MASS EFFECT Critical Anthologies in Art and Culture Johanna Burton, series editor Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Lauren Cornell and Ed Halter M A S S E F F E C T ART AND THE INTERNET IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY EDITED BY LAUREN CORNELL AND ED HALTER The MIT Press / Cambridge, Massachusetts / London, England © 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Chaparral and PF Din by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mass effect Mass effect : art and the internet in the twenty-first century / Edited by Lauren Cornell and Ed Halter. pages cm. — (Critical anthologies in art and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-02926-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Art and the Internet. I. Cornell, Lauren, editor. II. Halter, Ed, editor. III. Title. NX180.I57M275 2015 776—dc23 2015001909 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS ix SERIES PREFACE JOHANNA BURTON xi DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD LISA PHILLIPS x v HARD REBOOT: AN INTRODUCTION TO MASS EFFECT LAUREN CORNELL AND ED HALTER 1 Do You Believe in Users? / Turing Complete User OLIA LIALINA AND DRAGAN ESPENSCHIED 1 5 coming soon: ebay paypal blogs the internet CORY ARCANGEL 2 9 Doing Assembly: The Art of Cory Arcangel TINA KUKIELSKI 5 1 Dispersion SETH PRICE 6 9 Two Statements on Carnivore ALEXANDER R. GALLOWAY 7 9 Digressions from the Memory of a Minor Encounter RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE 8 9 The Different Worlds of Cao Fei ALICE MING WAI JIM 9 9 Net Aesthetics 2.0 Conversation, New York City, 2006: Part 1 of 3 CORY ARCANGEL, MICHAEL BELL-SMITH, MICHAEL CONNOR, CAITLIN JONES, MARISA OLSON, AND WOLFGANG STAEHLE, WITH LAUREN CORNELL, MODERATOR 10 7 Aleksandra Domanović and Oliver Laric in Conversation with Caitlin Jones 12 3 A Brief History of And/Or Gallery PAUL SLOCUM 14 7 Internet Explorers CECI MOSS 15 9 Lost Not Found: The Circulation of Images in Digital Visual Culture MARISA OLSON 16 7 “W e Did It Ourselves!” aka “My Favorites”: Volume 1, 2005 to 2009 GUTHRIE LONERGAN 18 5 Excerpts from Post Internet GENE MCHUGH 19 9 In the Long Tail MARK LECKEY 21 3 Everybody’s Autobiography ALEX KITNICK 22 3 A Theorem PAUL CHAN 23 1 The Centaur and the Hummingbird ED HALTER 24 3 The Visibility Wars REBECCA SOLNIT 25 5 Trevor Paglen in Conversation with Lauren Cornell 26 7 What to Do with Pictures DAVID JOSELIT 28 5 Net Aesthetics 2.0 Conversation, New York City, 2008: Part 2 of 3 PETRA CORTRIGHT, JENNIFER MCCOY, KEVIN MCCOY, TOM MOODY, TIM WHIDDEN, AND DAMON ZUCCONI, WITH ED HALTER, MODERATOR 28 9 Citizens Reporting and the Fabrication of Collective Memory JENS MAIER-ROTHE, DINA KAFAFI, AND AZIN FEIZABADI vi / CONTENTS 30 3 International Art English ALIX RULE AND DAVID LEVINE 31 9 Chronicle of a Traveling Theory ALEXANDER PROVAN 32 5 Arcades, Mall Rats, and Tumblr Thugs JESSE DARLING 32 9 Next-Level Spleen JOHN KELSEY 33 7 Digital Divide: Contemporary Art and New Media CLAIRE BISHOP 35 3 Sweeping, Dumb, and Aggressively Ignorant! Revisiting “Digital Divide” CLAIRE BISHOP 35 7 Art Workers: Between Utopia and the Archive BORIS GROYS 36 9 Black Vernacular: Reading New Media MARTINE SYMS 39 3 A Selection from DISimages: New Stock Options DIS MAGAZINE 40 1 Made of the Same Stuff: Ryan Trecartin’s Art of Transformation MICHAEL WANG 41 3 Post-Net Aesthetics Conversation, London, 2013: Part 3 of 3 JOSEPHINE BERRY SLATER, RÓZSA FARKAS, HARM VAN DEN DORPEL, AND BEN VICKERS, WITH KAREN ARCHEY, MODERATOR 41 9 Here I Am: Telepresent Subjecthood in the Work of Lotte Rose Kjær Skau MORGAN QUAINTANCE 42 5 Internet State of Mind: Where Can Medium Specificity Be Found in Digital Art? DOMENICO QUARANTA CONTENTS / vii 43 9 Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead? HITO STEYERL 45 1 Bodies in Space: Identity, Sexuality, and the Abstraction of the Digital and Physical KAREN ARCHEY 46 9 PUBLICATION HISTORY 47 3 CONTRIBUTORS 48 1 BOARD OF TRUSTEES 48 3 INDEX viii / CONTENTS SERIES PREFACE Between 1984 and 2004, the New Museum produced six anthologies under the series title “Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art.” Initiating these books was Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation (1984), a volume that, some thirty years after its appearance, continues to stand as a model for what it looks like to consider and reflect upon a historical moment even as it unfolds. Indeed, the pivotal nature of that book, and those that followed, evidenced a new model for scholarship within the purview of a contemporary art museum. Taking the art sphere (and its attendant discourses) as a nodal point by which to investi- gate larger culture, Art After Modernism gave shape and visibility to an arena of debate. The broad questions being considered—Were modernism’s effects truly waning? What movements or reorientations were replacing its foundation?— found provocative, pointed answers in wide-ranging texts by equally wide-ranging authors. In today’s much-changed context, the seminal arguments that appear in Art After Modernism are often discussed as having produced their own founda- tion, now itself in the process of being productively overturned. Our decision to reinvigorate the series in the year 2015, under the new rubric “Critical Anthologies in Art and Culture,” came out of discussions with museum and academic colleagues, with students, and with artists, all of whom expressed a hunger for platforms that equally prioritize debate and experimen- tation. Rather than focusing on topics around which there is already broad con- sensus, these books aim to identify and rigorously explore questions so salient and current that, in some cases, they are still unnamed, their contours in the process of being assumed. To that end, the series aims less to offer democratic surveys of themes under consideration and rather hopes to stage arguments and offer conflicting, even contrasting, viewpoints around them. The role of art has substantially, perhaps fundamentally, shifted in the last several decades. What has not changed, however, is its ability to channel,