[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 182, Issue 25

[Patrick Lichty]

Hello, Ali. Great points.

In cases of using eTurks or “cheaper" outsourced labor, the digital realm becomes a force multiplier for exploitation while sanitizing it at an arms length.

Yes, and I think that in doing "some" work through them rides the line between supporting these systems and looking at them critically. In many ways, I feel like there should be some visibility, but making these practices a real capitalist backbone of any art practice is not my intent. It is a discusrive position that interrogates labor, caritalism, class, and I think it's entirely valid to be holding the bow and arrow backwards as a middle aged white male to illustrate that point.

    by "Chinese painting ateliers” are you referring to places like Darfen Village? I am curious about your working with entities like the ateliers and how you view them in comparison mechanical/digital reproduction or print on demand technologies?

Yeah - exactly. My position is that I feel that under neoliberalism that there is often a symbolic equivalence of performed labor as a matter of facility and use value. It makes me very uncomfortable that in the coming age of AI, the line blurs in the labor mule economy between remote jobbing and machine labor. This has roots in the project (the managerial Lesiure suit) that we did when I was active with The Yes Men in the 2000's.

I understand the refrigerator analogy, but again the mapping of a 3D box that exists in Euclidean Geometry is limiting for a medium that strictly speaking does not need to follow those rules at all.

Mmmmmm. Maybe my position on this is more akin to projects like Duchamp's Boite en Valise, my Router Gallery (Sudden Gallery, which the online gallery is also done as an offline router gallery). I think there is an interesting point of heterogeneity in online spaces, apps like Activatar.org (which I just curated a West Asian art show), offline routers, and so on. There are so many questions of ubiquity, access, privilege (who is able to see HUO's butter?), that I believe are being broken open again with the online turn.

    Which takes us to KT having their students make "curatorial decisions such as 'what can queer design look like.'

Yes. I agree.

and gain "proficiency with a new technical process and worked as a cohesive team along side of many stake-holding entities to articulate visualizations of queer, trans, and nonbinary individuals as significant cultural contributors.”

    What will these future spaces look/feel like? Who are they built by? and Who are they built for?

That is a really good question; heretogeneity, re-homogenization, exclusivity, inclusivity, decolonization, recolononiztion - I believe that there is a lot that is up for grabs.

There was a recent article (and I'm dreadfully sorry for not having the lnk, but I swear it exists, that basically said that Postmodernism's deconstruction of truth and master narratives was interesting until things got too out of hand, and we wound up with the alt-right, incels, pepe the frog, and so on.  The failure of the Postmodern calls for the recreation of new narrative(s), where I am looking at non-Western/non-WhiteCIS discourses for inspiration.  Much of my problem is that it seems like new taxonomies are needed in the coming days, and Largely speaking I don’t feel there for me to create at all. Therefore it's time to reach out and listen.




Patrick Lichtyباتريك  ليشتي
Assistant Professorأستاذ مساعد
College of Arts and Creative Enterprisesكلية الفنون و الصناعات الإبداعية

P.O. Box 144534 Abu Dhabi, U.A.E | T:+971 2 599 3491 | M:
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