Trash artists connect to `Othernet'

Collaboration between academics and an artist has given rise to a new concept of art as communication.

The project is an inter-disciplinary, artistic interaction, crossing the frontiers of sociology, philosophy and art.

Two women, Ina T and Bea T, are behind the theory and practice of the Trash/Treasure idea of art as communication.

They have reduced their surnames to initials as part of the creation of new, joint identity. Bea T, who received her sociology doctorate at Aachen University in 1993, met her neighbour, painter Ina T, by chance. Ina T was born in Kishinev, Moldova, studied at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem, and now lives in Aachen.

A wide range of experts has taken an interest in Trash/Treasure. Academics in the fields of sociology, philosophy, cybernetics, psychotherapy and art theory plus art history have helped to create a critical rationale for the approach.

Bea T defines "derivative" art works as "nothing but contributions to communication that have arisen out of the web of communication into which they are released". She views Trash/Treasure as "switching stations in the network of communication that are waiting to be expressed, interpreted, worded, invested with meaning".

"We are trying to communicate in the same way as contemporary technology does through computers, but without computers, in a kind of artistic Internet."

The limited edition catalogue/art work, published by Thouet Verlag, contains essays, poetry, newspaper/manifesto, and l9 photographs of Ina T's paintings. Cybernetics professor Heinz von Foerster has sent a foreword from Pescadero, California. Bielefeld University lecturer, Dirk Baecker, has provided a critique of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Martin Heidegger's views on what makes an artwork, under the title "All Art is Auratic".

A paper contains messages and reviews by Theodor Bardmann, sociology professor at Moncheng-ladbach Polytechnic; Rainer Winter of the Rheinland Westphalia Technical University; and Moscow art theorist Gleb Smirnoff-Gretch.

The exhibition is currently at Fred's Club in Soho.