Featuring: Anvar Musrepov (KZ), Ben Grosser (US), Mohsen HZ (IR), Han Do Thi Doc (GER/VIET), Jim Munroe (CAN), Martin Le Chevallier (FRA), Patrick Lichty (US/UAE), Shalala Samamzadeh (AZ), The Institute for New Feeling (Scott Andrew, Agnes Bolt, and Nina Sarnelle (US)
Echoing the famous call-to-arms of the ‘68 protest movements, this online exhibition explores how art can continue to inspire change ‘IRL’ (in real life) from the immaterial spheres of digital media and the web. Does the digital at times become a kind of intangible vacuum, a zone of (self-)banishment for artists, or is it, instead, a site for empowered engagement with activist communities and ever-larger audiences around the world?
The works included in “Sous le web, la plage!” deal with issues of mediated violence, surveillance, data exploitation, online information manipulation, the affect economy, and marginalised online communities. They engage the digital critically, in order to create feedback loops linking right back to the conflicts, injustices, political issues, and environmental crises of the offline ‘meatspace.’ In visiting this exhibition on the web, you, too, are invited to take your reactions and reflections back offline, connecting them to issues and concerns of communities both small and large, local and international.
Image Credit: “Vigilance 1.0” (2001), Martin Le Chevallier