Duty free art

S15 This paperback edition first published by Verso 2019 2 0 1~ First published by Verso 2017 © Hito Steyer! 2017, 2019 c.1 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 License All rights reserved The moral rights of the author have been asserted 13579108642 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London WlF 0EG US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201 versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-244-9 ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-245-6 (UK EBK) ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-246-3 (US EBK) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress Has Cataloged the Hardback Edition as Follows: Names: Steyer!, Hito, author. Title: Duty free art/ Hito Steyer!. Description: London; New York : Verso, 2017. I Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2017024230 (print) I ISBN 9781786632432 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Art, Modem-21st century-Philosophy. I Art, Modem- 21st century-Political aspects. Classification: LCC N6497 .S75 2017 I DDC 709.05/3-dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017024230 Typeset in Sabon by MJ & N Gavan, Truro, Cornwall Printed in the UK by CPI Group

Contents I. A Tank on a Pedestal I 2. How to Kill People: A Problem of Design 3· The Terror of Total Dasein: Economies of 9 Presence in the Art Field 21 4. Proxy Politics: Signal and Noise 3I 5. A Sea of Data: Apophenia and Pattern 47 (Mis-)Recognition 63 6. Medya: Autonomy of Images 75 7. Duty Free Art 8. Digital Debris IOI 9. Her Name Was Esperanza IO. International Disco Latin II5 II. Is the Internet Dead? 135 12. Why Games, Or, Can Art Workers Think? 1 43 13. Let's Talk about Fascism 153 14. If You Don't Have Bread, Eat Art! 171 Contemporary Art and Derivative Fascisms 181 15. Ripping Reality 191 Acknowledgments 207 Notes 213

What is the function of art in the era of digital globalization? In Duty Free Art, filmmaker and writer Hito Steyer! wonders how we can appreciate, or even make, art in the present age. Exploring subjects as diverse as video games, the Wikileaks files, the proliferation of freeports, and political actions, she exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production. \"The highest duty of theory and art is to grasp and articulate their own time. In our time, Hito Steyer! fulfills this duty like nobody else. Her investigations of the fate of images and words in the age of their global circulation are always focused and precise-but also adventurous, unexpected, and fascinating.\" BORIS GROYS \"Steyer! refuses to nail down a single idea, or insist on a point of view. Instead, we get art as an act of moral thinking-in-progress. In a very of-the-moment, digital-age way, the logic of that thinking is fractured, the nature of morality suspect. But a belief in the necessity of thinking, restlessly, politically, never is in doubt.\" NEW YORK TIMES \"Offers a powerful defense of contemporary art's capacity to disrupt (rather than reinforce) systems of unequal distribution- of wealth, violence, power ... sometimes funny, frequently moving.\" WHITE REVIEW \"A dizzying and dystopian riff on the liquid capital that flows through the art world, the factoids manufactured by bots, and our accumulation of digital debris.\" IWONA BLAZWICK \"Gleefully surfs everything from military 3-D imaging and printing to big data and corporate surveillance to computer gaming.\" ARTFORUM \"Poses uncomfortable questions about today's imagf market. \" GUARDIAN DUTY FREE ART (079)-1 06/2021 9781786632449 IlJ6941861 \\ ' Art Criticism I II IIIII IIIll 111111111111111111 £9.99 I S17.95 I S23.99CAN 2121786632440 versobooks.com EB-DE0700-0001 EOOQ6 Cover art by Trevor Paglen Cover design by Melissa Weiss 454.00 g ll7ijf7ij5ll53244911 1111111111111111