Cory Arcangel, net neutrality, ISPs, AI and Add To Basket

I’m currently on the train back to Suffolk, even though it’s only a two hour journey the dynamic changes when I move back to the countryside for modicum amounts of time. Losing the ability to see contemporary art on a daily basis, having a shop a few minutes walk away and the autonomy and free will to do whatever you want to do. Although isn’t that the beauty of going home for Christmas? Anyway, this week was slow, de-installed the exhibition, (kind of) made two new works and the open call for issue 4 being published alongside an exhibition or two.

So, beginning with some new work, kind of a culmination of the body of work I’ve been producing this year relating to SIM cards, communication or lack thereof and the constraining authoritarian laws currently being passed around the world regarding surveillance and internet restrictions. As I still have just a bunch of SIM cards in the studio, alongside all the debris from the past pieces, I’ve been stuck in a mindset that I should use these materials because of a monetary investment. Obviously not the best way to progress forward, but they’re all used now so that work is finished with, after five or so works were made. Anyway, the work produced/finished this week was the tower piece from before, accompanied by a modified drone. Unfortunately, due to bad craftmanship, the tower kept breaking, the cards popping off from each other, ruining the perfect tower aesthetic and making a new piece in a way. The data tower, or lack of data tower, SIM card-less, begins to crumble and die, with the drone being ornated with SIM cards, taking off and abandoning the tower in a way, after striping it off its resources. This could obviously be interpreted in a number of ways, from creating a rich harvesting from the poor narrative related to information hierarchies, or hierarchies of technology, or the use of data, or too much data and communication, in a space taints the environment, corrupts and destroys. Yeah, I think I’m happy with how it’s come out, and kind of dislike how it’s split apart. Maybe when I return I’ll fix it properly and it’ll be back to how it was, who knows. On a side note, I’m getting a lot better flying the drone, it’s very fun. I’m not sure what to call the piece right now, maybe Search and Destroy, referencing video games and the gamified nature of society and living in general? Potentially.

The second work that was produced, again utilising SIM cards, was slightly influenced by Dani Ploeger’s show last week with regards to fascist states and spaces using old war weaponry whilst utilising new technology like GoPro’s and iPhones to document their escapades. Taking two different SIM card companies, one primarily UK based, used for international calls and sold in corner shops across London, the other EE, a multinational company that operates on a global scale. So, taking these two different companies I then, taking inspiration from various books and films, envisioned the war’s that will occur in the future between different companies, different corporations fighting to control the market in a hyperconnected world. So using the SIM card carriers as a base alongside some MDF (which I’m using way too much of now), I then utilised some army figures, dressed in stereotypical army fatigues, chopped off their heads and replaced them with SIM cards. The two platforms each hold one soldier, visually identical one another, ready for or involved in battle. In the future, when the internet has died, we will have SIM cards for heads and use WW2 era weaponry to fight for multinational corporations. So yeah, that’s that. I quite like how these small pieces have turned out, and could easily be built into a series of works. I’m thinking of calling them Post WW3, or something to that effect.

That’s the two works, now for isthisit? stuff, beginning with the online exhibition I’ll be curating in the next week, featuring a few great artists; Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Constant Dullaart, James Bridle, Rachel Lamot, Ann Hirsch, Olga Fedorova, Eva Papamargariti, Iain Ball, Sebastian Burger and Andy Holden. I wanted some others, but when people don’t get back to you, what are you gonna do. It will be looking at surveillance, corporate online spaces, etc, etc. The exhibition is called Why don’t we get a kickstarter going for an ISP?, taken from a Reddit post, of course and goes live tomorrow. This is the accompanying text:

After the recently publicised death of net neutrality in the United States the general populace finds themselves once again asking the question, what happens now? Over the course of 2017 the global community has encountered a tidal wave of scenarios that would have seemed absurd only a year before, from alternative facts becoming a buzz word eagerly dancing off the tip of your tongue to news channels devoting large portions of their time to deconstructing obscure early morning tweets.

As the fee-to-play business model has become a prevalent element in video game development, with corporate giants continually charging extortionate amounts for in-game unlockable content it was only a matter of time before other sectors of corporate society were influenced by this particularly ugly form of late capitalism. Soon the information superhighway will have added restrictions in every country. Artificial and unneeded slow lanes will become the norm, throttling traffic and restricting your apparent human right to a high speed internet connection.

Once villainised in the news for their connections to the illegal drug trade, cryptocurrencies currently make up more than 1% of the global money supply. Bitcoin continues to fluctuate and grow, moving further away from its cyberpunk roots and becoming a valued asset in many millennials virtual wallets.

In a world full of uncertainty and hidden agendas disguised by post-truth linguistics, where imagined dystopian futures are becoming present day scenarios how will the digital landscape transform and evolve in a society that forgives and forgets past discrepancies on a daily basis, restricts internet access and relies on a continually evolving algorithm to monitor and monetise created content. Information is power, and in a world where an ocean of conflicting ideologies is just a few clicks away, I find myself wondering why we haven’t been restricted already?

Ah another thing that I finished working on was a new net art piece (kind of) for Jim and Sid’s new curatorial project for the Christmas season called Add To Basket, taking eBay items and making work surrounding them. I created a piece called Build A Drone, creating a fictitious company that connected the consumer with sellers on eBay, enabling you to build your own drone. You can see it by going here, not too bad for a day’s worth of work - www.add-to-basket.com

I’ve also been invited to produce the next issue of STIMULI, which is an online journal of sorts, the same people who included my essay about trolls and Trump in their recent book. I’m not sure when this will be, but you can check out recent issues by going here - stimulistimuli.com

The recent exhibition came down swiftly and easily, although the cable tray had to be carried all the way home as it was too long for the bus! I had help from a friend called Qianqian which was much appreciated and now all the work is in my room, ready to go back to everyone involved. I think it was generally successful, although it would have been nice if more people would have been able to come, although I’m happy it was squeezed in before Christmas and new year. New year, new outlook, or something like that! Now I just have to think about how to use the cable tray in my own work!

The open call for issue 4 was opened, focusing on all things AI, machine learning, etc. It ends on the 20^th January (perfect dissertation hand in time) and you can find out more by going here - www.isthisitisthisit.com/issue-04 Hopefully I can get some more great people involved who I admire for this one.

I think that’s it for isthisit? stuff, probably. If you want better updates subscribe by going to www.isthisitisthisit.com

Let’s do exhibitions, unfortunately there was only a few before I left London. Beginning with the good ones; Beth Kettel at The Zabludowicz Collection. It’s a shame, as the show is predominantly performance based, with the remnants of the performance being what’s left when you visit on a non-performance day. When I visited, no performance, so I was encountering the ephemera previously used or produced in the last performance, which is gooey and abstract until you encounter the accompanying interview which focuses on the TV game show genre and aesthetic. I liked what wassaid but didn’t feel it necessarily translated into the physical.

I also, for some weird reason, visited the Tate Modern. One Two Three Swing! By SUPERFLEX was fine, I had fun swinging? Was that what I was supposed to do, as a supposed adult who now no longer has fun and feels like they can’t throw caution to the wind and... swing on a swing? I dunno, I don’t see the subversive side of that, I get that it could be subversive, but in reality the Tate is full of families and children enjoying themselves. I has become the epitome of a space that you just take your children to as a distraction, like the park or in front of a screen. Rather than mobilising it feels like more of the same, which is quite disappointing. Even though I enjoyed swinging.

The Modigliani exhibition was okay, I’m not that big a fan of the paintings and didn’t really feel like learning and reading. The exciting part of the show was some VR ‘transporting you into the artists’ studio’, which was actually quite informative and interesting to experience. It’s interesting to experience these digital experiences in different forms in art, from an artwork that’s been made by one person VS a whole team of people who’ve probably been trained to create these virtual escapades. Anyway, that was fun.

The Ilya and Emilia Kabakov exhibition just pushed how much money these people have, or have had access to with regards to their art production. Apart from that, a series of stereotypical installation art before it’s time, an absurdly long winding corridor that felt incredibly negative to encounter, a whole train station reimagined as a platform for art. Just very extortionate.

The Red Star Over Russia show had some incredibly communist imagery throughout, propaganda posters littering the walls that lead you to the gift shop. Why wouldn’t you buy a mug with the communist logo emblazoned onto the outer shell?

Cory Arcangel at Tenderbooks was fun, he was commissioned to create a window display for the holidays showcasing his fashion line alongside his fidget spinner works and other things. More monetary than anything, who wouldn’t like Fuck Negativity sliders?

I think that’s it, my lacklustre exhibition list before going away for a few weeks. Now, films and TV. Let’s begin with Paddington, a lovely film which I should have watched when it first came out a few years ago. Just lovely PG content that makes you smile.

I finally got the chance to watch Dunkirk, an incredibly tense film that re-sensitives you to bombs and gun fire in films thanks to punctuating sounds and a series of distressing character arcs. Quite brilliant, a shame I didn’t see it in the cinema.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer was brutal and very tense, throwing you into a world seemingly annihilated of any emotion. It’s a must watch, from the director of Dogtooth and The Lobster.

What Happened to Monday, a fairly dull over acted film with a fairly obvious/stereotypical setting and plot. In a future world where a one child policy has been implemented but seven identical sisters have managed to survive until they’re in their mid-thirties. Having Noomi Rapace play all seven siblings is quite impressive and what it means is that nobody within the plot is safe, akin to a Game of Thrones type scenario that sees your favourite character of 3 seasons killed without a moment’s notice, so can the different siblings. It’s very throwaway and fun.

In TV I watched Manhunt: Unabomber, telling the tale of the infamous Unabomber case, posting bombs. It attempts to e gritty and an FBI agent becoming obsessed, losing his wife because he’s too caught up with his job, etc, but in reality I find myself bored by this obvious and overdone scenario. In fact, this obsession and grit felt manufactured. It obviously is of course, but it shouldn’t be noticeable, or you shouldn’t want to notice it. You should be swept away by the narrative which I was not.

I actually found myself laughing at Daddy’s Home, which was very odd. It’s been quite a while since I last laughed in a Will Ferrell film but this got me for some reason.

I think that might be it? I’ve probably watched some other things of course, season 2 of Easy, season 3 of Lady Dynamite, etc. Anyway, let’s finish it there. Christmas is now happening, a few new things are going to happen, considering exhibitions for the future and everything else…

It doesn’t take long to find new targets, Yoshinori Niwa and Narrative Projects

2 weeks and a lot has happened, well, some has happened. It’s mostly been dominated by planning and installing the launch/exhibition of isthisit? issue 3; It doesn’t take long to find new targets. Other than that I’ve been trying to make some new work alongside going to as many shows as I can before going away from London for a few weeks for Christmas. It’s such an odd feeling, missing a space that I always end up being tired of after a week or two, knowing that I will and missing it anyway, wanting to go back for a bit, escaping the ‘buzz’ of London. I’m sure if I were to go back and look at the posts from around this time in the past I’d see the same thing; obsessing over time or a lack thereof and just general distress over the future accompanied by the boredom associated with moving back to the country for a moment. Isn’t it lovely to reminisce…

So the exhibition, which opened on Thursday 7^th December, is now on until the 16^th. I’m there on the weekends from 12-6pm and it’s open by appointment during the week. I still hate the invigilating process, since The Choice of a New Generation I obviously haven’t learned anything. For my next show I vowed to put on accompanying events, talks, a panel, but right now I’m just writing my blog in an empty gallery listening to the screams of a digital prostitute being chased in GTAV. Obviously nothing was learned, even if this whole experience is a continual learning process in itself! The private view was of course great, lots of people came and all the physical copies of the magazine sold out, a fact I’m incredibly happy about, but who else will see this show? It will leave on in highly edited photographs and be a part of my portfolio of shows, but has anything actually changed because of it?

Anyway, the show is made up of 16 artists, all work I really like;  Marc Blazel, Elliott Burns, Joseph DeLappe, Jon Haddock, Stelios Ilchouk, Claire L.Evans, Eva and Franco Mattes, Oliver Payne, Liv Preston, Michael Pybus, Stefan Schwarzer, Georgie Roxby Smith, Viktor Timofeev, Willem Weisman, Mathew Zefeldt. The main theme is violence in video games, beginning the show by encountering Eva and Franco’s Freedom, quite a naïve piece of work that sees the artists going into the video game Freedom and kind-of trolling the players, asking for their lives to be spared and questioning the whole experience. Kind of like taking the high road, a fact that is obviously embedded within the work and the reason why I positioned it towards the audience as they enter the room. I remember being shown this work a few years ago by my brother when I wasn’t into ‘digital’ art, back when I originally began this blog and was making work about my emotions being carved into wood. At the time, from a ‘gamers’ perspective, I disliked it, wondering why they has chosen Counter-Strike, a video game about team work and precision timing, rather than Call of Duty, a game franchise that is heralded as the epitome of first person shooters. Anyway, I still disagree with the potential thoughts behind the work, or the voyeuristic position of the artist entering a world and prodding the inhabitants in an unfamiliar territory, but I wanted to include it in the show as it is an entry point, it’s how people in general view ‘gamers’, how they’re portrayed in the media and how the #gamergate movement probably looked from outside of the gaming bubble. In that instance the naivety and potential ignorance of the artists I think serves the work well, especially in this environment of fake news and altered facts. You then end the show with Georgie Roxby Smith’s video work Fair Game [Run Like A Girl], which sees the video game GTAV being utilised. The work involves the player in third person as Franklin, a young black man, chasing down a white prostitute for nearly 14 minutes until the NPC eventually gets hit by a car. The screen then fades and the cycle is repeated once again. Having this as an end point for me takes the show back to thinking about the current socio-political climate surrounding women and abuse. In the work the player becomes the machine, never stopping or wavering from their target. Ironically the NPC is programmed with tiny attributes and assertions, making them appear a lot more unique than the player. In my opinion it’s an incredibly clever, simple, considered work that highlights the problems embedded within the game industry. Anyway, if this sounds interesting to you in any way, come and see the show, on until the 16^th December, or email isthisit96@gmail.com if you want to book and see it during next week rather than coming on Saturday.

So that’s the show and what it’s about, the set up took 3 days, realistically could have done it in 1, which is great to know, but I think 3 is a healthy number to be working with. The piece that took the most time, effort and money was Eva and Franco’s, which included a cable tray hanging from the ceiling. It brings the show together beautifully, splitting the space up into a corridor like experience which I love and will definitely be using again for my own work at some point. It cost over £100 to put together over all, and I love the aesthetic and idea of the corporate cable tray, so it will definitely be made into one of my own artworks in the new year. I had an intern called Georgina Rowlands and Jim (my brother) helping out for a day and couldn’t have done it without them, another thing that’s great to know.

The magazines also all looked great, apart from annoyingly 2 came printed badly, I asked for a re-print, then the 2 extras sent were badly made too! So I asked for another re-print and am just waiting to receive those. I then promptly sold the 4 badly printed copies, calling them ‘draft’ copies. They all sold too which is really exciting, meaning next time I do this I can order more, maybe 75, or 100, although that would probably be pushing it. We’ll see what happens and what kind of gallery space I obtain for the next issue’s launch!

What next? In my own art I’ve been trying to create some new things, no more work has gone into the cupboard idea or the creation of a new fictitious world, but I’ll get onto that. I have however built a circular tube-like structure from the plastic cases that the SIM cards I’d bought for the previous project arrived in. I like re-using the resources. I then purchased an incredibly cheap drone to work with, to sit atop this tower like structure, a tower of detritus cast off in order to access the data that was once stored within, with the drone having SIM cards attached to it in some sort of weird upper class way. The drone signalling a new surveillance elite that takes away the resources of the tower block. It kind of makes sense in a very off way, although I’m not totally sure if I’m happy with it yet, plus the tower keeps falling apart which makes it incredibly unsustainable. Although that could be a part of the piece? I need to think of it some more, and have a week before I leave London, so potentially I’ll have it made by the time I leave. That would be nice…

I also finally got around to making the vinyl prints of the portal like works into a reality, taking two MDF boards and gluing the vinyl to the back of them. They look really nice and slick.

Also in the past few weeks the old text of mine considering Trump and memes was published again in a book by Stimuli, a great platform run by Federico Sargentone & Ulya Soley, featuring other writings by Elliott Burns (who wrote the essay for press release of my show on at the moment), Matilde Cerruti Quara and Geert Lovink (an amazing writer). So that’s kind of great!

Another new work I’ve been thinking about, which is super simple, is turning crypto currency logos into children’s puzzles, working off of the common idea that everyone seems to know now about these currencies but don’t understand how they work, or something like that anyway. I’m still thinking about it. Or maybe it’s about how none of us really understand the technology, continually being told about how it works in incredibly simplistic YouTube videos? It’s a work-in-progress that I just need to print basically. More money…

The last piece of exciting news is that the Annka show has been announced, which is great! It’s a nice selection of artists, 3 of which I saw at the MFA shows at Goldsmiths and the Slade. There’s also an award involved for the show, which is cool; The award recognises the artist that produces the most outstanding exhibition, as determined by the award’s jury, which will consider interest shown in the artist’s work, the number of gallery visitors it attracts and the number of likes it gets on Instagram, as part of its deliberations.  The award includes a cash prize for the winning artist. How exciting, although potentially harmful in pushing you to make Instagram friendly work! Maybe that’s the fun of it though?

I’ve been having various chats with people about upcoming projects, a studio request or two, working towards some workshops in the new year and other things, but they’re just beginnings of things rather than anything solid right now. I’m still in the process of planning the online show on isthisit? for the end of this month, very few people responded to my emails which is kind of annoying, but some did! Enough to make an interesting show at least! The bulk of the work for that will happen once I leave London next week.

Aside from that it’s been mostly isthisit? admin stuff, currently planning next issue, which will be about AI fitting nicely in with my dissertation plans and for something to publish the essay in. Oh speaking of the essay, I had an idea to simply film someone’s day talking to their phone, going about their day, shopping, jogging, cooking, etc, whilst having this incredibly diverse conversation with a bot that’s residing within their phone. As if this is a common occurrence and happens on a daily basis, AI replacing your friends and family basically. But yeah, that’s a future thing, or something I’m in the process of planning anyway.

If that’s everything, let’s get onto shows. Although I haven’t been able to visit any this weekend because of invigilating. I do however have all of next week to wander around London, lots of time to visit everything I want to see.

Combining Materials at Rosenfeld Porcini was kind of dull, lots of artists working with the materiality of things, the weight of random objects, etc. Artists knowing and understanding objects, probably the word object orientated ontology is being thrown around, something like that. Yeah? It was okay.

Lost & Found at Rod Barton was kind of fun, lots of weighty objects, materialistic endeavours and heft. Not really my kind of work but I liked some of it nonetheless, works by Tom Volkaert were fun.

James White at Blain Southern was okay, glass box cubes on the wall with photographs inside? Yeah?

I’m still yet to go to Sophie Jung’s show there. I went to the PV but it was so crowded that I was unable to get into the performance. I’ll definitely be going back in the new year!

Arcadia Missa had a solo show with Maja Čule, basically one video piece that sees a group of figures patrolling a forest like area, later discovered to be in the abstract wilderness of Central Park. I dunno, it was okay, I think I wanted to like it more than I did. One of the fun things regarding the space, the lights had been crammed full of dead leaves.

Harm van den Dorpel at Narrative Projects was great, basically artificial selves being created from algorithms and making art with them. Definitely go and see that.

Yoshinori Niwa at Edel Assanti was fantastic, performances/videos concerning ideas that are lost in translation with a political edge. Getting his girlfriend (who doesn’t speak Japanese) to read out a policy speech made by the Japanese Prime Minister in 2016. Just really great basically.

Dani Ploeger’s solo show at Arebyte was also pretty great, basically works responding to trips he’s made to the Ukraine/all over Europe, visiting fascist groups that combine new and old technology together, in particular soviet era weapons with iPhone 6’s. The work in the show responds to this contrasting climate, from iPhone footage playing on meticulously crafted 16mm film to a real wooden used AK47 handguard, 3D scanned and put into the game unity. Really great show with a real sense of dread and despair.

Annd I think that might be it. As I say, I haven’t had that much time these past few weeks, things have been busy and it’s very cold outside. Let’s go onto films and TV now, although I’ve been truly terrible these past few weeks. A severe lack of films have been consumed. Let’s start with War for the Planet of the Apes, which was quite brutal actually. It’s (obviously) a continuation of the recent planet of the apes films, prequels to the original Planet of the Apes in 1968. In this film we see a particularly nasty human running an off the grid militia of sorts, rounding up apes and putting them in camps, starving them and torturing them in horrific ways. There’s a particularly distressing scene when apes, now pretty much humans as they speak and can think, are being tortured and abused on a mass scale. It was great but truly devastating.

Next up is Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton, a documentary looking at the behind the scenes of Man on the Moon and Jim Carrey’s descent into madness. Even though I haven’t even seen the original film it’s still pretty impressive, watching Carrey transform himself into different characters. It’s fun but very bleak and disturbing.

The final film, that I’m truly upset to have watched, was Happy Death Day, a terrible film that’s basically Groundhog Day but instead of simply waking up the main character is killed in a series of brutal killings. Terrible acting and a sort-of predictable plot. Why did I watch it?

And that is literally everything, three films in two weeks, how dull. Obviously I’ve been watching lots of TV, catching up on all the regulars, but I just keep being dragged into YouTube videos, endlessly repeating 10-20 segments of the same repetitive bullshit. I guess it always feels a lot easier to watch a YouTube video than to find a film to get involved with… Anyway, I think that’s it for the past two weeks, perhaps. I didn’t think any more about the screening in Suffolk, so that’s pretty much gone to shit. I’m going to begin planning the next issue in the next week I think, concentrating on that, moving forwards and moving on. One final note, the last season of Adventure Time is currently coming out. How sad.