Assange is the star of the seventh edition of the Internet Pavilion

The seventh edition of the AIIA Internet Pavilion-Assange is Internet and the Internet is Assange-will be held from June 12 to November 27, 2022. Miltos Manetas (Athens, 1964), a Greek painter and multimedia artist who founded the Internet Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, donated eleven oil-on-canvas paintings of Julian Assange during the opening week of the Art Biennale 2022. Now Manetas is presenting at the Gervasuti Foundation in Venice the exhibition Assange in Prison curated by Mara Sartore.

According to Miltos Manetas, Julian Assange is a mythological figure, outside of time and space, embodying the contradictions of liberal democracies, a punished Prometheus. If the Internet was created as a free space for the exchange of information and global communication, Assange’s account narrates the limitations of this system and highlights the dark areas of the web. The artist identifies with Assange as he stands at the limits of the art system.In 2009, the first Internet Pavilion participated as an official collateral event of the Biennale; in fact, it opened its doors that year after Miltos Manetas and curator Jan Aman received an invitation from the Venice Biennale directed by Daniel Birbaum to add the Internet to the list of participating countries. It was then excluded in subsequent editions because the Pavilion brought the pirates of The Pirate Bay to the lagoon city. Thirteen years later, now the Internet Pavilion is giving away its paintings.

“I dedicated this seventh edition of the Internet Pavilion to Julian Assange because thanks to the NFTs he cannot be erased, as Blockchain exists and therefore no one can plug Julian Assange’s mouth,” said Miltos Manetas speaking about this edition of the Pavilion. “Assange may or may not be liked, but Julian Assange is the Internet and the Internet is Assange.”

For Miltos Manetas, Assange’s prison represents a state of mind and a human condition, even before the immersive experience created at the Gervasuti Foundation.

Miltos Manetas and Mara Sartore met at the first edition of the Internet Pavilion. They collaborated for the first two editions, and then again in 2019 when Miltos Manetas was a guest at Venice Meeting Point.

The seventh edition of the Internet Pavilion was made possible with the collaboration of Lightbox, Galleria Valentina Bonomo, Hyperuranium.io and with the support of DiEM25.

For more info: www.padiglioneinternet.com

Assange is the star of the seventh edition of the Internet Pavilion

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