Electronic Superhighway

Zach Blas talk @ Whitechapel Gallery, Apr 21

20 April 2016

Artist and lecturer Zach Blas will give a talk called ‘Contra-Internet’ at London’s Whitechapel Gallery on April 21.

Taking its starting point from a screen shot of a Facebook status in which Blas outlines a transparent ‘user’s agreement’, foreswearing “any biopolitical position as a user of the internet” and points to the himself as “physical-data-body-nodes within the naturalised capitalised internet system”, this coming Thursday, Blas will talk about the “emerging militancies and subversions of ‘the Internet’”.

Also to be expected is a discussion of dildotectonics (a theory adopted against ideals of heteronormative sex), utopian plagiarism, and social media exodus, all in order to pose a challenge to the “control logic” with which we look upon our time and bodies spent online.

The talk by Blas, who has recently given similar lectures at Goldsmiths and RCA art schools, is a part of Whitechapel Gallery’s Electronic Superhighway season events programme.

See the Whitechapel event page for more details.**

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Electronic Superhighway @ Whitechapel, Jan 28 – May 15

25 January 2016

A massive survey of the impact of the internet and computer technologies on art practice is happening at London’s Whitechapel Gallery opening on January 28 and running until May 15.

Electronic Superhighway will bring together over 100 artworks spanning four decades between 1966 and 2016. It will be curated in reverse, so that the viewer will walk progressively towards the most historical experiments in media and sensory technology.

The survey show will include work by Amalia Ulman, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, The Yes Men, Hito Steyerl, Ryan Trecartin, Olia Lialina, Lynn Hershman Leeson, who’s work Lorna was one of the first interactive installations, and Nam June Paik, from whose musings on the future of the internet and art in 1974 the show borrows its title.

See the Whitechapel’s event page for more details.**

Olia Liana, 'Summer' (2013). Courtesy the artist and artist-host websites
Olia Liana, ‘Summer’ (2013). Courtesy the artist and all artist-host websites.

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