Mapping utopian art: alternative political imaginaries in new media art (2008-2015)

This thesis investigates the proliferation of alternative political imaginaries in the Web-based art produced during the global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath (2008- 2015), with a particular focus on the influence of communist utopianism. The thesis begins by exploring the continuous relevance of utopianism to Western political thought, including the historical context within which the financial crisis of 2008 occurred. This context has been defined by the new political, social and cultural milieu produced by the development of Data Capitalism – the dominant economic paradigm of the last two decades. In parallel, the thesis identifies the “organic” connections between leftist utopian thought and networked technologies, in order to claim that the events of 2008 functioned as a catalyst for their reactivation and expansion. Following this analysis, the thesis focuses on how politically engaged artists have reacted to the global financial crisis through the use of the World Wide Web. More specifically, the thesis categorises a wide range of artworks, institutional and non-institutional initiatives, as well as theoretical texts that have either been written by artists, or have inspired them. The result of this exercise is a mapping of the post-crisis Web-based art, which is grounded on the technocultural tools employed by artists as well as on the main concepts and ideals that they have aimed at materialising through the use of such tools. Furthermore, the thesis examines the interests of Data Capitalists in art and the Internet, and the kinds of restrictions and obstacles that they have imposed on the political use of the Web in order to safeguard them. Finally, the thesis produces an overall evaluation of the previously analysed cultural products by taking into account both the objectives of their creators and the external and internal limitations that ultimately shape their character. Accordingly, the thesis locates the examined works within the ideological spectrum of Marxist and post-Marxist thought in order to formulate a series of proposals about the future of politically engaged Web-based art and the ideological potentialities of networked communication at large

Changing the game: towards an 'internet of praxis'

An introduction to the first book published by the 'Leonardo Electronic Almanac', titled 'Red art: new utopias in data capitalism.' The publication investigates the relevance of socialist utopianism to the current dispositions of New Media Art, through the contributions of academic researchers, critical theorists, curators and artists. From the early stages of its development, New Media Art readily adopted a variety of means of artistic engagement and expression that aim at serving modes of utopian social being: from multi-modal collaboration to unrestricted public participation and from open software applications to hacktivism, the germs of leftist political thought seem to abound in the art of the Digital Age. Prompted by the economic crisis, New Media Art appears to increasingly employ the tools provided by new technologies in order to penetrate all aspects of global social living and assert the need for socioeconomic change. New Media artworks and art projects have gradually formed a common practice whose objectives allude to utopian theories of social organization lying closer to certain visions of communism, direct democracy and anarchism, rather than to the realities of neoliberal capitalism within which new media are produced and predominantly operate. 'Red art: new utopias in data capitalism' explores this multifaceted context in an attempt to demystify whether and to what extent the art of the Digital Age could be the result of the seemingly paradox combination of capitalism's products and communism's visions

Red art: new utopias in data capitalism

The publication investigates the relevance of socialist utopianism to the current dispositions of new media art, through the contributions of renowned and emerging academic researchers, critical theorists, curators and artists. From the early stages of its development, new media art readily adopted a variety of means of artistic engagement and expression that aim at serving modes of utopian social being: from multi-modal collaboration to unrestricted public participation and from open software applications to hacktivism, the germs of leftist political thought seem to abound in the art of the digital age. Prompted by the economic crisis, new media art appears to increasingly employ the tools provided by new technologies in order to penetrate all aspects of global social living and assert the need for socioeconomic change. New media artworks and art projects have gradually formed a common practice whose objectives allude to utopian theories of social organization lying closer to certain visions of communism, direct democracy and anarchism, rather than to the realities of neoliberal capitalism within which new media are produced and predominantly operate. "Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism" explores this multifaceted context in an attempt to demystify whether and to what extent the art of the digital age could be the result of the seemingly paradox combination of capitalism's products and communism's visions

PUNK: its traces in contemporary art

Featuring over sixty artists, both national and international, this group exhibition traces a journey through the influence of punk in contemporary art and echoes the importance of its presence as an attitude and as a referent for many creators. It includes installations, documentary excerpts, multiples, photographs, videos and paintings, together with a section documenting the origins of punk and its vestiges in the present day. Some of the themes addressed include noise, denial, violence, nihilism and sexuality. Dissatisfaction, nonconformity, the loss of faith in progress and a fierce criticism of the icons of the economic and social system appear in the work of these creators. Punk was born in London and New York between 1976 and 1978 as an explosion of discontent and dissatisfaction towards a situation without a future, which immediately caught on and spread geographically. A rage that still resonates today. The journalist and music critic Greil Marcus outlined this for the first time in 1989, in Lipstick Traces. A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, a journey through the history of the antecedents of the movement, going back to Dada and Situationism. The exhibition draws on this book and performs the same exercise in reverse: a prospective exercise that looks for vestiges of punk in the artists of today. In this exhibition, punk appears as an explicit reference in many artists; in the use of elements such as noise, cut-out typography, anti-design and the aesthetics of the ugly; or in the inclusion of explicit references to musical bands. But it also shows traces of punk as an attitude: denial, opposition and destruction; the do it yourself; the reference to fear and horror in a society that alienates individuals; the same alienation that provokes psychotic states; the fondness for anything outside the norm; nihilism; criticism of the economic system and anarchy; or the demand for sexual freedom itself, the body as a place of battle. The exhibition was curated by David G. Torres. For the exhibition in Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Bill Balaskas was commissioned to produce a new installation titled 'Anarchy Near the UK'

Passé simple, futurs composés

This group exhibition includes work by Adel Abidin, Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza, Ali Cherri, Larissa Sansour, Lamina Joreige, Siska, and Bill Balaskas. Balaskas exhibits his work Parthenon Rising (2011)

Show me the money: the image of finance, 1700 to the present

'Show Me The Money' asks what does 'the market' look like? What does money really stand for? How can the abstractions of high finance be made visible? The group exhibition charts how the financial world has been imagined in art, illustration, photography and other visual media over the last three centuries in Britain and the United States. The project asks how artists have grappled with the increasingly intangible and self-referential nature of money and finance, from the South Sea Bubble of the eighteenth century to the global financial crisis of 2008. The exhibition includes an array of media: paintings, prints, photographs, videos, artefacts, and instruments of financial exchange both 'real' and imagined. Indeed the exhibition also charts the development of an array of financial visualisations, including stock tickers and charts, newspaper illustrations, bank adverts, and electronic trading systems

Workbench

In Workbench, Balaskas is inspired by the 200th anniversary from the birth of Karl Marx (1818-2018) and, in particular, by a catalytic event for his political awakening: the prohibition of gathering firewood in the forests surrounding his home city Trier, in today’s Germany (50 km from Luxembourg). The Prussian government banned this activity and imposed harsh punishments, thus leading to many convictions for wood “theft”. Heinrich Marx – Karl’s father – had to deal with this problem on a regular basis as a lawyer, and in the preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) Marx reveals that those “forest thefts” and the division of land property played a crucial role in his understanding of capital’s function and the formation of socioeconomic classes. Notably, this was the main subject of a series of fiery articles that he wrote for the Rheinische Zeitung in 1842. Workbench adopts as its point of departure the fact that Marx critiques in his writings not only the artificiality of law, but – most importantly – the ways in which the artificiality of power at large produces forged relationships between citizens, as well as between citizens and their natural environment. Prompted by Marx’s argumentation, the installation incorporates wood as a raw material, a production tool and a finished product in order to reflect on the manipulable “naturality” of natural resources through their commodification. This condition is made explicit in the installation’s audio component, which features an AI (text-to-speech software) “reading” 14 extracts from Marx’s Rheinische Zeitung articles – a number equal to the number of the axe handles placed on the workbench. Finally, at a time when climate change threatens irreversibly the sustainability of the commons, it is inevitable to also consider the environmental dimension of the issues that encouraged Marx’s political “initiation” – people’s access to natural resources and the right to exploit them. However, in today’s case, even the potential democratisation of such access cannot entail anymore that this would remain unlimited, or that it would continue indefinitely

At a time of crisis (AUDI Art Award artworks)

This body of research focuses on the cultural and political origins and implications of the global economic crisis of 2007-2013, through the production of three new artworks. Re: Evolution is an imaginary flag combining the Soviet flag with the design of a computer; Culture is a neon sign using antique lettering whose power cable is too short to reach the nearest socket; and Opus 2012, Symphony No.27 (‘Europa’) is a video that employs official footage from the European Parliament and likens Europe to an orchestra tuning without ever initiating a performance. In a precarious context for global societies, the works are intended to highlight the contradictions inherent in the current condition, by using elements of irony, humour and kitsch. The three artworks employ different media and materials (neon, fabric and video) alongside diverse symbols and cultural references, in order to create a hybrid visual language. They were nominated, as a body of work, for the 2013 AUDI Art Award for the most innovative young artist. The award is supported by the German Federal Government, the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Art Cologne (Koelnmesse) and the Bundesverband Deutscher Galerien und Editionen (BVDG). Two of the works (Culture and Re: Evolution) have been developed further and are currently being shown in the main exhibition of the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (central exhibition Everywhere But Now, curated by Adelina von Fürstenberg, 18 Sept. 2013 – 31 Jan. 2014: http://www.thessalonikibiennale.gr). My aim in redeveloping them was to further engage with the context of the Greek socioeconomic crisis and its connections with current political conditions in the Mediterranean region

10th Mildura Palimpsest Biennale 2015

Group exhibition