Post-Internet Art and the Alt-Right Visual Culture

Simoniti, V ORCID: 0000-0001-5832-9587 (2023) Post-Internet Art and the Alt-Right Visual Culture In: Dada Data Contemporary Art Practice in the Era of Post Truth Politics. Bloomsbury Academic, London, pp. 246-260. ISBN 9781350227613, 1350227617

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Summary

What is the relevance of Dada and its artistic strategies in our current moment, one marked by post-truth politics, information floods and big data? How can contemporary art highlight the neglected nuances of cultural representation in the present day? While it may feel like we are living in a period of anomaly with the rise of the alt-right, this book shows how the Dada movement’s artistic response to the aggressive nationalism and fascism of its time offers a fruitful analogy to our contemporary era. Dada’s counter-cultural strategies, such as the distortion of reality and attacks on elites and rationality, have long been endorsed by artistic avantgardes and subcultures. Dada Data details how modern-day movements have appropriated such tactics in their ways of addressing the public both on- and offline. Bringing together contributions from interdisciplinary scholars, curators and artists working in global contexts that explore an array of artistic modes of persuasion and resistance, the book demonstrates how contemporary art can bring out neglected nuances of our post-truth moment. In linking the Dada movement’s counter-cultural activities to modern phenomena such as post-internet art, information floods and big data mining, the book collates original propaganda with diverse artwork from such figures as Hannah Höch, Paula Rego, Tschabalala Self, Sheida Soleimani and South African artists donna Kukama and Kemang Wa Lehulere. In doing so, Dada Data brings together a rich scrapbook of Dada resources and perspectives that are highly relevant to present-day political concerns. With artistic contributions by IOCOSE, donna Kukama, Kemang Wa Lehulere and montage mädels. The fragmentation of imagery and the playful engagement with truth characteristic of Dada invites parallels with the aesthetic strategies appropriated by populist politicians and the alt-right in the era of so-called ‘post-truth politics’. This is surprising since the adaptation of the counter-cultural strategies of the Dada movement were for a long time ascribed to left-wing subcultures. If populist politicians persuade the masses by tailored data strategies and simplified conceptions of reality, how can art highlight the neglected nuances of the so-called ‘post-truth’ era? Dada’s artistic response to the aggression, nationalism, white supremacist thinking and rising fascism defining its time offers the fruitful backdrop which this edited volume takes as its point of departure. The book will shed new light on the engagement with tactics of Dada in recent cultural and artistic representations. If Dada strategies are now used by both the left and the alt-right, how does genuine artistic resistance need to be re-thought in the era of post-truth? One-line description Dada Data interrogates how an engagement with the counter-cultural tactics of the Dada movement can help develop critical and artistic vocabularies for confronting our era of post-truth politics mediated by information floods and Big data.

Item Type:	Chapter
Uncontrolled Keywords:	4702 Cultural Studies, 3601 Art History, Theory and Criticism, 47 Language, Communication and Culture, 36 Creative Arts and Writing
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	25 Sep 2023 08:09
Last Modified:	23 May 2026 07:54
DOI:	10.5040/9781350227644.ch-013
Related Websites:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3173006
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