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Checkmate atheists12/18/2022 Among its many startup-like projects-a sustainable juice bar, a bitcoin trade fair-was Christopher Kulendran Thomas’s “New Eelam” (2016), an app-based housing subscription meant to replace traditional citizenship with “liquid,” transnational membership-what the press release describes as “the luxury of communalism rather than private property.”įor a monthly fee-like rent, but not rent-members will be able to stay at any one of the brand’s commonly (i.e., corporately) held properties in cities around the world. It became the signal exhibition of this new ambiguity. In 2016, millennial ironists DIS curated the 9th Berlin Biennale, The Present in Drag. The problem arises when we can’t tell the difference. In these extreme times, in need of extreme measures, even art that claims to solve, or simply confront, a social issue will have difficulty signaling, beyond all doubt, the difference between a “modest proposal” and a serious one. What Ben Davis calls “deliberately provocative moral ambiguity” settles in, deliberately or not.Īs the viewer completes the work, they introduce a thrilling degree of chaos. Where an artist’s intentions are unknown-where an artwork isn’t flagged as satire, or even as critical in any way-it remains possible, indeed probable, that some viewers will interpret (or misinterpret) the work as sincere. Now they plan how their shows will look on Instagram.Įlitism: Viewers of past avant-gardes may have had the feeling that art was a joke at their expense today, viewers may feel like they’re being trolled.Īnd art, too, is subject to Poe’s Law. Self-Documentation: Time was, artists fretted over adjusting to the distribution conditions of Contemporary Art Daily. The purely sincere artwork is pinned down, digested, inert the one that hedges stays vital. Irony: Rare is the artwork that does not come with the plausible deniability of an ironic read. Velocity: See artist Brad Troemel, author of “ Athletic Aesthetics,” for whom the virtue of art production is defined as constant and repetitive movement-quantity over quality. Or at least to its web- and tech-inflected edges. The four characteristics of online culture (what David Auerbach terms A-culture, for anonymous-but also asshole, accelerated, arch, etc.) carry over to the art world, too. Ultimately, the work itself can make no definitive statement. Others will speak for it, and whatever original intent will be engulfed by the discourse the work provokes.Ĭonsider another protocol: that of contemporary art. In a way, the author’s intent doesn’t matter sincere or sarcastic, the result is the same. When a meme is reposted, its context can easily change its reception-and its meaning. Wherever one encounters a text without its author, Poe’s Law holds. The more extreme a statement-the more fundamentalist, controversial, or radical-the more it resembles its own satire.Īnonymity and pseudonymity are fundamental elements of online culture. A sufficiently extremist group will reject most applicants for not being extreme enough they will suspect others of being parodists or infiltrators. Indeed, some views are so extreme that extremists don’t believe others might actually hold them. Even a clear statement of intent can be distrusted. Against the austerity of plain text, or even pictorial memes, a smiley lets us know the poster is “just kidding.” It helps keep ambiguity in check. Poe’s Law suggests using emojis as a crude substitute for body language and inflection to signal the tone of posts. Their exchange led Poe to formulate the law that bears his name: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.”Ī sincere post asks, if man evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? In a clear satire, a dog sitting at a table with a jar of Jif wonders if dogs came from wolves, why are there still wolves? And yet, one can always be mistaken for the other. In 2005 a certain creationist thread evolved into a heated back and forth between Nathan Poe (who lists his politics as US-Democrat and faith as Agnostic) and user Carico (who only identifies as Christian). So users on the website come waving their flags. On the internet, nobody knows if you believe in god. “I sincerely hope OP is trolling, if not, this is all terribly depressing.” – Anonymous Checkmate, Atheists: Intention and Ambiguity in Contemporary Art
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