Post Internet

Post Internet art, if it is even something that exists, can be defined in many ways.

This blog will try to cover some of these ways.

Here is one thought to start: Post Internet art leaves the Internet world. It goes to the art world and mutates itself to correspond to the conventions of the art world. It is art world art about the Internet. A deeper goal, though, is that as the work mutates from the conventions of the Internet to the conventions of art, the work catalyzes the conventions of art to mutate to those of the Internet.

For these worlds to meet on good terms, you can’t simply snap your fingers. Each world enters a process, a series of adaptations in order to find its feet in the world of the other.

From Barefoot in the Head (1969) by Brian Aldiss:

Take pictures of yourselves, he had said, pictures every moment of the day. That’s what you should do, that’s what you do do. You drop them and they lie around and other people get into them and turn them into art. Every second take a picture and so you will see that the lives we lead consist of still moments and nothing but. There are many still moments, all different. Be awake but inwards sleeping. You have all these alternatives. Think that way and you will discover more. Cast out serpents. I am here but equally I am elsewhere. I don’t need so much economy – it’s the pot training of the child where the limitation starts. Forget it, live in all regions, part, split wide, be fuzzy, try all places at the same time, indecisivize time itself, shower out your photographs to the benefit of all. Make yourself a million and so you achieve a great unilateral trajectory, not longwise in life but sideways, a unilateral immortality. Try it, friends, try it with me, join me, join in the great merry multicade!