Context of Practice: OUGD401 - Practical Work Research

Post-post modernity is said to exist right now, we are living in this strange era where things are even more hard to define solidly. An art movement that I am interested in in 'Post-internet' and also Vapor Wave Aesthetics. For me this movement is significant in defining post modernity. The fact that work like this is still being produced indicated a profound and distinct influence of post-modernity ideologies on 21st century art and design and society. Post-modernity can mean a personal response to a post-modern society, the conditions in a society which make it post-modern or the state of being that is associated with a post-modern society. For me post-internet art is a direct extension of post-modernity, the two are linked and have evolved from each other.

Just as twentieth-century modernism was in large part defined by the relationship between craft and the emergent technologies of manufacturing, mass media, and lensbased imagery, the most pressing condition underlying contemporary culture today—from artistic practice and social theory to our quotidian language—may well be the omnipresence of the internet. Though the terminology with which we describe these phenomena is still nascent and not yet in widespread use, this exhibition presents a broad survey of art that is controversially defined as “post-internet,” which is to say, consciously created in a milieu that assumes the centrality of the network, and that often takes everything from the physical bits to the social ramifications of the internet as fodder. From the changing nature of the image to the circulation of cultural objects, from the politics of participation to new understandings of materiality, the interventions presented under this rubric attempt nothing short of the redefinition of art for the age of the internet.

This understanding of the post-internet refers not to a time “after” the internet, but rather to an internet state of mind—to think in the fashion of the network. In the context of artistic practice, the category of the post-internet describes an art object created with a consciousness of the networks within which it exists, from conception and production to dissemination and reception. As such, much of the work presented here employs the visual rhetoric of advertising, graphic design, stock imagery, corporate branding, visual merchandising, and commercial software tools. Arranged along several thematic threads, this exhibition considers issues related to internet policy, mass clandestine surveillance and data mining, the physicality of the network, the post-human body, radicalized information dispersion, and the open source movement. It looks at changes taking place in the age of the ubiquitous internet, from information dispersion and artwork documentation to human language and approaches to art history.

'Post-internet' is a term that denotes a movement in arts, and criticism. It has emerged from Internet Art, however the movement has not been thoroughly defined. The term does not imply art after the internet has ceased to exist, but refers instead to society and modes of interaction following the widespread adoption of the internet. The term “post-internet” refers not to a time 'after' the internet, but rather to an internet state of mind...

The term has recently appeared in a variety of far-flung contexts: a talk at Frieze Art Fair, a forum at New York's Museum of Modern Art, a panel at the College Art Association conference. Unlike "Neo-Expressionism" or "Neo-Geo," "Post-Internet" avoids anything resembling a formal description of the work it refers to, alluding only to a hazy contemporary condition and the idea of art being made in the context of digital technology.

Supporters of Post-Internet art might say that it's not the gallery that really matters but the shot of the work there, like a shot staged in a photographer's studio. But staged photography often disguises the shoot's environment, or transforms it. Post-Internet art preserves the white cube to leech off its prestige. The same supporters might also say that Post-Internet art offers a critique of how images of art circulate online in service of the art market. But unless the artist does something to make the documentation strange and emphasize the difference between the work's presence online and its presence in the gallery it's hard to believe that anything close to a critique is happening.

Post-Internet art is in love with advertising, like a lot of art since Warhol, but it's the obsession with art-world power systems—as represented by the installation shot—that irks me the most about it. After a century that has witnessed art in newspapers, art on the radio, art in the mail, art on television and art on the Internet, here's a self-styled avant-garde that's all about putting art back in the rarefied space of the gallery, even as it purports to offer profound insights about how a vast, non-hierarchical communications network is altering our lives.

There's a promise of broad social commentary in the term "Post-Internet," but as "Competing Images" demonstrates, it takes real people to bring this implicit commentary to life. Without an external impurity like the human body, Post-Internet defaults to an art about the presentation of art, playing to the art-world audience's familiarity with the gallery as a medium or environment for art, as well as with the conventions of presenting promotional materials online.

Some examples of post-internet art: