News from Nowhere (2013)

News from Nowhere: the title of the show is taken from the classic novel written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. In this novel, that that loops together utopian socialism & science fiction, the main character falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and an open and democratic control over society's means of production. By yoking together two disparate languages (political discourse and genre fiction) William Morris tried to create an image of a utopia. These themes and strategies resonate with much of the research undertaken by the artists in the show: both in form and content. These works severally explore the politics of decision-making, our political relationship to the images and information that surrounds us, and our subjective relationship to our own histories. The works also loop together languages taken from a range of discourse including pop culture, political theory, spam email, feminist debates around consent, family scrapbooks and archives. It is this looping together of disparate forms and codes that forms a common pre-occupation of the research undertaken within the department. Within contemporary media, code and image have interpenetrated. From digital cinema, to database driven gallery installations, and web publishing: contemporary media objects are constituted by mutually embedded code and image, the two are impossible to tear apart. In a parallel development, media objects inevitably form the dominant crucible in our culture where disparate codes derived from critical culture, commercial culture and technology are forced together. Our newly expanded department focusses on research into the forms that are developing through these complex interpenetrations, and the artists in this show epitomise the exciting research being undertaken within this new area. -- Date::2013

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