Artwork in the age of photo-documentation platforms

If you longed to go to a contemporary art exhibition but for various reasons didn’t manage to do so, it does not mean that you will never get to see it. One of the most common PR and promotion tools used by gallery and museum institutions today has become the easily accessible online photographic documentation of works, exhibitions or accompanying events. This text will, however, focus on a specific type of digital platforms that are primarily aimed at publishing documentation on exhibitions with an international reach, and yet are not a priori tied to specific physical institutions. Their DIY character makes them look more like blogs and they include platforms such as Tzvetnik [1], O Fluxo or the relatively young project Solo Show. What they have in common is that they were mainly founded by artists and are involved in authorial art projects created for both the Internet and the physical environment. Nevertheless, this paper is not seeking to define a new nature of contemporary documentary photography emerging as a medium in its own right, but to point out its new aspects in the conditions of a post-digital society which are making its documentary function and relationship to art more complicated. How does this hybridization of the physical and the virtual contribute to the transformation of the understanding of art exhibitions, the production of artworks and the formation of artistic communities? And in what ways does this art featured on blogs move away from post-Internet strategies?

1. It is necessary to add that in the context of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine marked by numerous war crimes, the authors of Tzvetnik (Natalya Serkova and Vitaly Bezpalov) were unable to address the crisis in an adequate and comprehensive manner and radically reject this aggressive imperial policy. Serkova‘s private Instagram profile only published Russian-written statements defending the apolitical nature of art. Many Czech as well as international artists have protested against this behaviour of Tzvetnik and refused further cooperation. So the question remains what level of importance and influence will Tzvetnik retain in the near future and where it will refocus its attention.

The beginning of the first decade became in some ways an immensely rich and captivating moment for the development of art, mainly due to the massive expansion of digital technologies and social networks. The online environment with its unprecedented potential brought about a transformation of socio-technological conditions and an emergence of a new visual culture, including specific concepts of representation or a convergence of the relationship between art and capital. The advent of post-Internet art was marked by heated debates seeking to capture the change in the overall discourse which, in turn, gave rise to blogs focused on art exhibition photo-documentation.

Even now it seems intriguing to think within the scope outlined by viewing our social situation as post-digital. The post-digital picture encompasses a whole spectrum of approaches and contexts, from deepfake technology, the use of artificial intelligence and post-production image manipulation to the carbon footprint of data. Photos on social media are not only consumed by humans, but also fed into a vast and invisible network based on algorithmic surveillance, control and the exercise of repressive power. Images have become a fixed part of our subjectivity, even though no one doubts their artificiality anymore. In the age of algorithmic or computational photography, no matter how much the resulting image may resemble the captured reality, it has nothing to do with indexicality itself – photography as a direct imprint of reality is definitely a surpassed concept. Photography has become a tool of instant communication and a way to gain attention – rather than creating points of reference in life and preserving memorable moments, it functions more like an endless sensory flow. But in fact, each stimulus irretrievably disappears in time, much like the present-day image sinks into the depths of nothingness of a constantly fed and ever hungrier stream of social networks and other communication platforms.[2]

2. Filip Láb, Postdigitální fotografie. Prague: Karolinum, 2021, p. 16-17.

Endless stream of images

In his probably most famous text, The Image Object Post-Internet [3], the artist Artie Vierkant emphasizes that in the post-digital age nothing is permanent and any object can become a different object because it exists within a constant flow between various states. He sees one of the problems in the object’s lack of footing within the strategy of representation. He argues that the post-Internet age takes for granted that a work of art is present both as an object to be found in a gallery or a museum and in other forms shared over the Internet. Another way of pointing out the lack of representational footing is to understand the represented object as a completely different object with no connection to the “original”. In the post-digital situation, there are no “original copies” of objects. Even if, say, an image or object can be traced back to its source, the nature of that source can no longer be considered more significant than the nature of any of its copies. To consider the original as necessary and to respect the rules of its representation is pointless. In terms of photographic documentation of artworks, one might then think of a kind of multiversality of objects, whereby the photographic reproduction of artworks is not their indexical imprint or just an unworthy illusion, but a different version of these exact works. This version points to a certain viscosity of the art object and is equal to the original physical version which is only manifesting itself through different expressive qualities.

3. Artie Vierkant, Objekt obrazu po internetu, in: Sešit pro umění, teorii a příbuzné zóny, no 17, 2014, Prague: AVU, p. 98-119.

While artists are beginning to sort themselves out and form international communities based on mutual following, it seems absurd to think that it is possible to make any kind of curatorial choice within the vast spectrum of contemporary artists without being in some way directly connected to their social networks. This is a complicated turn, as this artistic community creates primarily on the basis of aesthetic rather than conceptual or ideological principles. In any case, the architecture of the Internet, i. e. a certain structure of language, sound and images in which visual materials are the most represented, immediate factor, helps to create an environment in which artists can increasingly move away from language and rely on purely visual representation to explain their artistic sources.[4] This is a key departure from recent art history, for it is arguably a sign that language and semiotics as fundamental metaphors in our effort to articulate an artwork and our relationship to objects and culture are being abandoned.

4. Ibidem, p. 110

For Vierkant, it is not just about the artists‘ approach to images, but about the overall transformation of the nature of the image in the online environment, where images replace language by taking over part of its function – images are an instant and therefore more effective mode of language. Vierkant‘s notion of the post-Internet follows up on the post-conceptual paradigm (as defined, for example, by the philosopher Peter Osborne), but the art present on image-driven documentation blogs goes a step further, moving away from reflecting on institutional, discursive and infrastructural conditions towards a focus on affectivity, materiality and spiritual charge which is perhaps most clearly described by Michal Novotný in his text Emo-romantic turn.[5]

5. Michal Novotný, Emo-Romantic Turn, Mousse Magazine, https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/emo-romantic-turn-michal-novotny-2018/ (accessed March 10, 2022)

The Internet is transforming art as it is

After all, even the art as it is presented on Tzvetnik and O Fluxo is clear and memorable, the objects are full of details and become formally attractive or, on the contrary, sometimes deliberately repulsive”[6]. In any case, in a relatively short perception time, the art object makes a strong impression on the viewer. At the same time, the authors of Tzvetnik, in an interview for the online magazine Artalk, note: “Few people, however, mention the fact that art itself is changing along with the new conditions of representation. Not only does it adapt to these new conditions (in our opinion, this would be a very superficial and fundamentally incorrect point of view), but at the same time it uses these conditions as part of its own functionality, as a feature and at the same time an integral part of its own production, which influences what art actually is. In other words, we are looking at the situation from a slightly different angle. The Internet is not transforming the perception of art - the Internet is transforming art as it is.”[7] This means that it is no longer a conceptually focused play or problematization of the interface between the online and offline world, which was typical for post-Internet art, but an overall transformation of artistic strategies that aim to assault the viewer‘s visual sensibility – whether through the evocation of a strained materiality or the engagement of a fantasy- oriented expressive register.

6. Anna Karpenko, Tzvetnik: „The ability of art to constantly elude the final fit into this or that frame, the ability to see open horizons and feel some fresh air - is its main strength“, saliva.live, https://saliva.live/tzvetnik (accessed Nov. 21, 2021)

7. Tina Poliačková, Tzvetnik: Svět se digitalizuje, ať chceme nebo ne, Artalk, https://artalk.cz/2021/01/18/tzvetnik-svet-se-digitalizuje-at-chceme-nebo-ne/ (accessed Nov. 21, 2021)

Thus, the art disseminated via photo-documentation platforms has found a new mode of expression, which it has acquired in this complex panorama, allowing it to reach a different kind of audiences. It responds to the logic of today’s youngest generation for which the dominant way of presenting oneself is through fictional performative gestures [8], most often via digital images on social networks such as Instagram and Tik Tok. Photo- documentation platforms mainly exert their influence on Instagram, which is, by its very nature, focused on the sharing and dissemination of images, while also being a crucial communication medium for millennials and zoomers. These platforms are also based on a different type of criteria and understanding of what takes place on them, which requires a knowledge of the Internet culture and its iconography or language, and above all, a speedy and brief communication consisting, for example, of the multi-layered culture of memes. Against this backdrop, a new kind of artistic “niche” communities are being generated to share ideas, ambitions, but also a kind of inevitability of coexistence within the confines of the Western artworld model, where fierce competitiveness, often impenetrable hierarchies, and financial burdens in the form of expensive gallery space rentals reign. [9]

8. Sean Monahan, the co-founder of the “trend forecasting group” K-Hole, published a report last year on the “gonzo culture” in which he puts forward the hypothesis that social media has transformed the individual into a media object. The title refers to an approach in 1970s journalism, when journalists like Hunter S. Thompson inserted exaggerated, subjective, fictionalized versions of themselves into their writing style. According to Monahan, today’s Internet users (whether streamers, memers, influencers, or gamers) apply the same principles in the digital space. See https://www.8ball.biz/reports (accessed Nov. 21, 2021)

9. Nuno Patrício, O Fluxo: ‘Thankfully, there is a place for everything to exist in this world’, Tzvetnik https://tzvetnik.online/article/nuno-patricio-o-fluxo-thankfully-there-is-a-place-for-everything-to-exist-in-this-world (accessed Nov 21, 2021)

In the aforementioned conditions of art reception on social networks and blog platforms, the shared images also provide a more easily accessible, suggestive visual form that leans towards stylized figuration, subcultural element references, an emphasis on materiality and an imaginative approach to the exhibition environment which manifests itself perhaps most successfully in non-gallery conditions. Thus, off-space site-specific projects that were created in the most inaccessible locations, such as birdhouses suspended in nature or projects scenographically set in a real mushroom forest undergrowth, have had the opportunity to emerge in large numbers. [10] Elise Lammer, in a roundtable discussion on the rise of figuration incontemporary art, notes: “Given that we’re now over the initial fascination with virtual reality and all the technologies that are currently able to trick our senses, I would argue that today’s figuration is special in its candid attempt at being more introspective and speculative— less ‘real’ in a way. It’s not only magic and gothic, it’s also psychedelic, cute, surrealist. A true celebration of today’s hyper-subjectivity, it’s clumsy on purpose.” And art thus “opens, with a lot of empathy and imagination, a perceptive window into alternative ways of being”.[11]

10. https://www.ofluxo.net/bird-feeders-curated-by-sakari-tervo/ or https://tzvetnik.online/article/under-the-moon-group-show-at-camp-eternal-hell-chamber-new-york or http://soloshow.online/bigfungus.html

11. Rózsa Farkas / Elise Lammer / Megan Rooney / Katharina Wulf / Lydia Yee / Isabella Zamboni, Sick and Tired of All That Purity: A Roundtable on Contemporary Figuration, Mousse Magazine, https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/roundtable-on-contemporary-figuration-2020/ (accessed Nov 21, 2021)

Slippery gallery, insecure curator

In this sense, the photographic documentation of art also subverts the classical perception of the gallery system, which has been the subject of probably the only compact publication on this topic entitled Flatland Reader and initiated by O Fluxo. In it, the critic Loney Abrams, whose introductory essay Flatland gave the book its title, notes: “The difference between artworks and their documentation images online is collapsing. So is the prestige economy of traditional galleries.” Like in so many other past cases when it was assumed that the possibilities of the digital environment will replace “obsolete media”, digital documentation platforms have failed to replace the power of traditional art galleries. Back in 2011, the art historian Michael Sanchez, in an essay for the Artforum magazine, commented on the tendency of artists to create artworks only for the sake of documenting them online (at the time, it was about Contemporary Art Daily) and not for the sake of experiencing them in space. Contemporary Art Daily‘s distinctive whiteness also mimics a pure white cube with incandescent lighting. According to its critics, post-Internet art thus perpetuated the white cube in order to bask in its prestige and in the power associated with it. While they do not subvert it, today’s blogs break away from this logic – many times leaning towards publishing off-space exhibitions set in abandoned industrial buildings, basements or natural sites, often initiated by collectives such as Rhizome Parking Garage, Underground Flower (both are Solo Show projects) or Final Hot Desert, Darkzone, etc. The blogs are offering an alternative, an expanded space for a diametrically different type of understanding of artistic presentation that can take place under any conditions.

If, at least in the Czech environment, alternative and mostly artist-led exhibition spaces have emerged since the beginning of the new millennium as a kind of grass-roots revival attempting to overcome the critical phase curating was experiencing in the previous years [12], then today we can ponder yet another shift, but this time in a different setting. The prominent or powerful position of the curator gives way to the connections established between different actors on social networks which in turn provide grounds for a potential future collaboration in the physical environment. The digital photo-documentation platform thus mentally occupies the position of a quality guarantor, a kind of meta-curator guaranteeing a certain kind or a certain qualitative level of contemporary art, although in practice this content can be quite heterogeneous. As they evolved over the last century, exhibitions have established themselves as a specific medium holding an essential position of power – they have shifted the interest in the uniqueness of solitary artworks and the development of styles towards discursively produced exhibitions to which a curator has lent their name thus becoming the primary general medium for the presentation of art or even determining what can be considered as art. In a sense, we can see the Tzvetnik, O Fluxo or Solo show platforms as a kind of para-institutions, especially in the sense of legitimizing what is still considered contemporary art and how it should be displayed and archived. The artists – creators of the blog – can thus work and express themselves in a similar way as culture professionals.

12. Terezie Nekvindová, Od komisaře ke kurátorce? Tvůrci výstav v českém umění ve druhé polovice 20.století, in: Pavlína Morganová / Terezie Nekvindová / Dagmar Svatošová (eds.): Výstava jako médium, Prague: AVU, 2020, p. 210.

Another problem associated with the online presentation of documented art is the criticism that this environment lacks emphasis on artistic originality which is being dissolved in the reproduction of formally based trends. This no longer occurs through provocative rebellious gestures of theft or obfuscation of identities by post-Internet artists, but through a total transformation of the distribution environment in which authorship recedes into the background for the benefit of the image selected by a given blog. Moving around in this environment means actively following user accounts, constantly monitoring the influx of a multitude of posts that recede into the background for the benefit of suggestive visual forms. Nuno Patricio, artist and founder of O Fluxo, made the following remark about this situation: “a lot of the information is in my head - the details, the colours, the materials, the techniques - and even if I didn‘t want to, these characteristics stay with me every day, every single day, until forever, and I think it‘s driven me to create a kind of unconscious plagiarism.” This space encompasses diffuse subjectivity on both the side of the creator and the receiver of this art. The art environment consists not only of artists, viewers, and curators, but also of social network algorithms and the context of non-art images in the social network environment. This whole environment forms a kind of collective body that operates on the principle of big data processing algorithms. In this system, each of us is a subject of a discourse and at the same time has nothing to do with it. And the power hierarchy among all the participants is probably distributed in a similar manner – anyone can suddenly become its vehicle and just as suddenly lose it. To conclude, it seems necessary to ask: what do images do if they have no representative relation to reality? Hito Steyerl in her article A thing like you and me [13] suggests that “digital images have an active agency” and thus have great power. In the conditions of cognitive capitalism, where so much culturally relevant information is transmitted through images, the objects of our desire are most often encountered in the form of images. According to Ceci Moss, an image is a representation of desire and if/when an object materializes, it is often represented and disseminated again as an image or documentation. [14] The documentation blogs in question seemingly become nodes that group them together through techno-capitalist platforms. Is it possible that these images of melted forms, goblins, various monsters and delicate apparitions can affect in their virtual proximity the final viewer through an affective reaction? Or, in the words of the feminist theorist Sara Ahmed, they simply “stick to us” without the possibility of a conscious control?

13. Hito Steyerl, A Thing Like You and Me, e-flux Journal, Issue #15, 2010, e-flux, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/15/61298/a-thing-like-you-and-me/ (accessed April 10, 2022)

14. Ceci Moss, Expanded Internet Art: Twenty-First-Century Artistic Practice and the Informational Milieu. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, p. 110

Tina Poliačková is a doctoral student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague focusing on curating and criticism of contemporary art.