Red art: new utopias in data capitalism

Balaskas, Bill and Aceti, Lanfranco and Stallabrass, Julian and Jaschko, Susanne (2014) Red art: new utopias in data capitalism. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 20 (1). The MIT Press, Leonardo/ISAST. ISBN 9781906897284

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Red art: new utopias in data capitalism

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Creators:

Balaskas, Bill and Aceti, Lanfranco and Stallabrass, Julian and Jaschko, Susanne

Description/Abstract:

The publication investigates the relevance of socialist utopianism to the current dispositions of new media art, through the contributions of renowned and emerging academic researchers, critical theorists, curators and artists. From the early stages of its development, new media art readily adopted a variety of means of artistic engagement and expression that aim at serving modes of utopian social being: from multi-modal collaboration to unrestricted public participation and from open software applications to hacktivism, the germs of leftist political thought seem to abound in the art of the digital age. Prompted by the economic crisis, new media art appears to increasingly employ the tools provided by new technologies in order to penetrate all aspects of global social living and assert the need for socioeconomic change. New media artworks and art projects have gradually formed a common practice whose objectives allude to utopian theories of social organization lying closer to certain visions of communism, direct democracy and anarchism, rather than to the realities of neoliberal capitalism within which new media are produced and predominantly operate.

"Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism" explores this multifaceted context in an attempt to demystify whether and to what extent the art of the digital age could be the result of the seemingly paradox combination of capitalism's products and communism's visions.

Item Type:

Book

Official URL:

http://www.leoalmanac.org/vol-20-no-1-red-art

Date:

15 January 2014

Funders:

University for the Creative Arts, Goldsmiths, University of London, New York University, Royal College of Art

Additional Information:

Edited by: Bill Balaskas, Lanfranco Aceti, Julian Stallabrass and Susanne Jaschko.
ISSN: 1071-4391.

Schools:

School of Fine Art, Crafts & Photography
School of Communications