Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen. Can These Antiques Ever Prove Dangerous Again?, 2012.

In honor of Labor Day, today we want to thank the publications that made our Summer Reading series a success. We were honored to host articles from Artforum, Art Papers, Art Practical, the Brooklyn Rail, East of Borneo, Frieze d/e, Hyperallergic, MN Artists, MN Original, MOMUS, Rhizome, SFMOMA’s Open Space, Temporary Art Review, and un Magazine. And we credit the labors of the artists and writers, without whom this series would not be possible: Juana Berrío, Timothy P.A. Cooper, Steven Cottingham, Jarrett Earnest, Matthew Fluharty, Orit Gat, Claudia La Rocco, Patricia Maloney, Pippa Milne, Ceci Moss, Mohamud Mumin, Matt Stromberg, Matt Sussman, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Catherine Wagley, Caroline Woolard, Ben Valentine, and RM Vaughan. We are truly proud to share this space with you! 

Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke. The 3D Additivist Manifesto, 2015 (screenshot).

Not long ago I wrote an article celebrating the work being done by cyberfeminist collective Deep Lab. In a post-Snowden world that’s seen few legal or structural changes since the first leaks, and one that’s filled with male-dominated tech conferences that sound more like advertising than critical discussion, I still consider Deep Lab’s work to be invaluable.

However, after the piece was published, Dorothy Santos—a writer, curator, and friend who’s currently organizing an exhibition on privacy and surveillance and their relationship to gentrification in the Bay Area—wrote to me to express concerns about the lack of women of color (WOC) and queer or trans women of color (QTWOC) artists in Deep Lab. She questioned why I didn’t discuss that lack of representation in my article.

With Santos’ encouragement, I decided it would be valuable to do a follow-up piece and include perspectives from WOC and QTWOC artists and writers regarding Deep Lab, new media and technology-based art, and representation. We emailed a small questionnaire to twenty such women. Seven responded, and their comments are featured below along with Santos’ own answers. We encourage any WOC/QTWOC readers to comment on this article or email to share your perspectives. As Deep Lab continues its work in 2015, with exciting partnerships with the MIT Media Laboratory and NEW INC, we hope these voices will be taken into account.

Read the full article here.

Anthony Antonellis. Net Art Implant, 2013; RFID chip, artist’s skin, animated GIF. Courtesy of the Artist.

Art viewers have long relied on context and written texts to fully understand and appreciate works of art. Audiences who meet conceptual and minimalist works with the reaction, “Well, I could do that,” fail to understand that context, concept, and history are vitally important to the meaning of contemporary artwork. Stripping them away can inhibit the artwork’s legibility and be highly disorienting to its audience. While such a reaction has been commonplace ever since Marcel Duchamp called a urinal a work of art, internet-based artworks have been subject to this decontextualization at a faster rate and often to a more complete degree than physical artworks.

Lacking the traditional grounding of a physical space, net-based artworks can be found without a contextual frame. Furthermore, net-based artworks can be effortlessly taken out of their original context into new arenas, to be read by entirely different audiences. This unmooring that the digital space allows has greatly amplified issues of readership, legibility, and audience, which have already long been present in contemporary art.

Read the full article here.