Self-Per­form­ing in the Feed­back Loop

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Sniff, Scrape, Crawl: Part 2

• Self-Per­form­ing in the Feed­back Loop

• Steve Rushton

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: Sniff, Scrape, Crawl: Part 2

  This talk will argue that me­dia-ac­tivist ini­tia­tives from the late 1960s and early 70s (such as Ant Farm and Rad­i­cal Soft­ware) share more in com­mon with today’s so­cial net­work­ing sites and re­al­ity TV shows than one might first sup­pose. I will in­ves­ti­gate how the no­tion of ‘feed­back’ works as a metaphor and a ma­te­r­ial con­di­tion which in both in­stances aims to pro­duce a self-per­form­ing sub­ject. Al­though the self-per­form­ing sub­ject has been re­al­ized through media such as Twit­ter and Face­book, it is of a dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter than the one en­vi­sioned by the media gueril­las of the past. My pre­sen­ta­tion will fur­ther ex­plain how the feed­back loop of non-scripted TV serves as an aid to the neo-lib­eral po­lit­i­cal rea­son­ing which pro­motes a cul­ture of en­tre­pre­neurism, pri­vati­sa­tion, vol­un­teerism, and re­spon­si­bil­i­sa­tion.

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Category:

• Panel