Zach Blas: Contra-Internet

Gasworks presents Contra-Internet, a major new commission and the first institutional solo exhibition by London-based artist Zach Blas. The exhibition is commissioned by Gasworks; Art in General, New York; and MU, Eindhoven; and is produced by Gasworks.

Contra-Internet at Gasworks marks the premiere of Jubilee 2033, a queer science fiction film installation that includes live action, CGI animation, blown glass sculptures and a single edition publication titled The End of the Internet (As We Knew It). Framed by existing works in animation, moving image and vinyl text, the exhibition confronts the growing hegemony of the internet.

A “neutral” network during the 1980s and ’90s, the internet is fast becoming the principle instrument of accelerated capitalism, surveillance and control: an infrastructure that it is increasingly difficult to imagine an outside of or alternative to. Counter to this, Contra-Internet appropriates queer and feminist approaches to technology and science fiction to reanimate the network’s more progressive past and speculate about forms of resistance to the internet of the present and near future.

Roughly based on the opening sequence of British filmmaker Derek Jarman’s seminal 1978 queer punk film Jubilee, Blas’s Jubilee 2033 (2017), starring Susanne Sachsse and Cassils, is set in the Silicon Valley of 2033. Known as the Silicon Zone, it is the imagined future of novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand’s early thought, as advanced in her novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). Following decades of deregulation, the internet has become an omnipotent “internet of things,” defined by the principles of self-interest and laissez-faire that underpin Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism.

This has given rise to an oppressive, neo-neoliberal, supra-state monopoly that polices the internet, which is indistinguishable from the world as everything falls apart. Flames encircle ransacked office buildings, riots abound, and the corpses of dead techies litter the streets. In the shadows of a vacant office building, however, the so-called anti-campus rises up. Led by their AI prophet Nootropix, eager students are taught history, politics, art and counter-infrastructure after the collapse of the internet. It is a philosophy against the legacy of Rand: contra-objectivism, contra-Californian ideology, contra-sexual, contra-internet.

In addition to this commission, existing works consider the present state of the internet, showing that the totalitarian network of Jubilee 2033 has in many ways already begun. A critical definition of the internet written by the artist is installed as vinyl lettering in a web-safe font; while Totality Studies (2015–17) comprises a triptych of animated .gifs that show 3D globes with stock images as their skins. These spinning icons demonstrate that recent popular imagery of the internet always seems to convey the same message: that it’s big, and it’s everywhere.

Resisting these and other visions of internet supremacy, three short, performative videos titled Inversion Practices (2016–17) utilise various conceptual-technical tactics to abandon and subvert the internet. These include strategies as diverse as erasing images of social media posts in Adobe Photoshop; plagiarising queer and radical economic theory to produce an anti-internet manifesto; and working with animators to model paranodal space (the space that exists in-between the various nodes of a network) as a way to visualise and think through what networks frustrate, obstruct or occlude as they are constituted.

Contra-Internet is a project of Creative Capital, generously supported by Arts Council England; Cockayne–Grants for the Arts and the London Community Foundation; Thor Perplies; and Gasworks’ Exhibition Programme Supporter 2017-18, Catherine Petitgas.

The exhibition will be presented at Art in General, New York from January to March 2018 and at MU, Eindhoven from May to July 2018.

Zach Blas is an artist and writer whose practice confronts technologies of capture, security, and control. He is currently a Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London and has lectured and exhibited internationally, recently at IMA Brisbane, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and ICA Singapore.

Exhibition events

Lecture performance: Metric Mysticism
Wednesday, October 18, 7pm
In this lecture performance, Zach Blas gazes into the crystal balls of Silicon Valley and charts the transmutation of big data into a magical substance that can predict—and police—the future.  

Symposium: The Only Path to Tomorrow
Saturday, November 25, 11am–6pm
Gasworks presents The Only Path to Tomorrow, a symposium convened by Zach Blas. Artists and scholars Ramon Amaro, Erika Balsom, Matthew Fuller, Elena Gorfinkel, Lawrence Lek, Ana Teixeira Pinto and Susanne Sachsse will discuss Contra-Internet in relation to their own research, ranging from smart drug trends to contemporary manifestations of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism; from futures of artificial intelligence to transparent architecture in Silicon Valley; from modes of minoritarian techo-resistance to aesthetic strategies in queer cinema. Nootropics will be served.

Residency events

Winter Open Studios
Open studios: Saturday, December 9, 12–6pm
Artists’ talks: Saturday, December 9, 4pm

Katrina Beekhuis (New Zealand), hosted in the Outset Residency Studio
Patricia Domínguez (Chile), hosted in the Juan Yarur Torres Residency Studio
Mahbub Jokhio (Pakistan), hosted in the Roberts Residency Studio
Andrés Pereira Paz (Bolivia), hosted in the Sackler Residency Studio

Gasworks’ current international artists in residence open their studios to the public throughout the day on Saturday, December 9. Open studios and artists’ talks offer audiences a unique opportunity to see, hear about and discuss the research and work-in-progress that these artists have been developing during their residencies.

Gasworks’ current residencies are supported by the Jan Warburton Charitable Trust; David and Libby Richwhite; the New Zealand Friends of Gasworks; Creative New Zealand; Charles Wallace Pakistan Trust; Rangoonwala Foundation; Fundación AMA; and The Shelagh Wakely Bequest, administered by the Elephant Trust.