NEORT++ is pleased to announce the exhibition "The Last Acres of the Internet" by exonemo.

Statement

H, T, T, P, colon, slash, slash, dub, dub, dub, blah blah blah.

Exploring the internet once began with typing an address and visiting a place belonging to someone you had never met. Personal introductions, diaries, guestbooks, collections of links. These were small spaces that individuals built as they pleased, each link opening onto another place. A URL pointed to information, but it was also an address that told you someone was there.

exonemo’s exhibition “The Last Acres of the Internet” at NEORT++ attempts to reimagine these “addresses” as “land” remaining on the internet. Unlike data, which can be copied endlessly, the same domain name cannot be registered twice at the same time. Domain names embody one of the few forms of scarcity built into an internet founded on duplication.

“Own the last acres of the internet—where your real dreams come true.”

With photographs of wilderness and language reminiscent of real estate advertising, The Last Acres of the Internet invites us to explore what remains available within this system of scarcity. The addresses for sale consist of a random string of 63 characters—the maximum permitted for a domain label—followed by “.land.” They are impossible to remember and difficult to convey aloud. In a market that has long valued brevity and clarity of meaning, these largely overlooked names are presented as undeveloped plots of land and put up for sale.

To purchase land is also to take responsibility for its future. Buyers are entrusted with renewing the domain and keeping the website publicly accessible. If the registration lapses, the address expires, and the path to the artwork is lost. As the fate of many early internet artworks has shown, the ability to copy data does not guarantee that a place will endure. Ownership is not secured by a single purchase; it is sustained through continued care and maintenance.

For the duration of the exhibition, NEORT++ becomes a real estate agency dealing in plots of HTML wilderness that stretch to the horizon. Alongside exhibiting artworks, the gallery becomes an office where visitors are shown plots, contracts are brokered, and new landowners begin their tenure. You are warmly invited to come for a viewing.

Official website

https://the-last-acres-of-the-internet.com/