pop~Feature WESTBANK INDUSTRIES

State, Digital Artists Homeland, and Net Economics

The physical placement of the virtual information in the net, is just as relevant for artists and designers as it is for corporations and states. Stuart Rosenberg and Jo Seiler visualize this fact clearly with their art project Westbank Industries. They show a working possibility of how to live and work with Digicash.

THE WEST BANK INDUSTRY

http://www.westbank.org

The Art Concept corresponds to the structure of an actual company. The artists created and manage their own corporate digital territory which has been tested by real banks and customers. They see their own project to be a training room for future for new electronic marketing (trade) areas in the publicly assessable Internet. In contrast to this, Saskia Sassen describes the autonomous, non- accessible Intranet structure of the financial and economic world. These territories already contain materially functioning mechanisms of digital exchange and trade. But, these networks are based on the exclusivity of their participants and on the exclusion of certain user groups. In contrast to this, the Internet is based on the possible relationship of the inclusion of all user groups of the world wide electronic net. Therefore, the market concept of Westbank, with Cyberbugs for all becomes interesting.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

FOREIGN STOCK EXCHANGE MARKETPLACES:

Ecash (electronic cash) is the basic component of the Westbank Industries artists concept. By password and entry, safe money transfer is insured. WB emancipates themselves from the traditional concept of money and place themselves into the proximity of foreign stock exchange marketplaces - which are the most virtual of all markets, according to Sassen. The programming power, the responsibility of Jo Seiler, is a realistic and functioning model of trading of real goods, called Infogoods . Parts of the Westbank Trust Control are similar to a government state system. They have taxes for certain things, like on gifts (which are .gifs) which you can buy.

THE IDEA

Their concept of virtual Digicash is presented as an art project in the Internet and at exhibitions. The financial service is bound to an individual for every art recipient.

WB exposes themselves also to the idea of the obligation of the gift. It has always been more provocative to give a more valuable gift (than the receiver). The Lettristic idea of pottlage (the worthless gift) is far from the WB reference. They are, rather, trading with goods that have little worth on the Internet (on first view) because they were not --up to now-- charged for. In the Poison Shop, for example, there is the possibility to download imaged from Seiko Mikami or pin-ups from the Annie Spinkle for a certain amount of Cyberbucks. Siegrid Zielinsky describes this project as a model for idea exchange between economy, industry and art. It is not just the understanding of artists as a simple creator of images, or the designer of surfaces, or interfaces. Westbank Industries creates a real working system as sculpture in the net.

LOCAL BACKGROUND

The artist group Westbank Industries are operating together with Stahl Stenslie and the group Knowbotic Research at the mem_brane Laboratory (tp article in german) in Cologne. Mem_brane Homepage

Ingo Guenther was one of the professors at Kunsthochschule Media Cologne. Because of his ideas about art impacting political capital, Guenther might have been one of the most influential teachers of the artists in this surrounding.

The ideas of the market potential of art and webness as well as tradable corporate identity, the offering of services on the net, and the selling of objects are some of the essentials of the work of Westbank Industries.

The relationship between Guenthers concept of a country being similar to a corporation, and the transfer this concept into an art work is a mechanism that his pupils developed further, and the result is potentially more economically successful (and useful?).

Theory

Guenther and WB use similar iconographic images for related topics. In connection with economy and territorial definition, they both use the symbol of the globe for the distribution of power, movement, communication cash, art presentation. Both distribute, as well as other artistic network territories do, objects, gadgets and gimmicks by which they transport their artistic ideas and identity. These objects include passports, buttons, caps, crack n peel stickers, T-shirts, which supports the corporate identity of the project. The embodiment of the idea takes place via these objects, which are not the art themselves, but the physical representation of it. Keith Harring is well known for is gift shops, greeting cards, stickers, etc. In the exhibition True Art at the Offenes Kulturehaus, Linz, curator Bazon Brock presented a collection of articles from international museum shops, describing the tactics of imaging through objects as a condition for socially relevant communication art.

WESTBANK OBJECTS

For 1.18 Ecash, you can acquire the .gif gift of a Universal Passport, which serves as a cover for your existing passport. Similar to the Diplomatic Passport of the NSK, Westbank sells principles that are part of the possession of the passport.

1.The Global Counsel will present any world citizen bearing this passport assistance with global laws, treaties and human rights.

2.The Global Counsel Requests all national authorities to assist the bearer of this passport to afford such help and assistance as may be necessary in any case of need.

3.We ask that the bearer respect the cultures, customs and traditions of the land in which he or she is living.

4.This passport entitles the bearer to travel, work and live freely

anywhere he or she chooses.

Westbank Industries

Westbank Industries not only design virtual markets, they also design anti-markets. They set their own structure against the Anarco Capitalism of Utopians, by using Cyberbugs. The world wide financial collapse might be prevented by the use of these electronic units of value.

CRITIQUE

At the presentation of their project at the D.E.A.F. Festival in Rotterdam, one could have the impression that they should introduce a Digicash Free Zone, in which no .gifs were sold. Something should always be free. This concerns, also, Westbanks relationship with the mental model to preserve and manage the actual Internet. The possibility to buy web projects for a small payment, and the exploitation of content orientated Mail art projects (as advertising media for commercial magazines) is something not usually explored by artists, and it might be a solution for their independence. The trade union of content providers also needs a personal market structure, as this project demonstrated at D.E.A.F.