Internet Core. Aesthetics of digital disaster

Within the context of contemporary art, and more specifically Internet art, we can question what stage we are going through at the present time and what are the challenges to be faced as agents of culture. The category of ‘post-Internet art’ initially proposed a paradigm shift, in which the Internet became an omnipresent element in artistic practice. Over time, this approach drove the commodification of certain works and the consolidation of a specific group of artists in the art market. Now, under platform capitalism and activity on the Clearnet we crave a shift in the ways in which we as artists relate to each other within the infrastructures of the Internet.

The label ‘core’ emerges on the Internet on platforms such as TikTok and Tumblr, and is part of the trend of ‘aesthetic movements’ with a deeper engagement with pressing global concerns. Aesthetics are a visual expression of a particular identity or culture in relation to platforms. This constant artistic practice of archiving images to build the core is where we want to focus our attention.

The ‘Internet Core’ would be the condition in which art defends aesthetics as forms of anti-capitalist critique and resistance to the system, and encourages a digital artistic exodus to smaller virtual communities (such as Mastodon, Signal, Telegram, Discord or Substack), marking a divergence from the post-internet era, which was driven by influencers and wider public exposure.

In this conference we will address this condition through lectures, conversations, actions and projections by different artists and researchers.
The conference will take place on 3 April from 16:00 to 20:00 at Santa Mònica and on 4 April from 16:00 to 20:00 at Hangar.

Programme 3rd April

16:00 - Opening by Diana Millán: The Internet Core condition.
16:30 - Blanca Martínez: A vision of the ‘core’ from visual studies.
16:55 - Marc Villanueva: Neither alive nor dead. Rethinking aesthetics from the biological metaphor and the alien invasion.
17:20 - Bani Brusadin: In conversation with Jordi Mininn.
17:45 - ¥€$Si PERSE: On the trajectory of the SiegedSec group, its dissolution and legacy in the Trump 2.0 era.
18:10 - Break.
18:30 - Doctor Andergraund: On the end of subcultures.
18:55 - Roundtable with Daniel Moreno, Proyecto Una and Ezequiel Soriano: On memetic tactics, platform migrations and the limitations and political possibilities of shitposting.
19:35 - Geert Lovink: On Platform Brutality.

By Ezequiel Soriano, Diana Millán and Geert Lovink

With the participation of Santa Mònica and Hangar

Activity promoted by Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam)

Diana Millán (@fearlessdiane) Artist and PDIF/FPU pre-doctoral researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (EALyC). Visiting researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam). Her research and artistic practice focuses on the housing crisis and romanticization, using aesthetics and internet cores.

Doctor Anderground (Klau) divulges about aesthetics and underground culture from a transversal perspective on Youtube, with a Community of more than 280k subscribers. He loves music but especially Hardcore Punk. Tattoo culture and illustration are his other professional facet. In Doctorcharco he captures his peculiar vision of the world through weird, surreal and surreal creatures.

¥€$$Si PERSE is a hyperstitional interface that allows its users to enter alternative narratives, equivalent to a metaphorical fictional suit. This paraperson is an avatar in continuous construction, an otherkin or cyborg creature that manifests itself in a role-playing game character, a Radikal Mutant XenoFaery lost in the NeuroDungeon of a cybermedieval economistic system, where science fiction elements collapse with urban fantasy.

Blanca Martínez aka HJDarger is a journalist and researcher and founder of El Bloque TV, the publishing house Cielo Santo and the magazine Visual404. She was also co-founder of the collective Ontologías Feministas.

Bani Brusadin is an independent curator, teacher and researcher. His work focuses on technological imagination, artistic methods, planetary infrastructures and the possible feedback loops between them. In search of new models, exceptions to the rule, oddities and social justice. His professional career includes the direction of The Influencers festival (CCCB Barcelona, 2004 - 2019) and his curatorial activity for the transmediale 2023 festival (Berlin). https://www.banibrusadin.info/

Jordi Mininni is an artist, a maker of useless things, a record collector, an Internet aficionado, a YouTube addict, a pirate, a Liverpool fan, a floppy disk, a friend of machines, a counterfeiter, a ramen fanatic, a failed architect, an asthmatic, a professional Instagram scroller, a sticker printer.

Marc Villanueva Mir graduated in Stage Direction and Dramaturgy at the Institut del Teatre and in Literary Studies at the University of Barcelona. His interests revolve around the ideas of play, device and performativity, as well as the relationship between digital technologies and perception. In addition to making prooio projects, he works as a playwright and teacher at the UB and at the Institut del Teatre, where he coordinates the Postgraduate in Scene and Digital Technology together with Xesca Salvà. He has been artist-in-residence at the Santa Mònica of the Digitalisation Guild, as well as at the Frankfurt LAB and the Teatre Lliure. https://marcvillanuevamir.com/

Proyecto UNA is a writing collective that investigates new forms of online propaganda and our relationship with technology. They have published the books Leia, Rihanna & Trump. How feminism has transformed pop culture and how machismo reacts with terror (2019) and The virality of evil. Who broke the internet, who benefits and how we're going to fix it (2024).

Daniel Moreno Roldán is an artist and musician. He has recently shown his work in venues such as the Museu del Disseny, Art3 (Valence, France), Getxophoto (Getxo), Art-O-Rama (Marseille, France), Fluc (Vienna, Austria) and La Casa Encendida, among others. He also disseminates his work using the language codes of humour on the Internet, through various social media platforms. He is a member and co-founder of the Club de Videojocs, a group of people interested in video games as more than just forms of entertainment. He also works as a music producer and sound designer, both for music and stage projects and for audiovisual productions. http://danielmorenoroldan.com/

Ezequiel Soriano Gómez is an anthropologist and artist. He works on the internet, folklore and appropriation through ethnography, artistic experimentation and post-digital publishing. He directs the publishing lab Artefactos Nativos and is currently (2025) developing a research residency in mediation in Santa Mònica (Barcelona). https://ezequiel.artefactosnativos.com/

Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fibre (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016), Organisation after Social Media (with Ned Rossiter, 2018), Sad by Design (2019) and Stuck on the Platform (2022). He studied Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and received his PhD from the University of Melbourne (2002). In 2004 he founded the Institute for Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). In December 2021 he was appointed Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the Department of Art History (UvA). www.networkcultures.org/geert

Language: catalan, spanish and english