Be­tween Hy­brid­ity and Hy­per-Space: AES+F’s The Feast of Tri­mal­chio (2008)

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Hybrid Cultures

• Be­tween Hy­brid­ity and Hy­per-Space: AES+F’s The Feast of Tri­mal­chio (2008)

• Kerstin Mey

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: Hybrid Cultures

  In their nine-screen dig­i­tal video the Russ­ian artist group AES+F has sought to pro­vide an anal­ogy for the glob­alised third mil­len­nium by re/pre­sent­ing it through a he­do­nist glut in the en­vi­ron­ment- as imag­i­nary lux­ury hotel re­sorts that op­er­ate as com­pound non-places of su­per­moder­nity (Marc Auge). It is a place in which the power re­la­tions be­tween con­tem­po­rary mas­ters and slaves is re/en­acted and re/af­firmed through the con­ver­gence of re­spec­tive his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary cross-cul­tural sig­ni­fiers. The space-time con­tin­uum is col­lapsed into an ahis­tor­i­cal, tem­po­rary par­adise made up of frag­mented ,global/ised ref­er­ents from fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy, glossy tourist mag­a­zines, leisure ad­ver­tise­ments, broad sheet sup­ple­ments and soap op­eras (as well as art, de­sign and ar­chi­tec­tural his­tory) and shaped by metonymy (rather than metaphor).  Using this com­plex and dense work as a pri­mary case study, the pre­sen­ta­tion ex­plores the ten­sions be­tween its fore­grounded media and tech­no­log­i­cal hy­brid­ity and the mapped out al­le­gor­i­cal hy­per­space, as means to crit­i­cally in­ter­vene in the un­der­stand­ing of con­tem­po­rary me­di­ated cul­ture under the con­di­tions of a global flow of cap­i­tal.

Category:

• Panel