Duty Free Art

Research output: Contribution to journalLiterature reviewpeer-review

Abstract

Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War is a collection of short essays and public talks from filmmaker and theorist Hito Steyerl. Reading Duty Free Art at times feels like surfing the web with no objective. This in part is due to the structure, a collection of articles and lectures, but mainly as a result of the frantic connections between philosophy, art, pop-culture, military and economy. It’s easy to get lost in the wormhole like effect that these hyper connections of separate concepts in time and space create. The multiple, fragmented lines of thought mimic the proliferation of media-channels in the new media landscape that Steyerl explores. Discussing a diverse range of phenomena – video games, WikiLeak files, freeports and Internet spam – seemingly disparate facts are bound together into a range of illuminating political accounts of digital artefacts, such as cat videos, lorem ipsum and twitter bots. It is the combination of acerbic wit, poetic play on paradox and the eccentric assemblage of references taken from high theory and low culture that makes Duty Free Art a joyful read.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages1
JournalMedia Theory
Publication statusPublished - 26 Mar 2018

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