My research aim is based on critical analysis of virtual art platforms (e.g. O-fluxo, Art viewer but also Instagram) and their influence on artistic practise but also condition of contemporary galleries.Those platforms are enquired as an indexes of discursive limits (Foucault, 1969) but also as a specific form of public spaces with its autonomous cognitive rules (Malafouris, 2013) and aesthetics (Virilio, 1980). Those kinds of virtual public spaces are then – even if it looks at first sight differently – indisputably linked with material artifacts (Miller, 1997) in galleries and creates one coherent knowledge system consisting of various actors (Latour, 2005).
To understand how virtual platforms disseminate its potential it is firstly important to describe their aesthetic patterns influencing the depiction and presentation of art pieces. My research is for that reason stepping back from established art science positions which are mostly focused on one particular object and tries to term the trends in the contemporary art scene in border scale (Bishop, 2024). In other words – it is more about creating topology of similarities rather than typology of details. Because of mentioned specificity we can methodologically classify this approach as study of material culture dynamics in galleries and studios plus its enlarged cognitive assumption caused by the virtual realms.
And because an important part of my terrain is accessible from places all around the world I had decided to use my SpaceX secondment in UvA mostly for self-led research and regular consultations with several scholars in the Department of digital humanities of Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research. Closeness of Utrecht city and the fact that the local university has a strong tradition in New Materialism studies (e.g. Rosi Braidotti and Rick Dolphijn are based there) provides another valuable consultation option. Last but not least the lecture summing up my one month abroad research results was already arranged with art historian Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes at UvA.