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A Letter To Young Internet Artists
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July 6, 2014 | Emilie Gervais

What happened since Rosalind Krauss introduced the term “post­media,” full of semiotic contradictions? After Felix Guattari used the expression “post­-media era” and producer and consumer melted within the media, dissecting themselves? What happened after Miss Krauss wrote A Voyage in the North Sea. Art in the Age of the Post­-Medium Condition, chatting about post­-medium, killing with her thoughts put into words any medium-related stuff Clement Greenberg had ever given birth to? After Peter Weibel curated his Post­-Media Condition art show, reinforcing the concept that all art is post­-media because it is embraced by the media?

There is no Art beyond the Media: aesthetic experience comes from a media experience. Art Stack. There was the terminal and beyond, an endless line of warehouses. The media itself is pretty lame, unless you’re into a retro version of some new neoclassical art. Per instance, Martine is Mouchette. I want to be the fly on her background ­image.

Mouchette

Bonjour. му lιƒє ιѕ dєlιcαтєlу ωєll вαlαиcєd. єνєяу dαу ι ωαкє, иσт киσωιиg нσω ѕнιтту ι’ll ƒєєl. Have you ever tried to kill the cat on my website? Have you ever looked for my shells? Did you go to my last birthday party? It happened in Amsterdam. єνєяу мσтнєяƒυcкιиg dαу. ι’м ѕcαяєd тσ lαу ιи вєd ƒσя ƒєαя тнαт ι мιgнт иσт вє αвlє тσ ѕlєєρ. иσт вє αвlє тσ gєт уσυ 域 му мιиd. My name is Mouchette I live in a garden I am nearly 13 years old I am an artist And this is my shop Le site existe aussi en Français My next mood is…
(reload) 

Artie Vierkant’s The Image Object Post­-Internet evokes the idea of “being post-­internet.” A body, an object, an image that doesn’t take place more in physical space than in digital space. The concept was developed after Marisa Olson’s use of the term “post­-internet art” and Gene McHugh’s art criticism blog titled Post­-Internet. Marisa suggests that internet art is now mainstream and that contemporary art is becoming more internet. Gene describes post-­internet anything that considers the internet more of a banality than a novelty, as nothing, not even internet art, sticks to the internet anymore. Internet is our everyday life. It is no more a question of web amateurism, hackerism, programmerism, cyberism, whatever­ism.

Welcome to its homepage. A post­-internet object is an object that looks good on a webpage, in your Facebook news feed or photo album, on Tumblr or Instagram — somewhere you can access with an internet connection and possibly, a screen, or something that lets you view information as something meant to be visually appealing, says Brian Droitcour. A post-­internet object doesn’t trigger space. Post­-internet artists do not consider art. Post­-internet artists do not consider objects. Post-­internet artists are not really artists. It’s about something else, something larger than life. I see your true colors shining through. I see your true colors and that’s why I love you. Cindy Lauper is post­-internet.

A post­-internet object is lost within all its representations disseminated all over the world, which includes the internet and other stuff. It’s about all other possible variations of that object left anywhere by anybody, by any object or any image. There is no original copy. The source element isn’t important. Variations and recontextualization is what enrich the object. Ubiquitous authorship and the mutability of the image­-object post-­internet highlights that what matters is the transmission of ideas. What’s really important is not the content. It’s the concept.

Post-­Internet, the art movement. Wikipedia decries that an art movement is a style in the art world with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a period of time. Art movements are fed by stuff written by art critics, journalists, art historians and others. To give birth to an art movement, it takes a lot of free time because one must shit a lot of theory and basic human non­sense. Post-­internet art cannot exist without words to define it and people being like, “Post-­internet post-internet post-­internet.” But art can exist without words. What is culturally relevant right now? Use these key concepts in relation to art. Jpeg an art movement. But really, it could all be summarized in a tweet. Post-­Internet is just a way to conceptualize art and give it sense — for humans.


Post-­internet makes no sense semiotically. This leads to the cancellation of anything philosophic it could be bragging about. The metaphor has its own limit. The prefix “post” used before the word “internet” implies the posterity of the internet, a time that comes after it. The concept itself is post­dated: post-­internet art, semiotically, is a type of art that doesn’t even exist. It can’t even exist. All art, qualifying itself as post-­internet, uses the internet as a carrier, to distribute and to justify itself. Are sound art installations qualified as post­-sound artworks? If you are trying to reflect how life and culture functions, baby, I would say think about your spatiality and your temporality, your mass medium being your art medium, your distribution model, your method of reception and of exhibition. More, if you want, but that’s just you being a product of your own product.

That’s not because you’re not always using a screen to show your internet-related art that you’re ”after, beyond, post” the internet. That’s just like a webpage that really wants to be a website. A website that really wants to be a dynamic painting. A dynamic painting that really just wants to be a painting.


But any artwork produced, exhibited and discussed in the new media art world is considered and labeled as new media art. That is art, considering creative research on any medium, exploration as an art process — simple, lacking irony and taking technology seriously. On the other hand, contemporary art is about content, semiotically complicated or rich, usually ironically self-­referential and into materiality destruction. No matter what the medium is. The artist is aware of all illusions. Being post-­internet can somehow be considered as an answer to Lev’s The Death of Computer Art. A short text published on his website in αмєяιcαи ѕтαиdαяd cσdє ƒσя ιиƒσямαтισи ιитєяcнαиgє in which Lev mentions that the convergence between the art world and the computer art wouldn’t ever occur because contemporary art wants Art and not just explorations within new media. But as a post­-internet being and a post-­internet image­-object, I obviously prove that the convergence between contemporary art and new media art happened.

It’s a new communication standard — your information behaviors, my information behaviors, our Information Behaviors. Tell me how you access and process information and they will tell you who you are. Organize data and structure the user’s experience of the data. Ain’t nuffin nu abt dat. It has always been about information. Yung Lascaux paintings are information, not just latent representation. The user decodes the information based on his knowledge and life experience. It’s not about the author’s intentions, the content and the form of an artwork. It’s about how the user makes use of that information — what you allow the user to see, what the user is going to encounter. Art movements are as irrelevant as categorizing art under medium labels, because 2014 is about life.

Emilie Gervais is an artist based in France.