As a human being, I am of course no stranger to hypocrisy, inconsistency and deception. As an artist, however, I always try to carry out my self-committed tasks as honestly and faithfully as possible. In this case, it makes no sense to do it half-heartedly. The whole idea of dissolving in time will only be imbued with any kind of meaning if the deletion of all digital traces is rigorous and total. It needs to be all or nothing, and that is not only difficult, but it also has a number of consequences.
Friends have already laughingly noted that this may well be my final project. Obviously, if I want to delete all my work from the digital domain, then I cannot organise any more new projects which themselves could again be digitally reproduced. This is a bit annoying because there are still a few exciting ideas on the shelf. Still, if I am to take this project seriously, that’s one of the consequences.
Another consequence is that this project itself should not get too much attention. After all, it’s not intended to be picked up by the media and thereby again introduced into the digital realm. It is explicitly intended to not receive publicity.
I realise that this makes it a bit of a peculiar project – surely an artist always wants to reach as broad an audience as possible. Indeed they do, but in this case, not through the media. So if you think this project is interesting, feel free to pass it on to friends and acquaintances, but please don’t draw any media attention to it because that would of course immediately undermine the premise of the whole project.
As a visitor to this website you are thus part of a rather exclusive audience – a member, so to speak, of a privileged club with confidential knowledge about the project. It’s not a membership from which you can derive any rights, I will however try to keep you updated on all the practical, social, ethical and philosophical obstacles that I encounter in the course of this project.
I shall probably start a newsletter soon, so if you want to stay up to date, please send me an email: ron[at]peperkamp.nl
Also read: Background