As a project platform neture.org focuses mostly on collaborations and cross-disciplinary projects. It presents completed works and finished projects along with rather loose lines of associative and speculative thinking of the ones to-be in a sketch book manner. Similar to the idea of the experimental seminarist Buckminster Fuller and his legendary “Thinking  Out  Loud”.

One could picture the relational dimension of “neture” as the “changing states of aggregation” like in chemistry – when a setting or situation changes through the relational activity of its protagonists involved. Only that in our case the chemistry kit would be impacted by the relational characteristics of humanness as well. So neture clearly means less the “technical implications”, which dominate the notion of -let’s say- a “network” today. In addition it seems equally important in the current present to know the right moment when to leave this technical grid behind and drop offline as well.

And this is how neture begun …

My first meaningful intensive struggle with this theme was in the summer of 2003, as I worked on an application for a project with Johannes Sienknecht. In this framework “n e t u r e” popped up for the first time as a project title. Then it was written with a lower case “e”. “n e t u r e” was proposed as a project with the wish to abandon the trusted studio of the internet work place and to find places which could give a physical counterweight to the medium. Here is a brief sample from our application:

“n e t u r e” wants to focus on the impulses and posssible conceptual or aesthetic transfers of the mediafied spheres and physical spaces with a similar structure, and to document such processes. Where can one find the unused capacities in mediafied and physical spaces that allow “neture” to grow exuberantly and freely? Can one compare, e.g., redundantly laid telecommunication-cabling which private-persons can hire from telecoms for a cheaper rate to abandoned and vacant post-socialist tower-blocks in East-Germany, Hungary or post-industrial relics in Sheffield, UK? The focus and crux of the subject matter of “neture” are spaces with communicationpotentials, which are forgotten or no longer used, and spaces where less relevant conventional references exist (or are in the process of vanishing) between the place itself and its culture and history. “neture” uses this void, grows within it and creates dynamic presence in it with methods of art, communication and documentation. “neture” uses free space, communicates out of necessity, cooperates out of love, creates from passion, manifests from coincidence.”

Please see the nEture Catalogue for more in-depth information on this subject …

Download the original nEture Catalogue script here.