I am an artwork ? Yes, no, maybe, why?

Between January 2002 and November 2007 the visitors of the webpages http://www.fraclr.org/users/abrahams/jesuisunoeuvredart.pl and http://www.fraclr.org/users/abrahams/iamanartwork.pl could participate in a collective net art work. (français)

In this work, made with financial help of the FRACLR, the visitors could react to the question "Am I an artwork, yes, no , maybe?" A positive reaction was rewarded with the sound of a kiss; a negative reaction gave a grrrr. At the same time the IP number of the visitor was retrieved and used to influence on the colours of the page layout. This was a way to attract attention to the fact that the visitor was not anonymous, something many did not know in 2002.
What remains of this experiment in shared writing is a collective text, a range of arguments and moods around the concept of " artwork". Artwork in general, but more specifically artwork on the Net; artwork which questions the concept of the author and the role of the institution. As Olia Lialina demonstrates in the article "Location="Yes"", the information in the location bar of a navigator is important and artists use this in their works. Thus I am glad that the archives are located on the site of the FRACLR. Sadly they disappeared in 2019.



"I am an artwork, yes, no, maybe, why?" has been presented in ‘Les 20 ans des FRAC’ in 2003 and in Betaspace in August 03. The collective text written by the page visitors was used during a performance on September 24, 2006 in the frame of the exhibition “Chauffe Marcel!” organized by FRAC Languedoc Roussillon in the Panacée, Montpellier.
A follow up : "I am (not) an artwork", today located on bram.org, has been put onthe site of the FRACLR in the autumn of 2002.

In 2005 in an article on BramTV for Furtherfield.org (London) Joachim Desarmenien remarked on the importance of the URL in the navigation bar in the work of Annie Abrahams :
"In Bramtv as in most of Annie Abraham's works, both the URL and hosting sever is very much an integral part of the content in the ongoing projects. For example 'I am an artwork' is hosted on the frac languedoc roussillon's website, an official art institute, that has a large contemporary art collection, 'I am not' 'served by' a splash page for Rhizome, Annie seems to always use every glimpse of information that there is to gather to put up new ways of displaying/retreating information, name dropping?"

In 2002 in the article 'The cyber-kitchen et Je (ne) suis (pas) une œuvre d'art, problématiques de la collaboration' for the Centre International d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, Cécile Petit wrote about the role of the visitor :
" Un détail nous arrête toutefois dans notre enthousiasme… Je (ne) suis (pas) une œuvre d'art, le titre même de l'œuvre, pose directement les questions qu'est-ce qu'une œuvre ? Qui est artiste ? Qu'est-ce que l'art ?… ......... Ces deux œuvres, hors de la démarche propre à ces artistes, mais de par leur nature même, posent également la question de la place du spectateur dans l'œuvre on line, qu'il soit intégré ou pas dans le processus de création de celle-ci. Le regardeur de Duchamp est aujourd'hui "spect-acteur". Et même s'il est vrai qu'il ne faut pas faire trop grand cas de la place effective de l'utilisateur au sein d'une œuvre interactive car elle reste somme toute limitée, l'internaute est désormais intégré dans son concept. Et finalement, c'est ce processus de "dépossession" de l'œuvre par l'artiste et de "ré-appropriation" de celle-ci par l'utilisateur qui importe dans un projet de collaboration. C'est dans cette dynamique relationnelle et créative que l'œuvre prend tout son sens."