005) or the original (2005) are just a few examples of Katastrofsky's interest in exploring alternative ways of distributing and owning net art, always within the institutional art world logic and always through a critical, yet playful approach. His projects are mostly conceptual, not defined by fancy visual effects or sophisticated programming. There is no "beautiful" or "poetic" things to be seen on the screen, just the critical use of massified online tools that he masters in order to achieve his own agenda.
lastwishes, the project the artist created specially for LX 2.0, is a great example of the lack of any visual aesthetics in his work. In a simplistic (yet pretty accurate) way, there is nothing to be seen in his new project. lastwishes deals solely with the principles of communication. Mailing lists are popular tools for the exchange of thoughts and opinions: they make multiple (written) dialogues possible as well as the archiving for future references. In this work the mailinglist-software "mailman" is modified to allow only one single posting from a sender. The user is able to subscribe and to receive messages endlessly but post only once and by this immediately get unsubscribed. The idea of "exchange" is thereby turned into something absurd: one can listen but only talk once. Sending a message thus requires meaningful content, "chatting" becomes impossible.
The ephemeral quality of this sending-process reminds of zen-qualities: be quiet and learn to listen but if you really have to say something meaningful then talk. Above that, the question arises: how is communication possible when there is a quiet, listening mass and no one dares to stand up and speak? According to an Austrian proverb, "talking is silver and being quiet is gold", but being quiet only makes sense within the process of communication.
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