Out now: Hyperemployment – Post-work, Online Labour and Automation

In November 2019, one year and two lockdowns ago, the exhibition Hyperemployment opened at MGLC, Ljubljana as part of a year-long programme focused on post-work, online labour, AI and automation, including the group exhibition, a symposium and several solo exhibitions. Along this year, I've been working intensively with Hyperemployment's producer Aksioma on a publication able to wrap up this experience, that I'm extremely proud to announce today.

Co-published by NERO and Aksioma, and beautifully designed by the amazing Superness (Federico Antonini and Alessio D'Ellena), Hyperemployment - Post-work, Online Labor and Automation is more a reader than a catalogue. Edited by Domenico Quaranta and Janez Janša, featuring words by !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo) and Felix Stalder, Silvio Lorusso, Luciana Parisi, and Domenico Quaranta and works by !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Danilo Correale, Elisa Giardina Papa, Sanela Jahić, Silvio Lorusso, Jonas Lund, Michael Mandiberg, Eva and Franco Mattes, Anna Ridler, Sebastian Schmieg, Sašo Sedlaček, and Guido Segni, this book is an attempt to investigate our fragile, troubled, scattered present, in which the borders between life and work, home and office, sleep and wake, private and public, human and machine have faded, and in which the personal is not just political but economic. A catchphrase borrowed from media theorist Ian Bogost, describing “the Exhausting Work of the Technology User”, hyperemployment allows us to grasp a situation which the current pandemic has turned endemic, to analyse the present and discuss possible futures. 

If you are interested in the book, check it out and pre-order it on NERO Editions' website!

#hyperemployment in streaming

The launch of the book Hyperemployment - Post-work, Online Labour and Automation will be accompanied by two streaming events featuring artists and writers included in the book: a conversation between artists Silvio Lorusso and Sebastian Schmieg, taking place on Monday November 23, 2020 at 5.00 PM CET; and a discussion between artist duo !Mediengruppe Bitnik and professor Felix Stalder (Monday December 7, 2020 at 5:00 PM CET). Both the talks will be available and feely accessible on Aksioma's streaming channel: https://aksioma.org/streaming.

Laborious Relations is a conversation between Silvio Lorusso and Sebastian Schmieg, moderated by the director of the Rijeka cultural association Drugo more, Davor Mišković. Lorusso will take the cue from the essay (featured in the book) entitled “Gig Economy Art and Its Dark Matter” that focuses on the figure of the art worker and critically reflects on the use of outsourcing and crowdworking services in artistic production. Schmieg will instead take as a starting point the idea of “laborious intelligence”, expressed in a recent article.
On Monday 7 December 2020, artist duo !Mediengruppe Bitnik and Professor of digital culture and network theories Felix Stalder will discuss topics related to the invisibility of institutional processes, the functioning of infrastructures and logistics, freedom and the economy of data.

Fresh and stale news...

｡･ﾟﾟ･ As an early contributor to the Digicult platform, I was extremely happy to penn a short introduction to the “Cultures and Markets” section of the book Intervista con la New Media Art. L’osservatorio Digicult tra arte, design e cultura digitale (edited by Marco Mancuso, Mimesis, Milan 2020), an excellent selection of texts and interviews first published on the platform. 

♥*♡∞:｡.｡ “From Context to Content: On the Preservation of Net-based Art” is a text commissioned for and published in Science and Art: The Contemporary Painted Surface, edited by Antonio Sgamellotti, Brunetto Giovanni Brunetti, Costanza Miliani and published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2020. The book is available on Amazon and other bookstores. Alternatively, you can buy single chapters of the book here.

( ´థ౪థ)  On November 24, 2020 at 5.30 PM a webinar on Science and Art: The Contemporary Painted Surface will take place on Microsoft Teams (hosted by Politecnico di Milano,  Dipartimento DCMC - PhD Course in Material Engineering). If you want to come and say hi, you can register here.  

.。･:*:･(✿◕3◕)❤(◕ε◕✿)･:*:･。. Recently, I started writing notes about the books I read, right after reading them. They were meant to be private, a way to save impressions and thoughts before they fade out. But com'on, what's really private today? Nothing feels more safe than a Medium account with no readers.