http://www.adaweb.com/

The New York-based website Adaweb commissions virtual site-specific interactive pieces from artists such as Jenny Holzer and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and artworld figures like MOMA video curator Barbara London, and is a bountiful treasure house that will keep you coming back for more.

"All things are delicately interconnected" read a message at the top of the screen the first time I loaded the site, and five flickering shapes invited me to try my luck. The first brought me through to a menu, from which I selected Stir Fry, "a video curator's dispatches from China". Barbara London spent some weeks there in September last year, and the site is a fascinating diary of her journey and the artists she met, complete with video clips.

Then there is Jenny Holzer's 1995 piece, please change beliefs, one part of which invites users to better Holzer at her own game of creating truisms (ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE; ACTION CAUSES MORE TROUBLE THAN THOUGHT) by "improving" or replacing them. Checking the master list of efforts by others only highlights Holzer's skill. Very entertaining. And that's only two of the projects on offer.

http://www.icon.co.za/~kendell/

To my knowledge, this is the only website by a South African artist to feature a specially designed project rather than a catalogue of the artist's work in other media. Clicking on brings you to a rapidly blinking eye and the title The Black Hole in the Rainbow Nation, a quick-fire delivery of the statistics of violence, and a hypnotic emblematic visual involving a waving flag and burning fires against a background of R10 notes. This is followed by some of Geers' challenging writing and a list of good links.

Other locally related links

http://www.gem.co.za/sang/
Top of the country's art museums, such as they are in our impoverished cultural climate, the South African National Gallery in Cape Town also has the best website. Visit the museum's permanent collection, look at documentation on past and current shows, access info on artists.

It is also possible to receive an online version of the gallery's quarterly journal, Bonani.

http://www.mg.co.za/mg/art/ fineart/fr-fineart_listings.htm
Luckily you can click through to that mega address, the Electronic Mail & Guardian's fine arts page, or you might pass up this extremely useful and concise listing of all the current visual art activity across the country.

http://www.artslink.co.za
Winner of the Arts and Culture Trust Award for best electronic media, when this fledgling site fulfils its aim of providing a comprehensive resource on all aspects of culture in the country, it will be truly valuable. The visual arts side needs serious attention. In the meantime, there's lots of info, particularly on the performing arts, and many connections to be made.

http://kulturbox.de/univers/
Launched into cyberspace by Argentinian artist Pat Binder and Berlin curator Gerard Haupt, this excellent site focuses sharply on the arts and major art events of Africa, Asia/Pacific and the Americas, countries now emerging into the art world spotlight. Click straight through to this month's updates:

USA/Arts: Chicanos, Latino Americans, Latin America in the USA
http://www.kulturbox.de/univers/ america/us_lat/english.htm

Japan
http://www.kulturbox.de/univers/ asia/jpn/english.htm

Vietnam
http://www.kulturbox.de/univers/ asia/vnm/english.htm

Colombia
http://www.kulturbox.de/univers/ america/col/english.htm

Available soon:
- Dak'art 1998: Information and exclusive report by Sabine Vogel
- Updated art-directory USA/African-Americans

e-mail: univers@kulturbox.de

http://www.onepeople.com
An online road trip by Paul and Charity, recently in South Africa, in which they meet artists of many persuasions, interview them and record their work.

http://www.goodman-gallery.com/
Johannesburg's top gallery has recently revamped its site, making access to its information on many of the country's top artists more accessible

http://artsafari.com
Cape Town's new-on-the-scene Lipschitz Gallery shows its wares and will arrange tours of local artists' studios for visitors.