#exstrange: eBay as an Artistic Platform

The #exstrange project, curated by Marialaura Ghidini and Rebekah Modrak, transforms eBay into a site for artistic experimentation. Running from mid-January to the end of March, it features 21 artists who each "exhibit" for seven days. On February 5, a group of guest curators will invite additional artists, expanding participation to over 30. Works are listed as normal auctions without explicit art labeling, identifiable only by the #exstrange tag, which also allows anyone to join the exhibition. Projects include IOCOSE's Instant Protest (renting protesters by the hour), Tara Kelton's Human Internal Memory Storage (a USB drive for memory extension), and Renuka Rajiv's Skype Portrait (a live portrait during a video chat). The initiative highlights the ephemeral and surreal nature of the works and engages an unsuspecting audience that encounters them randomly. This approach continues a tradition of net art parasitically using commercial platforms, such as Keith Obadike's 2001 auction of his "blackness" on eBay, Alessandro Ludovico and Paolo Cirio's Amazon Noir, and !Mediengruppe Bitnik's Random Darknet Shopper. #exstrange emphasizes two aspects: the ephemeral content and the confrontation with an unaware public.