July 8, 2016
Join us on Friday, July 8 at 7:30 pm to celebrate the launch of the summer issue of e-flux journal, “Art Ontologies of Silicon Valley.”
The issue launch party will feature sounds by Mark Beasley, readings by Ian Hatcher, and visuals by Rosa Menkman; co-organized by Maya Castro Gutiérrez. Appletinis will be served.
“Tech is never simply technology. It never appears in the abstract, any more than the characters “H2O” appear anywhere on water. Tech is always specific. How old should someone be when they first have sex? How old before they get their first cell phone? This sequence unsettles us because it is hard to think about either inevitability. Sex and technology are instruments of desire, the objects and system of adult unfreedom. Children at play are so analog. Young is life before text. We clutched love letters, in the past, when we couldn’t clutch each other. Now our phones get warm and vibrate. Eventually, they die. As a proxy for a body, technology is never better than the next best thing. Too often, it’s the only one. Today the image of the beloved appears most against the canvas of the phone, carved into polymer, inscribed onto text messages, recorded in electronic memory. Our relationships with our phones are our relationships, most of the time.”
—Editorial, e-flux journal no. 74. With essays by Douglas Coupland, Ingrid Burrington, Andrew Norman Wilson, Mike Pepi, Lee Mackinnon, Elvia Wilk, Alexander Galloway, Zach Blas, and Marina Simakova.
We look forward to enjoying the sounds of Silicon Valley with you.
Mark Beasley is a curator and writer. He is currently curator at large with Performa and curatorial advisor for the inaugural Okayama Art Summit.
Maya Castro Gutiérrez is an independent curator whose projects explore performance and sound-based art.
Ian Hatcher is a text/sound/code artist whose work explores human cognition in the context of digital systems.
Rosa Menkman is a theorist/glitch artist who focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in both analogue and digital media.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.