Page 176 - The Black Box Book

WHO RAN THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION?

This digital awakening of the world of art and culture raised quite ‘a buzz’
within social media, especially amongst those commentators and Insta-
gram pages that were already scrutinizing the contemporary art world, its
elitism and erratic attitude towards digital and web technologies. Within
the aesthetic flow produced by the pandemic, various tweets and memes
circulated mocking the positions of galleries and museums with regard to
establishing an online presence. Among the most effective examples was
the Tweet published by technologist Barry Threw which stated “The way
to take your museum online is not to email a picture of something in your
collection every day” (Threw, March 24th 2020, Twitter post); or the post
published by Freeze Magazine, an Instagram page mocking the famous
art journal Frieze, posing the question “Who led the digital transforma-
tion of art galleries?”, and offering the following responses in the form of
a multiple choice list: “A) Artists; B) Curators); C) Communications Teams;
D) COVID–19” (Freeze Magazine, April 20th 2020, Instagram post).
Zooming back into the Italian context, it was artist Giulio Alvigini
who launched on his Instagram page #makeItalianartgreatagain, a vid-
eo provocation that effectively captured the temperature of the moment
on the 11th of March 2020 (Alvigini, 11.03.2020). Alvigini, whose artistic
practice can be described as a memes-based institutional critique of
the Italian art system, called out the Italian artworld and the museums
sector for the phony enthusiasm and noise that was being produced with

Figure 2: Barry Threw Tweet. (2020) Print screen of tweet from curator and technolo-
gist Barry Threw. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/barrythrew/ Figure 3: Zoe De Luca Post. (2020) Print screen of Instagram post from curator
Zoe De Luca. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/zoedelucalegge/

regard to digital initiatives. He provoked art professionals by inciting them
to “ have sex and watch the Simpsons instead of hypocritically congrat-
ulating each other for having woken up – with decades of delay – from
a digital amnesia” (Alvigini, 2020). The video caused a number of fierce
reactions, yet it opened up discussion on the highly problematic attitudes
of cultural institutions towards artists in such a complicated situation.
He voiced a necessary argument, considering that the attitude of cultur-
al institutions was beginning to appear highly problematic, particularly
with regards to the exploitation of artists as unpaid content producers.
Artists were in fact being asked to provide content for free in order to
keep the online pages of museums and galleries live. This request from
the side of institutions was rather distasteful considering the economic
fragility artists had suddenly found themselves in. An Instagram post by
curator Zoë De Luca published on the 19th of March 2020, summarized
this problematic condition, pointing out that “freelance artists and art
practitioners in quarantine were not bored” but rather “were struggling
176 177