&: We are happy to present your latest artwork Web Work in ScreenSaverGallery. Would you mind introducing it a little bit?

S: My name is Sakrowski and I’m interested in web phenomena since long time and in 2007 I started ikonoskop a youtube channel where I have tried to understand social media from inside – this later became then curatingyoutube and web.work as web.pilgrimage is one of the latest sub projects from it (still trying to understand the net)

&: What preceded the creation of this work? What were your input ideas, concepts or problems you wanted to focus on before you have started working on it?

S: There was no conceptual work before – as it has to be (I think with a pilgrimage) I started walking through soc media and was open for what will happen at this tour. And because of that I had to get step by step better equipment – what I hope the people can see – so that over time the videos became better. My initial idea for that was that I really had no glue about this soc media at all and the net was becoming more and more strange to me so I thought this would be a god way to reconnect and it was … I have used this kind of practical thinking always in my research – https://youtu.be/6LgS3VkAS-s If you want so were my first curatorial projects also a kind of practical thinking http://netart-datenbank.org/projekte.html?pro=++projekte&bprojekt=+%2B+

&: In Web Work, I see several interesting moments. One of them is the way how I feel about the time in relation to computer media and the internet traffic. On the internet, we meet increasing amount of videos (and not only videos) where the part of inbuilded narrativity is based on the acceleration and time-lapsing. While in the Web Work, we can watch all the head movements, eye movements, the amount of clicking one must make just to open a page and log-in. It is so slow; it seems like slow motion even though it’s real time. What an interesting moment thinking about the context of screensaver and visualisations of meditative CGIs.

What surprised you while working on Web Work?

S: How hard this work really is, what we do every day, day by day and as it seems forever…

&: You have great deal of experience with curating web based content. For those who don’t know, you are, among other things, the author of CuratingYouTube.net, which is a wonderful curatorial concept for presenting web based content.
Via Curating YouTube.net, you have presented artistic projects as well as the videos uploaded by people without artistic ambitions. Having the degree in art history, what turns your focus toward the web based content issues?

S: I think the web / the net is the media of our times. It seems today already inextricably interwoven with our society / culture. And thinking about contemporary art helps me to find my own position in the world.

&: For some people, the net based art is almost dead. How do you see the evolution of questions or challenges that were at the very beginning of your interest in the internet based art?

S: I can see that too – but isn’t there always some media dead ? Wasn’t there a time some people thought painting is dead ? I still believe in images and their power to express something you can’t express in language. And I still think the internet is a medium in which people can create works. And also I think that it’s important to reflect on the media, the internet itself and maybe reappropriate it for artistic expressions, so that it flushes out all this sticky stuff and becomes a canvas for experiments, hopes and dreams again.

&: What are your recent activities, and what are you interested in at the moment?

S: I’m the curator of the panke.gallery for the last two years. I’m still interested in net phenomena and related NetArtActivities.