Critique of Pure Image – Between Fake and Quotation
A project of the Art Today Association
in collaboration with Code Flow
written and curated by Dimitrina Sevova
Theoretical Conception
In its definition of notions, the project makes use of the term of “technics” introduced by Lewis Mumford in “Technics and Civilization” in place of the universally accepted “technologies”, when it comes to the primary terminological framework defining artistic events closely linked to digital and communicational technics and their use in an artistic process and language. In line with these thoughts we will refrain from using such terms as “creative”, “innovative”, “new”, etc., as terms defining the structure, aims and methods of this project. If their use should be unavoidable, we propose to open them to close scrutiny and to make sense of them not only in their contemporary context but also as part of a historical approach and methodological process, which has started substantially before the appearance of digital and communicational technics. The history of human civilization is also the history of technics.
Even with the first instrument used by prehistorical man, technics are entangled in a complex structure of mutually linked and dependent components making up human societies, such as myth, power, gender, energy, struggles. Based on critical theoretical analysis of the discourse on technical progress Lewis Mumford proposes a fundamental structure of the development of society – social life, art, science, theory.
The industrialization is also the history of capitalism. The dominating role of technics in an ever-spreading world leads to an existence in fragments, defining the working space, occupying everyday life and the “normal” places of everyday life. By creating certain habits, technics modify the structure of society, human habits, human consciousness and human anatomy.
The sources and references of this discussion are obviously much older than the digital technics themselves and their use as means for artistic goals.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. (Attrib.NonCommercial.NoDerivs 2.0)
art today lab 2005