The Google Adwords Happening is an Internet performance that lasted 24 hours before being censored by the Google Automated Performance Monitor.
This infiltration into the Google Adwords merchant system describes the transition towards “semantic capitalism”, where each word in each language has a price.
Link to the Google Adwords Happening
“At the beginning of April, a debate took place on rhizome.org mailing list, about how to earn money with net art. It suggested to me an answer to an easier problem : how to spend money with my art (if you understand everything on how to spend money, you should in principle understand also how to earn money, because of conservation laws…). I decided to launch a happening on the web, consisting in a poetry advertisement campaign on Google AdWords . I opened an account for $5 and began to buy some keywords. For each keyword you can write a little ad and, instead of the usual ad, I decided to write little “poems”, non-sensical or funny or a bit provocative. I began with the keyword “symptom”…”
Exhibitions:
2021: THE_OGRE.NET, Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris
2014: City Art Gallery, Ljubljana
2014: Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, Oldenburg
2008: NETescopio, MEIAC, Badajoz
2006: Galerie Sollertis, Toulouse
2005: Piemonte Share Festival, Torino
2005: ARTE-RED
2005: Arts meets Media, ICC Communication Center, Tokyo
2004: FILE – Electronic Language International Festival, Sao Paulo
2004: En Parallèle, Modern Art Museum of the City of Paris
2004: Third Nuit Blanche of Paris
2003: Tirana Biennale of Contemporary Art
2003: Ars Electronica – Honorary mention (Net vision / net excellence)
2002: Microwave International Media Art Festival, Honk Kong
2002: Freemanifesta.org
Christophe Bruno 