Contemporary art and digital culture

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an infornia business © 2017 Melissa Gronlund The right of Melissa Gronlund to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Gronlund, Melissa, author. Title: Contemporary art and digital culture / Melissa Gronlund. Description: New York: Routledge, 2016. Identifiers: LCCN 2016026138 I ISBN 9781138936386 (hardback : alk. paper) I ISBN 9781138936447 (pbk. : alk. paper) I ISBN 9781315676852 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Technology and the arts. I Arts and society. I Art and the Internet. I Digital media-Social aspects. Classification: LCC NX180.T4 G76 2016 I DDC 701/.03-dc23 LC record available at https:/ /lccn.loc.gov/2016026138 ISBN: 978-1-138-93638-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-93644-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-67685-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage,LLC

Contents List offigures Vlll Acknowledgements X Introduction: Beyond the visible image 1 1 Reproducibility and appropriation in the twentieth 17 century: precursors to the digital age 56 2 Cybernetics and the posthuman: the emergence of art systems 88 120 3 Challenges to immateriality: posthumanist thought 151 and digitality 188 218 4 Violence and the surveilled internet 5 Identity, language, and the body online 6 The art world infrastructure post-internet Index

Erika Balsom, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and Liberal Arts, King's College London, UK Contemporary Art and Digital Culture analyses the impact of the internet and digital technologies upon art today. Art over the last fifteen years has been deeply inflected by the rise of the internet as a mass cultural and socio-political medium, while also responding to urgent economic and political events, from the financial crisis of 2008 to the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. This book looks at how contemporary art addresses digitality, circulation, privacy, and globalisation, and suggests how feminism and gender binaries have been shifted by new mediations of identity. It situates current artistic practice both in canonical art history and in technological predecessors such as cybernetics and net.art, and takes stock of how the art-world infrastructure has reacted to the internet's promises of democratisation. An invaluable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of contemporary art - especially those studying history of art and art practice and theory - as well as those working in film, media, cu ration, or art education. Melissa Gronlund is a writer and lecturer on contemporary art, specialising in the moving image. From 2007-2015, she was co-editor of the journal Aftera/1, and her writing has appeared there and in Artforum, e-flux journal, frieze, the NewYorker.com, and many other places. ART Cover image: © Hito Steyerl, How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MDV File, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. an lnforma business I~ ~~o~;~;n~~~up ISBN 978- 1-138-93644-7 www.routledge.com II IIIIIII 111111111111111 9 781138 936447