Post Internet Post Info Wars I

December, 2021
by Kai (Kari) Altmann

A few months ago I noticed that a Wikipedia article had gone up about “Post Internet”, a genre of art, music, culture etc. that I was heavily involved in for many years. The name, although clunky, had situated a loose network of artists connected online and through online cultures as they slowly became aware of each other, and helped to name a paradigm shift in how art, content and networked culture were functioning. It caught on and was spreading, out from Western art megacities, out from the art world’s old-fashioned rules and class structures, when it hit a wall and became a co-option territorial battle. It became something of a resource race to control the narrative and “brand” of it, as well as to “print out” projects that were inherently linked into online cultures and formats…a very delicate ethical and material action. Somehow there was a regressive snap-back to antiquated ideas of gallery-based materiality as “proof” of ownership, which not only trampled some very innovative creators but disregarded the entire point of the movement…that materiality, especially in an art world context had evolved. Not that it was unimportant or dead, just that it was contextualized and processed differently, and that digital-cultural things were now on an equal plane with everything else that could be presented as art, and were moving in new communal and social forms which could not be solidified (at least in the old-fashioned ways) so easily.

After all the years of shows, talks, interviews and books of being a “leading Post Internet” artist, I had to move forward from the genre as it got hijacked by cultural colonizers and started bringing less understanding to my work and life instead of more, as well as urging me to do things that I felt were unethical or exploitative to other creatives and myself. The opportunities it was bringing weren’t actually doing my work or me any service. (I have also written about this in other pieces here on Medium and vocalized about it during some lectures and panels, but there is more to say.) The work constantly felt rushed, approximated, exported and outsourced. It felt automated. Algorithmic. And not in a good way.

The beauty of it going viral and being somewhat open also exposed it to this kind of activity. Every person that jumped in affected it in different ways, which was kind of cool, but also a bit too chaotic to be compatible with everyone’s ideals. It also lived in a different kind of geography. The art world is weirdly still broken up into DVD Region style zones, and this was something existing in all of them and beyond at once. Every person, city and scene seemed to have a different idea of what the genre was. I tried to negotiate with it for a while, even fight at times, and help to keep driving it toward (in my mind) a more innovative and expansive place, but it was kind of no use. I didn’t really have the resources to keep making and shipping/storing “gallery printouts” on the miniscule budgets being offered, or doing unpaid writing and talks while also keeping life going. And this became the trap of it all. At times curators were greatly helpful in escaping this trap, and at other times, they were keepers of the gate.

There was no choice really but to move on, and genres evolve anyway as artists do. I was craving new terms and the freedom to properly define myself — to actually make the work for real. There were certain angles and interpretations of the genre that had gotten misaligned. Over and over again the contextualization focused on technology, commercialism or corporations. Very rarely on actual culture, globalism, ethics, class-race-gender issues, spirituality, interpersonal dynamics, relationships, health, etc. Not shockingly, this scene had huge issues with many of these aspects as well. I had contributed as much as I could, though — doing no-budget shows in NYC and Europe, curating, posting online constantly, editorials and interviews, scrapping things together in the wild hopes that I would get to grow my projects and their surrounding mini-cultures to full fruition without much initial backing, as many artists do. I genuinely wanted to help grow or shine lights on other projects I believed in, too. More about this in future posts.

I identify with new tags now but also focus more primarily on solo projects and self-publishing, and try to turn down everything that isn’t an opportunity to do the full, real work justice. (It’s still sometimes approximated and algorithmic.) I have also been re-focusing on music, video, private commissions outside the art world, health and global travel, all of which give me a needed change of scenery.

Now it seems the Wikipedia history is also getting hijacked, with seeming emphasis on artists under Kraupa Tuskany Ziedler‘s umbrella and a weird emphasis on the Berlin Biennale that (super problematic collective) Dis curated and which had very little to do with Post Internet as a movement, though they tried so hard. They have been land-grabbing artists’ work since the start and if you showed friction, you were discarded. Many names, shows, online works, etc. are missing from this.

Wiki is also a problem. Largely controlled by a small group of (mostly white male) editors and easily influenced via payola, it is not the egalitarian info repository it has ever claimed to be. This is one of the main issues with “open source” things, unfortunately. Artists are being added to this with plenty of citations and then deleted again. Literally history erasure.

I personally gave 10 years of my life to this “genre” only to have to exit when bad agents took over and started ruining the meaning of my work and even poorly copying my projects and ideas. A huge bummer when we were all making such efforts to be inclusive and break outdated power structures, to truly do something innovative and experimental. It’s disappointing when people come in with the same old-fashioned ideals and ruin the ecosystem. But I’m not going to sit by and let them erase those years of blood, sweat and tears in post. It may seem like Wikipedia doesn’t matter but in online world, any bit of written info seems to garner WAY too much importance. Literally people will write their PhDs and books based on random texts online, so it weirdly matters a lot and has to be very ethically taken care of. If you were involved in Post Internet as a movement, even if you are over it now, please make sure to add yourself to this article and as many of the actual shows, curators, writings, etc. as you can.

And if you know you know, Post Internet was just the beginning of a much wider new world.

Kai (Kari) Altmann aka Hitashya is a conceptual artist, musician and director currently based in India. She writes and archives selected texts here on Medium and posts on her platform, XLE.LIFE, as well as her personal sites and social media. She also communicates through interviews, books, editorials and lectures.

This was originally posted on other social media, archiving it here with additions for posterity.