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Next-Gen, Now: The Emergence of Post-Internet Art

In an effort to explain her artistic process, digital media artist Marisa Olson first uttered the term “Post-Internet Art” in an interview in 2006. She eluded to the the fact that she did not make artworks ‘on’ the internet as opposed to ‘after’; reorganizing and synthesizing material after browsing the internet and downloading items. Since then, the term has been adopted and used by various artists, critics, and writers to refer to the emerging avant-garde genre of digital artworks and the New Aesthetic. Published texts on Post-Internet Art are becoming more prominent in the art world, being sold at gallery shops and referred to in art historical theory - although this emergence is not totally surprising, considering the current popularity of curatorial blogging platforms such as Tumblr, Flickr, and Pinterest promoting art and authorship online.

Presently, Post-Internet Art no longer refers to Olson’s subjective interaction with the Internet, but rather alludes to the idea that we are universally in an era beyond the Internet as luxury; an era when information has never been so accessible thanks to online networks becoming an everyday tool. In other words, as critic and blogger Gene McHugh states—a time when “the Internet is less a novelty and more a banality.” Beyond the generation of Internet users prior to Web 2.0, also known as the Net era; when each website had to be built from scratch through sophisticated coding (and noisy modems were still a thing). Art concerning the internet has existed since its creation, but now there is a new look, new style, new matter of politics created with the Internet being more prominent than ever in everyday culture.

Blogger James Bridle recognized the ‘new look’ of Internet-influenced art and coined it the New Aesthetic, “the New Aesthetic is not superficial. It is not concerned with beauty or surface texture. It is deeply engaged with the politics and politicization of networked technology, and seeks to explore, catalogue, categorize, connect, and interrogate these things.” A great example of this is artist Jon Rafman’s ongoing series titled “The 9-Eyes of Google Street View” (above) in which he gathers odd and eerie screenshots from Google’s Street View technology. As you can see below, the juxtaposition of the careless automated machine and the woman whose fate is unknown, exemplifies the politics of human relationship with the Internet.

Nevertheless, the enigmatic and flexible concept of Post-Internet Art allows plenty of room for intellectual debate on the subject and its substantiality. Curator Brian Droitcour for one remarked that Post-Internet Art is simply “objects that look good online.” Although harsh a statement, it contains a truth to its aesthetic. He continues, “Post-Internet defaults to an art about the presentation of art, playing to the art-world audience’s familiarity with the gallery as a medium or environment for art, as well as with the conventions of presenting promotional materials online […]” Droitcour suggests that Post-Internet Art is defined most by its ability to be exhibited online.

Artist and writer Artie Vierkant, whose famous series “Image Objects” (2011-present) (seen above), concurs to Droitcour by making works of art that can be appreciated both online on the flat digital screen, and in real life as a physical installation. It is the acceptance that the art object and image of the art object could be considered a single unified piece. This flexibility in manifestation of form is to him the game-changer of digitally produced works. In “Image Objects” Vierkant produces physical objects that can do just that. We similarly see this flexible manifestation of exhibition in Jon Rafman’s series: we can view them online at his website as screenshots, or type in the geographical coordinates into Google Street View and see it them as originally presented, or see a physical print of the screen shots. All three perhaps evoke different experiences in viewing, but ultimately allude to the politics Rafman was concerned about between human and technology. Furthermore, the sophistication lies in the fact that by viewing Post-Internet Art, we are simultaneously engaging in the connectedness between technology and people it critiques.

Certainly, Post-Internet Art has been accessed and appreciated mostly autonomously, or in other words, through the stream of social media and online platforms. Yet, it is important to recognize Post-Internet Art as a new historical mode as it is crucial to the success of a new generation of emerging artists, whether digital media artists or not. By substantiating the principles behind the genre, as done by writers and publishers such as RHIZOME and DIS Magazine, new artists and their works are elevated to the level of engaging with high art. Despite any ignorance to the fact, within numerous fields of art-making, from video to sculpture or painting, the New Aesthetic and Post-Internet principles are at the core. Recent proof can be found in the New Museum’s 2015 Triennial titled Surround Audience. Works such as Josh Kline’s installation “Freedom” (2015) featuring uncanny army teletubbies presenting fictional newsreels reflecting political current events in real life, or Sascha Braunig’s painting “Squirm” (2014) (seen below) which embraces an aesthetic that can be appreciated both online and offline, both reflect Post-Internet Art attributes. With the nature of Post-Internet Art becoming visibly more prominent in professional and institutional settings, it seems inevitable that there is much more to come in the future of avant-garde exhibition and artmaking as the Internet becomes more and more engrained into our everyday lives.

--Prairwa Leerasanthanah