Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism

Congratulations to DFSA Lecturer in Critical Theory, Bill Balaskas, on the publication of his new book.

Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism is the first edited book, part of a series, by the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (Leonardo/ISAST, The MIT Press). Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism was edited and features introductions by Lanfranco Aceti, Bill Balaskas, Susanne Jaschko and Julian Stallabrass.

The launch event will take place May 19, 2014 from 5:30pm to 8:30pm at the Royal College of Art, Senior Common Room, Kensington Gore, SW7 2EU, London.

The publication investigates the relevance of socialist utopianism to the current dispositions of New Media Art, through the contributions of renowned and emerging academic researchers, critical theorists, curators and artists.

From the early stages of its development, New Media Art readily adopted a variety of means of artistic engagement and expression that aim at serving modes of utopian social being: from multi-modal collaboration to unrestricted public participation and from open software applications to hacktivism, the germs of leftist political thought seem to abound in the art of the Digital Age. Prompted by the economic crisis, New Media Art appears to increasingly employ the tools provided by new technologies in order to penetrate all aspects of global social living and assert the need for socioeconomic change. New Media artworks and art projects have gradually formed a common practice whose objectives allude to utopian theories of social organization lying closer to certain visions of communism, direct democracy and anarchism, rather than to the realities of neoliberal capitalism within which new media are produced and predominantly operate.

Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism explores this multifaceted context in an attempt to demystify whether and to what extent the art of the Digital Age could be the result of the seemingly paradox combination of capitalism’s products and communism’s visions.

The Leonardo Electronic Almanac is a collaborative effort supported by New York University, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development; OCR, Operational and Curatorial Research; Leonardo/ISAST; Sabanci University; The MIT Press; and Goldsmiths, University of London.

The launch event is graciously supported by the Royal College of Art (Programme in Critical Writing in Art & Design, Research Methods Course and the School of Humanities Event Fund).

The publication is kindly sponsored by the University for the Creative Arts.