Post-Internet Art

Ah…the currency of clicks!  The marketing tool for post-internet art.  Love it, hate it, networked technologies have influenced the way art is viewed, produced, researched, and purchased.  Huge corporations have altered the way they do business and present information based on those all-important clicks.  And how do those flashes of pseudo acceptance and approval affect artists?  If work is presented online, say Instagram and/or Facebook, and it gets substantial "Likes" does the artist gravitate to producing only that kind of art?  Based on the online validation of a particular style of work or presentation, couldn't that also serve as a kind of censorship of art that isn't "Liked" as much?

In Art in America Magazine, Brian Droitcour discussed the controversy of the term and the art.  “Whether people like it, hate it or feel indifferent toward it, they all seem to know what ‘Post-Internet’ means today but are unable to articulate it with much precision.  “I know it when I see it” – like porn, right?  It’s not a bad analogy, because Post-Internet art does to art what porn does to sex – renders it lurid. “ 

Post-internet art has even become a punch line on a TV show about art, “Touching the Art.”  Artist and comedian Casey Jane Ellison hosts the show, coincidentally running not on any broadcast television network, but rather…wait for it, the online Ovation YouTube channel.  The Los Angeles Times article about the show described the round-table format of it in which, Ellison – feigning cluelessness in a seductive shade of inky purple lipstick – grills a panel of guests about subjects such as the relevance of art school, the objectification of women and the possible meaning of the phrase “post-Internet.”  Ever the comedian, Ellison pronounced, “post-net is so annoying to say out loud.”

While the internet functions not only as an equalizing factor in distribution and opportunity to view, it nevertheless, defaults to a somewhat distorted presentation of art online given the possible nuanced changes in colors, the flattening of images, and the lack of interactive human experience.  But it’s interesting to consider artists’ relationships with the internet and objects – are they making art online or making art after going online. 

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-touching-the-art-series-casey-jane-ellison-20141201-column.html

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazine/the-perils-of-post-internet-art/