beeoff.se


This is Beeoff

A Swedish artist group based in Stockholm. They have worked under the name Beeoff since 1998. The artists working within beeoff today are Mikael Scherdin, Olle Huge and Tomas Linell.

Since the start they have focused on real-time processes and worked with advanced Internet technology as a distribution form. Their work often combines sound and images, where the image affects on the sound and vice versa.

To produce real-time image and sound flows they often build sculptures or installations containing video cameras, security cameras, tv-monitors, vegetables, animals, computers and a lot of more things.

This means that the image and the sound stream is connected to a physical installation that is as visual and in the same time the works can have very strong concepts.

The real-time concept
Central in all works since the beginning has been the real-time and a concept like real-time art can be very descriptive. Below the theories of the real-time concept is described by the curator Björn Norberg, that has been working close to the group since he beginning.

With real-time is meant what takes place right now, at the moment, right before our eyes. With real-time art is meant the art that is performed, created, distributed and shown in real-time, live. In the real-time art the real-time is the most important tool for the artist and the art created should not exist without it. The techniques can differ. The real-time art can be video sculptures or installations, performances, wind generated art, Internet based art, art containing surveillance or video cameras, animals or anything as long as the art is created in real-time.

Why real-time?
What is real becomes more and more rare and exclusive in a society that becomes more and more artificial. In the consumption society of the 1950's and the 1960's people found themselves in an acquisitive society filled up with artefacts, things and belongings. The object had until then a function as carriers of status, memory and history. What occurred then was a inflation of objects and they started to lose of importance. They were no more unique but consumed by the masses in enormous amounts. Now we have in many ways passed the acquisitive society - at least in terms of a society where objects still are of a large importance. A new generation has discovered something else, that they think is of greater importance than the consumption of items - the communication.

Now, when all objects, previously perceived as status symbols so expensive that only a few could afford them, have become everyone's belonging, the unique has become rare and much coveted. One example is antiquities that have gained interest. The antiquities represent a time when the object was something unique and produced by craftmen and they can not be reproduced or copied.

This development has reshaped the art and the artists have chosen between two direction. Some artists have stressed the mass consumption. Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol are among the most important artists in this direction. In their art the single object is lost and their works becomes multiple objects. In the other direction artists have chosen to create art without creating objects and new forms of art have showed up: performance, conceptual art, processual art, environmental art, digital art, mail art and more. Interesting is that many of those art forms have the real-time as an important ingredient.

The museum as an idea is old and the origin can be found in the cabinet lockers of the 17th century. The cabinets were filled with different kinds of artefacts that could represent the known world. The owner of the cabinet could then literary hold the world in his hands. The object was not just an object, it represented something more, a part of the world. Many of the central museums were founded on the 19th century and has preserved the idea of the object as a key to the history. The museums use the artefacts in the same way as they did in the 17th century. By collecting artefacts we could get an image of the past and by collecting and preserving them it is possible to preserve our history to future generations.

Today when objects in general lose the function as holders of status and history it is natural that the antiquarians at the museums are confused. How to preserve our contemporary time to coming generations if there are no relevant artefacts? The museums are going through a gigantic identity crises at the moment. The distance between the past and the contemporary time is growing all the time. What is real, f ex old artefacts made unique and by hand craft becomes more and more rare. They represent something not artificial and will gain more and more interest. How can we look at these objects? In our post modern time, or perhaps post-post modern, we know that the object is no key to the past, objects are no time machines and they can not give us an image of the past. As its best they can give us a number of possible explanations filtered by the present time.

At the art museums the identity crises is very clear. They have a mission to collect and preserve art works that represent our current time. But now with all new art forms, how can it be possible to preserve or collect a art work that is built on real-time and are made for the moment, art where no object can be found and where the concept is what matters?

The discussion is of course very obvious regarding the real-time art. The only way to preserve it is to document it. But the result would then be just a documentation, not a work of art since the real-time will be gone.

Realtime - typical for our present time
Today even time has become insecure and artificial. The theory of relativity and the quantum physics have taught us that everything is relative and in those theories we probably can find the origin to all post-modern theory, where the context has become crucial. Even time is conquered by the context.

As written above the world is becoming more and more artificial and what is real, genuine becomes more and more rare. We have abandoned the object for the communication. Today the communication is what the object was in the 60's. Mass communication will certainly lead to a inflation of communication and communication will become a surface without a meaning. Then the real-time communication becomes more and more important. We can see it in trends of reality shows in the television. The real life and the real time is more and more investigated. The audience is thrilled by the possibility to peep into the lives of other people and besides looking at the TV we can surf in on the TV-station website and follow the reality show in real-time. Real-time broadcast as web-TV is certainly something that will gain interest.

The real-time is very connected to the acceleration in our communication society. The new communication via Internet and mobile telephones takes place in real-time. Our patience is always shorter and we can't accept waiting for answers. We want our communication to be immediate.

The real will of course also be more and more important for the art and the Internet technology will speed up this process. There already are web-TV stations and more are going to be founded as the Internet connections and the interfaces will become better and the mobile- and satellite communication will be cheaper. Mobile communication will soon include streamed live moving images. The ideas of an art TV, as an alternative to traditional TV, ideas of for example Nam June Paik in the 60- and 70's have become reality and here the real-time will play an important role.

The object and the process
Many forms of the contemporary art seems to seek for a way to work with a process rather than the object. Using the modernistic tools of perception the works seems pointless or to have nothing to say. The aesthetic is of less importance than the conceptual thinking.


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