When Attitudes become Platitudes, Live in the Cloud: dematerialization in the work of Christopher Kulendran Thomas
When Attitudes become Platitudes, Live in the Cloud: dematerialization in the work of Christopher Kulendran Thomas
“New Eelam” is a cloud-based digital subscription housing project offering ideal homes to footloose “global citizens” who practice high mobility, postpolitical utopianism, and minimalist interior design. This article uncovers the political and cultural significance of this dream of dematerialized existence in the work of the artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas. Mapping the dematerialization of the art object onto the dematerializations of cloud computing and minimalist lifestyles, this article addresses two ongoing series: When Platitudes Become Form (2012 –) and New Eelam (2016 –). First, it explores how New Eelam conscripts its public into imagining itself as the morally and aesthetically superior advance-guard of a new world order. Then, it uses Kulendran Thomas’s submerged invocation of the 1969 exhibition Live in Your Head. When Attitudes Become Form to analyze how this experiment in “digital realty” uses dematerialization to solicit urgent realizations about the relationships between the contemporary art market, mass migration, and geopolitical reality.
Artwash, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Dematerialization, New Eelam, Voice-over
192–213
Hayden, Sarah
cf6b5dc1-acda-4983-83e6-ad2d96e73764
July 2020
Hayden, Sarah
cf6b5dc1-acda-4983-83e6-ad2d96e73764
Hayden, Sarah
(2020)
When Attitudes become Platitudes, Live in the Cloud: dematerialization in the work of Christopher Kulendran Thomas.
Cultural Politics, 16 (2), .
(doi:10.1215/17432197-8233392).
Abstract
“New Eelam” is a cloud-based digital subscription housing project offering ideal homes to footloose “global citizens” who practice high mobility, postpolitical utopianism, and minimalist interior design. This article uncovers the political and cultural significance of this dream of dematerialized existence in the work of the artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas. Mapping the dematerialization of the art object onto the dematerializations of cloud computing and minimalist lifestyles, this article addresses two ongoing series: When Platitudes Become Form (2012 –) and New Eelam (2016 –). First, it explores how New Eelam conscripts its public into imagining itself as the morally and aesthetically superior advance-guard of a new world order. Then, it uses Kulendran Thomas’s submerged invocation of the 1969 exhibition Live in Your Head. When Attitudes Become Form to analyze how this experiment in “digital realty” uses dematerialization to solicit urgent realizations about the relationships between the contemporary art market, mass migration, and geopolitical reality.
Text
When Attitudes become Platitudes, Live in the Cloud- Accepted Manuscript
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 8 November 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 1 July 2020
Published date: July 2020
Additional Information:
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Duke University Press.
Keywords:
Artwash, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Dematerialization, New Eelam, Voice-over
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 435999
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/435999
ISSN: 1743-2197
PURE UUID: ad2adb2f-a49c-4b6d-80d2-8b1ad5efb375
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Date deposited: 26 Nov 2019 17:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 05:04
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