I Was Raised on the Internet — exhibition text

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E Chicago Ave. Saturday 23 June – Sunday 14 October 2018. Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art and Turner Gallery. Text as published on the museum's exhibition page (source); harm.work reproduces the same text on I Was Raised on the Internet. Wiki reading: I Was Raised on the Internet (MCA Chicago, 2018).

I Was Raised on the Internet focuses on how the internet has changed the way we experience the world. Due to new types of gaming and entertainment and the rise of social media and alternative modes of representation, the everyday is no longer what it used to be. The ways we interact with each other have shifted through the connected nature of telecommunications devices across the internet, including mobile applications, social media platforms, and large search engines that have become everyday tools for individuals from all walks of life. New modes, not only of seeing but also of feeling, have emerged in response to this.

I Was Raised on the Internet documents a specific moment in time, beginning with 1998 and extending to the present, and focuses on the shifts that have occurred since the millennium. The nearly 100 works in the exhibition span photography, painting, sculpture, film, and video, as well as emerging technologies and interactive elements, which include interactive computer works and virtual reality. Among these are new adaptations of major bodies of work, as well as new commissions from some of the most significant artists working with these ideas today.

The exhibition seeks to put into language the idea of the "millennial'"—in the truest sense of the word—extrapolating the terms used by artists and creative practitioners in relation to the internet, including the so-called post-internet phenomenon. Fittingly, the viewer is an active agent, engaging new forms of networked behavior and participating both in the gallery space and beyond, through additional digital works hosted online. I Was Raised on the Internet plays with the dystopic connotations of our online multiverse but also is a direct reaction to the utopic beginnings of the world of computing.

The exhibition comprises five sections, each describing a different mode of interaction between the viewer and the art object: Look at Me considers new, more fluid forms of identity that have flourished in a world where social media has led to a performance of the self and a networking with others. Touch Me traces the limits of translating information and digital images into real space. This chapter focuses on art's fluid boundaries between two- and three-dimensions, and addresses the ways individuals are increasingly seeing touch and sensuality as entirely new constructs in the world of the internet. Control Me addresses the pervasive culture of surveillance and data collection that network technology enables. How do we create a visual vocabulary for state control, and what future can this vocabulary enable for us as citizens? Play with Me documents the ways in which art grapples with the move toward immersive and interactive technologies developing today, in which the visitor is not merely a passive viewer but an active agent in the work. Finally, Sell Me Out focuses on corporate culture and consumerism. Artists take up ideas from marketing, such as brand identity, with a critical eye to expose, critique, and participate in our late capitalist landscape, and to imagine new futures for the labor of buying and selling. Additionally, viewers can access each section's online works through an exhibition website.

The exhibition is organized by former Manilow Senior Curator and Director of Global Initiatives Omar Kholeif. It is presented in the Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art and the Turner Gallery on the museum's fourth floor.

Artists

As listed on the museum's page (an asterisk marks a commissioned work):

American Artist; Anna Anthropy; Cory Arcangel; Jeremy Bailey; Zach Blas; Nate Boyce; Ingrid Burrington; Cao Fei; Antoine Catala; Jon Chambers*; Shu Lea Cheang; Ian Cheng; Chris Collins; Douglas Coupland; Simon Denny; Aleksandra Domanović; Constant Dullaart; E. Jane; Lizzie Fitch & Ryan Trecartin; John Gerrard; Goldin+Senneby; Óscar González-Díaz*; Erin Hayden; Porpentine Charity Heartscape*; Mashaun Ali Hendricks*; Femke Herregraven; Shawné Michaelain Holloway*; Joel Holmberg; Juliana Huxtable; Oliver Laric; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer; Sara Ludy; Rachel Maclean; Eva and Franco Mattes; Takeshi Murata; Jayson Musson; Mendi + Keith Obadike; Trevor Paglen; Heather Phillipson; Angelo Plessas; Jon Rafman; Sean Raspet; Tabita Rezaire; Tabor Robak; Evan Roth; Jacolby Satterwhite; Ben Schumacher; Bogosi Sekhukhuni; Elias Sime; Daniel Steegman Mangrané; Christopher Kulendran Thomas in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann*; Thomson & Craighead; Josh Tonsfeldt; Francis Tseng; Amalia Ulman; Harm van den Dorpel; Artie Vierkant; Andrew Norman Wilson; YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. The page also features Sophia Al-Maria, Petra Cortright, DIS, Stan Douglas, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Hito Steyerl and Laura Owens.

The sections, from the museum's announcement

An earlier version of the museum's announcement, reproduced on Gamescenes on 7 December 2017 (source), names key artists for each section. Some names there (Andrea Crespo, Anne de Vries, Katja Novitskova) are not on the final list above. Its paragraph on the second section:

Touch Me traces the extent to which it is possible to translate information and digital images into real space. This chapter focuses on art's fluid boundaries between two- and three-dimensions, and addresses the ways individuals are increasingly seeing touch and sensuality as new concepts in the world of the internet. Artists in this section include Ian Cheng, Aleksandra Domanović, John Gerrard, Oliver Laric, Takeshi Murata, Jon Rafman, Elias Sime, and Harm van den Dorpel.

The same announcement says the exhibition "is supported by a lead grant from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation".

Other records

Upstream Gallery's announcement of 21 June 2018 gives the work as "Harm van den Dorpel, Assemblage (About). UV prints on pet-g, CNC-cut, ø 95 cm." (Upstream Gallery). The exhibition was accompanied by a book edited by Kholeif.