Through interventions in public space and a critical use of digital media and the communication strategies of the corporations connected to it, the theoretical and artistic work developed by Daniel G. Andújar (Almoradí, Alicante, 1966) oscillates between territories that are real (the city) and virtual (the Net). He sets out from the premise that when displaying/dissecting the connections found between both, the inequalities that generate social and power relations are envisaged in a context like the current one.
Operating System presents diverse projects, including a new set of works, Andújar has undertaken over the course of his artistic career to build a corpus that reveals the main constants running through his critical and creative discourse. For instance, projects such as the seminal Technologies To The People (1994) or the installation Individual Citizen Republic Project™: El Sistema (x-devian) (2003), which call into question instrumentalization for speculative ends and/or the social control of communication technologies, triggering the need for us to gain awareness of the dangers and paradoxes of the emancipatory discourse that has been constructed around them.
The considerations of simulated power and the relationship between the real and the virtual form the backbone of works like Se rumorea que… (1999) – which creates fake pieces of news on the gypsy community to explore the influence media narrations have on the construction/transformation of the collective imaginary – or Armed Citizen (1998-2006) and Golpead a los blancos con la cuña roja (2014), two pieces that look at access through the technology of firearms.
A critical approach to current issues, the questioning of the potential of artistic interventions in urban spaces and the deployment of subversive and iconic appropriationist tactics and strategies have also represented a key part of his oeuvre. This is illustrated in works such as La cultura del ladrillo (2004) and Objetos de deseo (2010), which renounce the co-existence of political and economic power in the creation of the housing bubble; Not Found. 1000 casos de estudio (2014), where spaces normally used for advertising feature the standard Internet message that, recontextualised, generates a profound effect of estrangement; Dirigentes (2014), an advertising series that distorts propaganda images of political leaders; and the installation on Picasso, Guernica and the Paris International Exhibition of 1937 that concludes the exhibition.
Exhibition´s details
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