Campanelli

After spending several days at a major European festival of digital art and culture, I had the impression of a community in which good manners and friendship where the rule. Smiles, handshakes and back-patting dominated within this laidback atmosphere, in which the participants were safe from unwanted or threatening currents. This brings to mind Baudrillard’s reference to a certain ‘accomplice paranoia’ in the world of contemporary art. In other words, this is a scene that constantly eludes the possibility of critical judgment, and leaves space only for a friendly, necessarily convivial, sharing of nothingness’. In such a context, open dissent is seen as utterly inappropriate. Nothing is allowed to disturb the quiet harmony of a community that in fact comes together for comfort rather then to confront.

Vito Campanelli, Web Aesthetics, Institute of Network Cultures / NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2010, pp. 42 – 43.