From Work to Mainframe: Lecture at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich

This lecture will argue for an understanding of the Internet as the so-called mainframe for contemporary artistic production, distribution, and reception. The titular phrase “from work to mainframe” is both observational and spectulative: it designates something that is actually taking place, but also captures the main proposition of the presentation. More specifically, it refers both to the increasing incorporation of contemporary artistic production in the Internet, and to a
proposed shift in critical and scholarly attention towards that incorporation. As such, the lecture presents an attempt to theorize more cohesively—through a reading of selective artworks and other case-studies, including the work of Trevor Paglen and the e-flux website—the implication of contemporary art in the online environment, with an emphasis on how this implication transforms
contemporary art’s commodification and therefore comes to condition it more and more outspokenly.