Metaphysics of Virtual Objects

Lucrezia Calabr Visconti

7 marzo 2016
Sensible Objects. The Art of Bonds.
MIRROR PROJECT#7
Mostra personale di Aurora Paolillo
A cura di Clara Madaro

Eva e Franco Mattes, My Generation, 2010 Video collage, broken computer.

PRIMA PARTE

THE UNIVERSAL
ADDRESSABILITY
OF DUMB THINGS

Most people I know think PostInternet is embarrassing to say out

loud. 1 But so is most of the language thats used to write about
contemporary art, and PostInternet does the job of artspeak so
efficiently that people keep saying it, embarrassment be damned.
The Post part conjures an aura of historical significance, the
mantle of the avantgarde; Internet supplies social relevance.
Together they lacquer art with an intellectual finish as thin as it is
opaque.
The PostInternet art object looks good in a browser just as laundry
detergent looks good in a commercial. Detergent isnt as stunning
at a laundromat, and neither does PostInternet art shine in the gallery. Its boring to be around. Its not really sculpture. It doesnt activate space. Its often frontal, designed to preen for the cameras
lens. Its an assemblage of some sort, and theres little excitement
in the way objects are placed together, and nothing is well made
except for the massmarket products in it. Its the art of a cargo cult,
made in awe at the way brands thrive in networks.

Flix Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)
Brian Droitcour, The Perils of PostInternet Art, Art in America Magazine, 2014

DISs online project Competing Images: Art vs. People, 2012, at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Models pose with artworks by Katja Novitskova and Timur Si-Qin.

Martijn Hendriks: So for example, how can a material, physical art work relate
to a world that is characterized by endless image circulation, translations and
mistranslations, buzz, news feeds, licensings, subscriptions, likes, following
and unfollowings, friending and defriending, accumulating strategies, seeding and leeching, caching, scanning, leaking, favoriting, ranking?

Searching for Devices installation view, Basis, Frankfurt am Main, 20/02 - 19/4 2015 curated by Gislind Khler Texts from the internet

Fake Follower, 2015 polystyrene, steel, epoxy resin, urethane resin, glass fiber, paint,
plaster, various materials

You Have Seven Events Coming Up Today, 2015 aluminium, plastic, inkjet prints, cotton
coated electric wire, display banner stands, backpack strap 112 x 135 x 12 cm

Watch Streaming, Licks Looks Leaks, 2015 plaster, aluminium, wheels, power cords, connectors, electric blanket, glass fiber, glass, urethane dipped flowers, epoxy clay, screen mount,
HD Ready projector / Assets Assets, 2015 steel, aluminium, polyure- thane, plaster, epoxy putty, power cords, paint, electric blanket, plexiglass, air bags, fluid con- tainer, glove

Katja Novitskova: As someone who started to make art around the same time Facebook
became global I am used to the ease of translation between off and online, to the idea that
art objects can and sometimes need to exist in several file formats, copies and physical
editions. A jpeg of a sculpture and a sculpture are related, but they can have separate
lives in their respected environments, on different platforms. They both constitute my
practice and experiencing an image of a work is experiencing my work. The cycle internet surfing, image-finding, sculpture-making, sculpture-exhibiting/selling, documentation-making, image-uploading all as a work, is just something that as you say makes
things more tangible, or matter- and network-aware.

Mark Leckey, The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things, installation view (detail) the Bluecoat, 2013. Photo Jon Barraclough

President Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley on December 21, 1970. The meeting was kept secret until Jan. 27, 1972, when the Washington Post broke the story.

Guy Ben Ner, Stealing Beauty, 2007 - screen capture single channel video, color with sound dvd (running time: 17:40 minutes) edition of 6 + AP.

Pamela Rosenkrantz, Our Product, Swiss Pavillion, Esposizione internazionale darte biennale di Venezia, 2015

Gene Mc Hugh, Post Internet, 2011

SECONDA PARTE

ECONOMIA
DELLA PRESENZA E
PROXY POLITICS

Hito Steyerl, How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 2013

Hologram Protest in front of the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, 2015. Organised by the group Holograms for Freedom against the Citizen Safety Law.

Place de la Republique, Paris 2015. Unauthorized protest in occasion of the Climate Change Conference.

TERZA PARTE

SUSPENDED
ANIMATION

Museum of modern art Warsaw, ART AND LABOR AFTER THE END OF WORK; The terror of total dasein by Hito Steyerl. With an intervention by Simon Sheikh.

Robert Morris, installation in the Green Gallery, New York, 1964. Seven geometric plywood structures painted grey.

Michael Fried / Robert Morris

Ccile B. Evans, Hyperlinks or it didnt happen, 2014, Single channel HD video, color, sound, 22 minutes.

La catacrsi (dal greco , abuso, derivato da , abusare) o abusine

una figura retorica ormai normalizzata, impiegata
per designare qualcosa per cui la lingua non offre un termine specifico. Si tratta soprattutto di
antiche metafore e metonimie non pi avvertite
come tali. Nella continua evoluzione della lingua
e di fronte alla necessit di designare oggetti o
anche situazioni nuove, e dunque in caso di cosiddetta inopia verborum (assenza di parole),
possibile che la catacresi giunga in aiuto della
lingua stessa, conferendo a un nuovo oggetto il
nome di uno gi designato che ricorda o che rimanda in qualche modo a quello nuovo.