Boris Groys: Art Power (2008)

“Art has its own power in the world, and is as much a force in the power play of global politics today as it once was in the arena of cold war politics. Art, argues distinguished theoretician Boris Groys, is hardly a powerless commodity subject to the art market’s fiats of inclusion and exclusion. In Art Power, Groys examines modern and contemporary art according to its ideological function. Art, Groys writes, is produced and brought before the public in two ways—as a commodity and as a tool of political propaganda. In the contemporary art scene, very little attention is paid to the latter function; the official and unofficial art of the former Soviet Union and other former Socialist states, for example, is largely excluded from the field of institutionally recognized art, usually on moral grounds (although, Groys points out, criticism of the morality of the market never leads to calls for a similar exclusion of art produced under market conditions).

Arguing for the inclusion of politically motivated art in contemporary art discourse, Groys considers art produced under totalitarianism, Socialism, and post-Communism. He also considers today’s mainstream Western art—which he finds behaving more and more according to the norms of ideological propaganda: produced and exhibited for the masses at international exhibitions, biennials, and festivals. Contemporary art, Groys argues, demonstrates its power by appropriating the iconoclastic gestures directed against itself—by positioning itself simultaneously as an image and as a critique of the image. In Art Power, Groys examines this fundamental appropriation that produces the paradoxical object of the modern artwork.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262072920, 9780262072922
224 pages

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Nile Southern: The Anarchivists of Eco-Dub: A Wireless Report (1991/2001)

ECO-DUB is a real and evolving cultural repository of image, sound and text–driven by a fictional cast of characters looking for answers in a society that commercial media left behind. Set in the near future, the world’s only hope of holding onto a humanist (and progressive) identity rests with a rag-tag band of drug and sex-addled info-junkies.

Through the Ecodub ‘shaman head hose’ processor, an Anarchival Research/Broadcast Station (see cover), The Anarchivists are able to “divine the exquisite corpse of culture” through the arranged marriage of live, recombinant media interplay and sophistocated indexing techniques. When their signal (beamed daily from erratic Satellite Erica) becomes too popular to control, the Media Blackouts begin, and the Eco-Dubbers’ only hope is to unleash a Divine Intelligence in the making.

“Verbs cannot re-scribe the Eco-Dub experience. It’s like all the world’s become a stage of easily accessible source material that has been broken down into ones and zeroes and the Great Napster God has laid down the social-progressivist gauntlet: peer-to-peer or die!” — Abe Golam, Prog-23

“Long live The Cinema of Information!” — Simulated Nikola Tesla, 2009

Published by Alt-X Press, 2001
ISBN 1931560021, 9781931560023

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Eugene Thacker (ed.): Hard_code: Narrating the Network Society (2001)

“HARD_CODE is an anthology of experimental electronic prose which asks the question: What kinds of stories are told by data? The texts in this anthology respond to this question from a wide range of viewpoints, often suggesting that the dynamics between bodies and data is not always a smooth one. Filled with identity avatars, DNA bodies, generative code, and virtual realities, HARD_CODE combines leading-edge work from new media art/net.art, cultural theory, and experimental fiction, forming new hybrids between flesh and data.

HARD_CODE brings together a group of innovative writers exploring the syntax of new media and computer technologies. From net.artists, to science fiction writers, to computer hackers, to practitioners of ‘degenerative prose,’ HARD_CODE is a ‘mis-users manual’ for the network society.”

Contributors include: Doll Yoko, Fakeshop, Matthew Fuller, Shelley Jackson, Harold Jaffe, ID_Runners, MEZ, Andi and Lance Olsen, Doug Rice, Steven Shaviro, Julia Solis, Alan Sondheim, Steve Tomasula, Don Webb, and many others…

Publisher Alt-X Press, 2001
ISBN 1931560048, 9781931560047
211 pages

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