Institutional anxieties about expensive real estate, attendance statistics and appeasing fickle corporate and government sponsors simply do not apply to online projects such as this one. Internet ideas must be stripped down to the barest essentials set by current technological constraints of sending data around the globe. Physical characteristics of online works are mediated through the glow of fingerprint smeared screens and cheap computer speakers. While the physical and social constraints of the internet are great, the freedom gained should not be underestimated. Furthermore, the original concept of blogging is not unlike traditional curating: bloggers became known for linking choice treasures from the internet sea. This project, and many others that deal specifically with art such as www.vvork.com and www.whitneybiennial.com are part of a rapidly forming internet art tradition still only tentatively recognized by the official discourse. We could, of course, just follow blog practices of casual hotlinking to works. But we prefer to combine the old way of direct collaboration with artists with the newer way of machine diffusion. We love .no, the Norwegian domain suffix: it is an inadvertent negation of everything it sends forward. Since the Nobel Prize Institute did not register a .no address, (they have .org) we assume that they were at least subliminally aware of this. However we will not offer our actual position regarding the Nobel Peace Prize because it is more important to use this space to ruminate on both the very admirable and less-than-admirable aspects of such an endeavor. A prize offered to "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" opens itself to questions about criteria. For the 2010 edition of the Unofficial Nobel Peace Prize online exhibition, we chose fifteen artists and four artist groups who responded with varying degrees of abstraction towards the high concept of the prize. The Norwegian artist group Alt For Hersleb summarize their struggle to save a school located in central Oslo from apparently racist policies. From Stockholm, the home of the other Nobel Prizes, Leif Elgreen sent us his intense reading about privilege. Lars Laumann and Vela Arbutina sent cloud links to digitally altered versions of the artists who were invited to perform at the fluffy annual "Nobel Peace Prize Concert". Catalan artists Anna Ramos and Roc Jiménez de Cisneros increased ritual intensity and absurdity in their proposed ceremony in Argentina. Amsterdam based Rafael Rozendaal linked two of his web site specific works as almost totally abstract, almost apolitical, aesthetic statements. Steve Roden performs word associations with nobel, peace and prize for the sake of obtuse poetry. New Zealander Alicia Frankovich and Taiwanese Patrick Tsai suggest the inevitability of physical violence and endless power struggle. Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani sent the simple but impossible message "Peace Be Upon You" paired with a simulation of a local marker that normally displays the distance to the holy city: but this one is printed with the exact distance between Oslo and Jerusalem, now historically linked. Roee Rosen punches as a progressive Israeli to reclaim the rhetorics and history from conservative hawks within the society. The classic Chinese works of painting and poetry speak for themselves: art is a powerful form of telepathy from person to person despite great distances. In January 2009, the Nobel Institute sent us a "Cease and Desist" letter stating that we had violated their "trademark and copyright". We sent a letter in response asking them what their "trade" is exactly, and stating that this project is philosophical (!) and does not involve financial gain. We spoke to Norwegian lawyers who are experts in internet legislation and the Norwegian Artist Union (NBK) and they unanimously recommended that we should take www.nobelprize.no down or risk serious financial penalties. The Nobel Institute has not sent another C&D letter, and we have not yet rolled over. This project has no funding and is not for financial gain. All artists and everyone else involved have contributed their time and work for free. Peace, Alejandra Salinas
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Aeron Bergman
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