“CTRL ALT DEL: The Problematics of Post Internet Art,” Art in the Age of the Internet edited by Eva Respini (New Haven, CT: ICA Boston and Yale University Press, 2018):58- 65. (original) (raw)
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Since the early 2000s, an increasing number of artists with a focus on desktop-based practices decided, where possible, to leave the technologies at home when they were invited to exhibitions. Software was converted into prints, videos, installations; performative media hacks were documented and presented in set-ups inspired by the ways in which conceptual and performance art manifest themselves in physical space; and the early adopters of the “post-internet” label, whose practice mainly consisted in appropriating and reframing internet content and playing with the defaults of desktop-based tools, naturally looked at video, print and installation as media to operate in physical space. This text has been commissioned for and first published in Megarave - Metarave, exhibition catalogue, Kunsthaus Langenthal / WallRiss Friburg 2014, pp. 37 - 46. Re-published in Domenico Quaranta, AFK, Link Editions, Brescia 2016, pp. 8 - 22
Art, Internet, Post-Internet: Between Theory and Practice
Although the term post-Internet emerged in 2008, since then many writers, critics and curators have been involved in the discussion of what it might mean. Some see it as the ’translation’ of net.art to fit the ecosystem of contemporary art, whereas others understand it as a form that is ’aware’ of its own environment and still carries the flag of institutional critique. Instead of using the Internet just as its material, post-Internet practitioners also take the Internet as subject matter and problematized topics like surveillance, infrastructure and control over the Internet. This dissertation puts an emphasis on theorizing the concept of post-Internet by referring to invisible infrastructures that shape the Internet, conceptualized by James Bridle as ’the New Aesthetic’; critique of neoliberal agents on the Internet as discussed by Zach Blas; the validity of distinction between digital and physical culture in the age of ’digital natives’ and the problems of authenticity, performativity and temporality in the post-Internetage. Opening chapters gives a non-linear development of the Internet as a medium and the subject of artistic practice, thus distinguishing net.art that is made using material gathered online from post-Internet. After ’defining’ post-Internet, the dissertation looks into real life applications and case studies in order to explore curatorial strategies and processes, especially focused on the rep- resentations of such works in physical spaces. Methodologically, theories are handled and explained using the practices of artists and other producers to point out the disappearance of difference between the theory and practice in life after the Internet.
Internet art, technology and relational aesthetics
2009
Some contemporary artistic practices, such as internet art, are difficult to understand, partly because their originality and relevance is not perceived. In this contribution, we look at internet artists’ relations to society, and to their position in art history. This can elucidate a number of important characteristics of this contemporary form of art. First, it is interesting to see that the goal of early 20th century avant-garde (in particular Dadaism), nl. to bring together social life and art, is motivated early internet art. The role of technology (the computer, the internet, hacking) is very important in this, and also implied the possibility that avant-garde strategies reached a more widespread public. Second, we present the main points of so-called ‚relational aesthetics’, a contemporary theory of art that considers contemporary art practice in terms of interhuman relations and small-scale social networks. Third, we question the possibility of considering internet art as an...
The proliferation of digital technologies in nearly every aspect of life has been accompanied with narratives of change – both dystopian and utopian – from its early days. And if art is in any way to relate to our lived experience, then it comes at no surprise that artists started to investigate the digital – as a tool and medium, but also as a testing ground for new models of thinking about art in relation to society. As Walter Benjamin infamously demonstrated in his analysis of art in times of technical reproducibility, technological advancements not only affect the way art is produced, but also the politics of its distribution and consumption. If the reproducibility of a photograph has caused the loss of the aura of the unique original – what effects do the ephemerality and malleability of the digital artwork have on previous formulas of producing, viewing and thinking art? Is digital art in its fleeting, participatory nature capable of challenging the the status of the artwork as a commodity, as envisioned by the politically motivated computer art of the 80s and 90s? Or are we today merely dealing with a digitalised version of an established system of contemporary art under the rule of neo-liberal capital?
Since the advent of the Internet, a community of artists have engaged with emerging digital technologies in a field of practices that have been indicated with overlapping denominations such as net.art, net art, media art, new media art, Internet art, post-Internet art, screen-based art, digital art, and born-digital art. Case studies of artists Hito Steyerl, Olia Lialina, Constant Dullaart, Harm van den Dorpel, and Katja Novitskova, will delineate the main concerns of born-digital art in relation to the development of the Internet. Through their artistic practice, these artists’ work allow an urgent look into the increasing configuration of user culture online, the standardization of the web and its platforms, the instrumentalization of social quantification to manipulate and control public opinion, and the use of affect and bonding strategies deployed by technology firms to ‘capture’ user participation. Taking the art institution LIMA as the central node of my fieldwork, this ethnography will showcase how born-digital art emerged in response to three founding myths concerning the Internet and its potential for humanity. They include that of 1) the ‘original state’ of the Internet, which 2) in and of itself held emancipatory potential, and was 3) lost when the Internet ‘died’ in the year 2000. Through ethnographic fieldwork, case studies, and interviews, this thesis outlines how the born-digital art community attempts to find resolution between the visible/opaque, emancipation/capture, and enchantment/disenchantment through these founding myths. This research will serve to illuminate the role of myth in artistic production, and shed light on how anthropology may foster alternative methods for analyzing contemporary discourses on technological development.
Introduction: It’s All Over! Post-digital, Post-internet Art and Education
Post-Digital, Post-Internet Art and Education, 2021
This chapter introduces the concepts of post-digital and post-internet by discussing the practices of the different technologies connected with the internet that are constantly changing, and the individuals, groups, and objects that practice with them. Post-digital and post-internet art and education is explored as a process that intervenes deeply in the world and self-relations, by changing subject configurations, identities, memory practices, social networks, ways and means of communication, as well as critical references to culture. This chapter also investigates art and education as a way of taking the present and future seriously, starting from the radically changed socio-technological conditions and its consequences.