Post-digital Circulationism. On- and Offline Intermedia Discourse in Contemporary Art and Scholarship

Abstract

The post-digital phenomenon of circulationism (Hito Steyerl), the wandering of images and data across media and through global networks, marks a decisive change compared to prior practices of visual culture. In today’s cultural networks, processes of intertextual and intervisual knowledge production, while being emergent, ongoing, and elusive, paradoxically take evident and retraceable form, ranging from crowdsourced creative productions via tumblr-based visual discourses to hybrid intermedial appropriations. This paper sets out to discuss and correlate artistic and scholarly works produced to simultaneously react to, shape and insert themselves into specific online discourses, such as a) models of post-production aimed at the perfection (Barry X Ball), consolidation (Corinne Vionnet, Aaron Koblin), or medial transformation (Marc Leckey) of existing artifacts and collections; b) discursive hybrids such as the video essay (Hito Steyerl), tumblr based research (New Aesthetic), and research practices based on an ‘epistemology of search’ (David Joselit).