A new exhibition at the Science Museum in London puts gadget fetish through the funhouse mirror. Done as part of Electroboutique, a collaboration between Net Art pioneer Alexei Shulgin and fellow Russian artist Aristarkh Cernyshev, it’s a pop-up show in the form of a pop-up store, full of modern day pop art: objects that twist modern gadgetry and sunny corporate PR into subtle, playful critiques. 3G International, above, is a take-off on Tatlin’s never-built Monument to the Third International, by way of Cupertino. Art and science are part of capitalism’s “avant-garde,” says Shulgin, making them responsible for building “new aesthetics and communications techniques for future use in product design, advertising and politics.” Hannah Redler, Head of Science Museum Arts Projects, spoke with him about the exhibit. (We met him too, in a 2009 video profile that’s posted below.)Can you say something more about your appropriation of the language of corporate social responsibility in the work, or why it became important subject matter for you? It's not immediately the most obvious bedfellow for works which play so expertly with the outputs and aesthetics of mass media. But when one starts to think about the corporate world as a major driving force within new media and communication spaces, lots of questions start to arise. Is this in any way related to the political drivers that originally led you to practice as a net artist?Perhaps. You know, you start being an artist because you feel the world around you is unbearable, you don't see how you can participate in this circus. Then, you discover that art world is not any better, and you start looking for new frontiers. In the 90's the internet was such a frontier; then after few years it has become a part of a banal and rude reality. I think it's a kind of evil loop: you look for a new "temporary autonomous zone" to quote Hakim Bey, and you start exploring it and then, after a while and thanks to your efforts it becomes eaten up by progressing capitalism.When working on our electronic gadgets/art objects we have discovered that our production is quite similar to that of a "real" electronics company: same kind of chipboards, plastic, cameras. We work with contractors, we hire engineers and workers, we use a chinese labour force. We work on the market, we try to be innovative and offer new exciting products… Another world, our art production looks exactly like any other creative capitalist production. That's why we decided to go further and use the current corporate marketing strategies such as declaring social responsibility and sustainability. And it all is true – we do care about world around us and we do try to make it better!
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Out of Control
