Trondheim Matchmaking 2009 is proud to announce the opening of the very first

Nordic Electroboutique!

In relation to this very last Trondheim Matchmaking, Electroboutique launches its new conceptual store:

Art that Cares.

The 150 sq. meters concept store named "Art that Cares" will be opened on October 16 in Fjordgt. 11, Trondheim, Norway.

Electroboutique's first concept store in the Nordic countries will offer unique art works developed by our highly competent contemporary artists, designers and engineers during the last 5 years.

The store, designed in eye catching eco-friendly style will emphasize the visual and functional qualities of Electroboutique's amazing art products.

Electroboutique is an innovative art-production company. We make cutting-edge art works that merge together style, interactivity and critical approach. Exclusive but affordable, they manifest the new era of responsible art making and open new horizons for creative consumption.

At Electroboutique, we believe that people and the environment are just as important as the art we make. Electroboutique manufactures sustainable art products that are not only energy efficient, but also helps reduce carbon footprint from the environment.

Electroboutique contributes tirelessly to social and charitable activities in order to create a more beautiful world. We are also committed to monitoring and progressively improving the conditions of people who work for us.

Electroboutique delivers art that cares.

Cares about nature.

Cares about people.

Cares about you.

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TechnoPop:

Electroboutique´s ‘Art That Cares’.

Aristarkh Chernyshev, Roman Minaev, Alexei Shulgin.

Based in Moscow, Alexei Shulgin started during the early 90´s to produce art works that used the Internet as a tool for his art practice. Shulgin is in this context to be recognized as one of the early pioneers within the field of new media arts.

Some 15 years later Electroboutique was founded. In 2005 Shulgin and colleague Aristarkh Chernyshev started the Electroboutique project as a direct reaction to what new media arts had become. Electroboutique took the profile of a combined gallery and gadget concept store that sold hands-on ‘techno toys’ and interactive screen products. Later on artist Roman Minaev joined the group.

In the manifesto for the project ‘Media Art 2.0’ from 2008, members of the Electroboutique claims that the object characteristics of their new works liberated them from the ‘media art ghetto’.

The Electroboutique project became in itself a comment to the new media field. Electroboutique postulates that software art and net art are in crisis, if not already dead, absorbed by media culture and new IT products, by ‘digital banalities’.

’We had moved away from media art and no longer wanted to be associated with it,’ Shulgin states in an interview with Rhizome in 2008.

Electroboutique´s works contains an immanent critique of today´s capitalistic systems. As a paradox this critique is wrapped in variations of commercially desirable gadgets. Gadgets that today have achieved a unique position inside the free market economy.

The exhibition manifests it’s self as a project that wants to investigate today’s relationships between art production and practice, and our escalating consumption oriented society.

The Electroboutige´s ’Art That Cares’ is a supermarket for the arts. The fact that the art works are for sale for real money in a real world suddenly gives the exhibition an ironic twist, the final revenge of the nerds!

Electroboutique asserts that the current state of ‘creative capitalism’, where creativity equals consumption, and marketing strategies have taken the form of art projects, has led to art being the ultimate commodity. Media art is in this light becoming the main driving force for commercial ideas and development, as the media art field leads the way by showing how to creatively deal with new technologies.

Electroboutige´s concept store ’Art That Cares’, appears as a an artistically well founded project where the art works itself exists in a kind of techno-surreal pop-art landscape. Like some hybrid on acid; it is TechnoPop.

With the establishment of Electroboutique, and the opening of the first Scandinavian concept store ’Art That Cares’, the members leave the world of virtual art production that they themselves have been an important part of building up.

Trondheim Matchmaking 2009 is the very last. Since 2002 we have arranged Trondheim Matchmaking as an annual international festival for art and technology, and in the light of the positive development this project has had over these years, TEKS will from 2010 start a new biennial for art and technology in Trondheim under the title Meta.Morf.

Electroboutique´s ’Art That Cares’ summarizes many of the challenges that Trondheim Matchmaking has touched upon through different projects over the years. The many questions for discussion that Electroboutique´s project represents are vital to the future of the field of media arts.

Espen Gangvik

TEKS

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’Art That Cares’ is financed and produced by TEKS - Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre in collaboration with Electroboutique, 2009.

Trondheim Matchmaking archives 2002 - 2008

NORSK