Media (Art) and Politics
https://www.neme.org/projects/emap/media-art-politics
Open webinar on media (arts), and politics. The webinar consisted of talks by Gregory Sholette, Rachel O’Dwyer, and !Mediengruppe Bitnik, and spanned subjects that discussed the relation of art and whistleblowing, the social obligation of the artists now, the blockchain based so called opportunities for artists, and how artistic practice can expand from the digital into the physical space.
Art in a Time of Crises (again)
To paraphrase philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon, “We artists shall be your avant-garde.” In the early 19th century French Republic such duty involved spearheading society’s forward movement towards liberty, equality, and fraternity. But in 1820s France, these ideals were also entangled with colonialism in Algeria, plantation slavery in Saint-Dominique, not to forget the miseries of the emerging factory regime then spreading across Europe. The questions that I wish to raise in these current days of perpetual crises is what if any social obligation does the artist possess now, and are we perhaps still haunted by this two-centuries-old social contract, including both its high-mindedness and its contradictions? Examples will be drawn from my own four decades of artistic activism, research, and pedagogy, as well as that of others, in order to ask if art is indeed of a certain historical spear, then whose lance is it we now embellish?
Dr. Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, teacher and activist. He is a Professor at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY), Co-Director of Social Practice CUNY (SPCUNY) headquartered in the Center for the Humanities, Graduate Center; holds a PhD in History and Memory Studies from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program in Critical Theory and alumni of the Center for Advanced Study of Visual Art (CASVA) in Washington DC. His books include Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture and Delirium and Resistance: Art Activism and the Crisis of Capitalism. His most recent study, The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art (2022) was published by Lund Humphries.
YOLO Forever
Money is a bet on the future. Where once the track to a secure future was hard work and safe investment, by 2020 there was no longer a clear path to ‘the good life.’ Millennials and Gen Zs, in debt and with no chance of financing their futures through so-called legitimate channels, were investing in high-risk, high-return stocks for the chance to ‘win’ a down payment. On forums like r/WallStreetBets, r/Preppers and even r/RedPillWomen (where so-called ‘Tradwives’ debate the economics of happily-ever), tales of hard work rewarded, prudent investment, or ‘winning the system’ have been replaced by all-in bets & grim self-reliance. Meanwhile, on the advice of millionaires Like LeBron James, poor and marginalised communities are pouring their savings into crypto to build generational wealth. The hashtag for this is YOLO, as in, ‘You Only Live Once.’ YOLO is all or nothing. It’s ‘lambos or food stamps.’ It imagines crypto as an escape to the lifeboats, or to life on Mars, or into the metaverse. Money is a token, a bet on the future. But what happens when that future is broken? This talk frames crypto and the cultures surrounding it – bitcoin prepping, toxic retail trading and even dreams of stay at home girlfriends, as a response to the fact that middle class society no longer has a clear pathway to what we might call ‘the good life’ (and working class and poor communities never had it in the first place). All that’s left is a desperate bet on a broken future.
Rachel O’Dwyer is a lecturer in Digital Cultures in the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She is the author of Tokens, (Verso 2023) Longlisted for the FT Schroders Book of the Year Award 2023 and selected as one of Wired, LA Times, and GQ’s Top Books of 2023. She was formerly a research fellow in Connect, the Centre for Future Networks and Communications in Trinity College Dublin and a visiting Fulbright Tech Impact Scholar in collaboration with the IMTFI at University of California, Irvine. Her research and writing focuses on the intersection of cultural and digital economies.
Non Guided Tour – !Mediengruppe Bitnik
!Mediengruppe Bitnik is an artist duo that works both on the Internet and with it as a medium, raising topical questions about surveillance, artificial intelligence, and networking. In doing so, their practice usually expands from the digital into the physical space, revealing the mechanisms of algorithms, bots, and tracking software. In this talk, !Mediengruppe Bitnik will give insights into their practice and how they create situations of deliberate loss of control in order to question the structures established by the technologies that surround us.
!Mediengruppe Bitnik is an artist duo consisting of Domagoj Smoljo and Carmen Weisskopf, who live and work in Berlin. Their works formulate fundamental questions concerning contemporary issues. In 2015 they were awarded the Migros New Media Jubilee Award, Zurich, and in 2008 and 2014 the Swiss Art Award, Basel. Their work has been presented internationally in solo and group exhibitions, including at: Open Berlin (solo, 2021); Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana (solo, 2021); Laboratory of Art and Form, Kyoto (solo, 2020); KINDL – Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin (2019); House of Electronic Arts, Basel (solo, 2019); Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin / South Korea (2017); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017); ZKM, Karlsruhe (2017); Kunsthalle St. Gallen (2014–2015).
