Hyperconnected and criticism: inventory of the young artistic guard with Ingrid Luquet-Gad

Where does the pulse of contemporary creation beats today? Art critic Ingrid Luquet-Gad is taking us in the footsteps of a young artistic guard that is both hyperconnected and criticism of new technologies.

Art critic connected to new philosophical theories and the Internet in all its uses, Ingrid Luquet-Gad is a singular look at contemporary creation.His approach is irrigated by the influence of outsiders philosophical currents as speculative realism, but also by a fine knowledge of art history.Born at the same time as the generation of post-internet artists, she is interested in the way in which digital technologies reconfigure our individual subjectivities.It covers the news of contemporary art for inrockuptibles, and also collaborates on publications like Spike Magazine, Artforum, Cura or Flash Art.

What artists located at the intersection between art, digital technologies and innovation particularly caught your attention lately?

Ingrid Luquet-Gad: I spontaneously think of the duo of artists Pakui Hardware, composed of Ugnius Gelguda and Neringa Cerniauskaite, both from Lithuania and based in Berlin.They work in collaboration with researchers on technological issues in the broad sense (biotechnology, quantum physics or algorithmic capitalism) and pay particular attention to the direct effects of these technologies on bodies and matter.

Their work of rather abstract sculptures and installations questions this new level of materiality, where the bodies are crossed by flows of capital and data.They observe what happens on an individual scale, when bodies are reconfigured by new technologies to increase the individual, but also by conscious modification processes such as sport or nutrition.On a more collective scale, they are interested in technologies as tools of biopolitical government.Their latest works speak of the well-being industry that makes individuals responsible for their health, or on the contrary of their diseases, thus obscuring the absence of state structures to repair bodies and take care of health in a global way.

One of the artists to take over these subjects is Hito Steyerl, who was exhibited at the Center Pompidou in the spring of 2021.What makes the singularity of his work?

I.L-G.: Hito Steyerl is a major artist and theorist.The retrospective "I will survive" that the Center Pompidou devoted to him was therefore an important moment.She is a German artist who emerges with the post-internet movement of the 2010s, even though she started her practice much earlier, in the 1990s.Its positioning in relation to technologies is both critical and emancipatory.According to her, to appropriate these tools, we must first know how to function and contemporary issues.

Hito Steyerl comes from a documentary tradition: she made herself known by her work of video installations, which are deployed in space and allow to touch the senses as much as the spirit of the spectator.By approaching the way in which images are transformed under the effect of new technologies, it immerses us at the heart of their functioning and emphasizes the way in which these reconfigure the social and political world.It shows how these influential technologies, from the gestures of people to their ways of thinking.But also how we can emancipate it, by finding other uses to these tools, which are intrinsically neither good nor bad.This is the message conveyed by his artistic work, and which is also shared by the Pakui Hardware duo.

We talk a lot about the irruption of non -fungible tokens or NFT in contemporary art.Where does this new technology come from?

I.L-G.: This is not really a new technology since its condition of possibility dates from 2007, with the arrival of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.It is interesting to see how some technologies are getting importance in the wake of economic and systemic crises, as was the case after the 2008 financial crisis, and today in the context of Pandemia.This is the Wall Street crisis that generated the generation of post-internet artists.And today we are witnessing an resurgence of actors, as much as subjects and objects, which crystallize around this question of NFT.

It was a sales record that brought this technology to the knowledge of the general public.In March 2021, the digital work Everydays: The First 5,000 Days by American artist Beeple was sold for $ 69.3 million by the Christie’s house, which may be the current reading of the NFT phenomenon.The first articles have indeed focused on the aesthetic content of the work, since it is a pixel generation image.We tend to see the NFT as a new aesthetic current, a "net art" which would be inspired by a vintage aesthetic of Internet forums, kneaded by glitch and mythological creatures.In my opinion, it is a false approach.The interesting with NFT lies in their ability to delete the intermediary between artist and buyer.

What are the ruptures brought by NFT technology in the context of the art world?

I.L-G.: NFT operates as authenticity certificates that allow you to buy an original, especially in the case of digital content made to be reproducible.But NFT can also concern physical works, sculptures, for example.They allow perfect traceability: to know who has bought and for how much, which makes it possible to limit the speculation effect when the work is too quickly sold.

Furthermore, I indicated that they delete the intermediary of the gallery by making it possible direct purchase, which allows buyers to possibly come together to buy a work.With this tool, we can get out of an individual logic of possession.This phenomenon of potential collectivization opens more political avenues, which could be extremely beneficial for long -term artists.

How does this idea translate into practice?

I.L-G.: This aspect does not emerge too much yet, but there are a lot of discussions, via discord servers, in particular, some of which are rather speculative.However, I can give the example of the transfer Gallery, a space that is both virtual and physical based in Los Angeles.This gallery very early became interested in the uses that artists have new technologies.It organized the exhibition "Pieces of Me", the first to approach the issues raised by NFT technology - in particular its environmental cost since mining constitutes a tremendous energy expenditure.

This gallery imagined a very innovative system for acquiring the works presented, around two proposals.The first was based on a system of offerings and talismans via auction, so that the purchase corresponds to a real crush, and not to a speculative approach.The second purchasing system allowed the reimbursement of the energy production cost of the work.Another principle within the exhibition, which this time affects a more social issue, concerned the distribution of profits from each sale.These profits were divided between the artist author of the work, the other artists present in the collective exhibition, but also the workers of knowledge, that is to say the people who have designed the discursive entourage of the exhibition(Catalog, texts ...).And finally, a percentage also returned to technical workers who have set up the exhibition.

Because it posed the issues and limits of these technologies, while providing an answer that greatly exceeds the challenges of NFT only, this exhibition was very interesting.

What are the laboratories of contemporary art today?

I.L-G.: The arrival of "Project Spaces" - these places without direct commercial vocation, managed by curators and artists - has revitalized the landscape of art galleries.I am thinking of pioneers like The Community in Pantin, an intersectional place for art and fashion, Exo Exo, in Belleville, without title (2016), which began as a nomadic project and now has a space in the 10th, or Goswell Road, controlled by two artists and which offers a program at the intersection between art, music and counter-culture.This model has infused as much as some traditional galleries, such as Balice Hertling, have split their space in half and have a project space with open programming, in addition to the commercial space.

You are a jury for art school diplomas.What are the concerns of this young artistic guard?

I.L-G.: The work I could see often focused on a criticism of art institutions, and political institutions in general.The questioning is twofold, both on the challenges of work and remuneration-how to reform the major structures of the art world?-and on the intersectional issues, articulated around the Race-Class-Genre reading grid.Formally, this went through the translation of certain key texts drawn from the corpus of gender studies and post-colonial studies, performance or pooling of resources and knowledge, to appropriate digital technologies and bring in realityAlternative models.The young artistic guard therefore has political concerns, rather far from purely aesthetic issues.

Ingrid Luquet-Gad course

Graduated with a double master in philosophy and history of the art of the Sorbonne and the Freie Universität in Berlin.Press articles, catalog texts, biographies of artists and conferences: she deploys her gaze on all the discursive media of contemporary art, in French and in English.She is part of a young generation of art criticisms as comfortable in Berghain as in the aisles of an art fair.His exhibition reviews can be found on his Instagram account @ingridluquetgad

This interview is extracted from the 2022 edition of the DNA Trends Book, to be found here.