NET. The Art of Dialogue

The first publication that elaborates on the works and correspondence of the artists participating in the Net. It includes also the documentation of two shows of the collection – first from 1972 and the second, almost 40 years later, in Profile Foundation in 2012.

The Net project was one of the most important initiative of the avant-garde art of the 1970s, in which the artists from all over the world had participated. The idea of the Net was formulated in 1971 by Jarosław Kozłowski and Andrzej Kostołowski, a historian and art critic. They sent a manifesto to about 350 artists and critics from Poland and other countries in which they encouraged cooperation and free exchange of the artistic facts. The contacts developed between artists despite the political and institutional barriers had grown owing to the conceptualization of art, popularity of the post art and anti-system ideas.

The idea of free circulation, dialog and decentralization was an artistic alternative to the political and ideological shutdown of the polish culture at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. In spite of the geopolitical division into East and West, the Net had spread through the exchange between artists from eastern and western Europe, Asia, both Americas. Anarchistic idea of the Net was challenge for both political status quo of the eastern Europe and for the capitalist mechanisms of artistic scene of the West.