Papers by Conor McGarrigle
Visual Resources, 2018
Prior to the release of the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers – leaked documents that u... more Prior to the release of the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers – leaked documents that uncovered the movement of funds through offshore tax havens – conceptual artist Paolo Cirio’s (b. 1979) project Loophole for All (2013) revealed and documented the mechanics behind offshore financial centers. In this interview, Cirio expounds upon his investigations of offshore banking practices, describes his projects for instituting alternative financial models, and explains his hacktivist (i.e. Internet activist) strategies that engage with legal and economic systems. Defining the foundational movements that inform his work, Cirio in turn illuminates his methods of direct provocation and performance to reveal social and economic inequalities.
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Visual Resources, May 22, 2018
Pre-print of the introduction to Visual Resources, Volume 34, Issue 1-2 Board Approved Special Is... more Pre-print of the introduction to Visual Resources, Volume 34, Issue 1-2 Board Approved Special Issue Art in the Age of Financial Crisis
To cite this article: Marisa Lerer & Conor McGarrigle (2018) Art in the Age of Financial Crisis, Visual Resources, 34:1-2, 1-12, DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1455355
This issue addresses the long financial crisis of 2008 and the nature and diversity of artistic responses to it. This financial crisis is understood as a globalized result of late capitalism that nonetheless is experienced differently at local, regional, and national levels. It is multi- faceted in nature, a phenomenon that has historical roots and precedents that inform contemporary responses. Artists are not restricted to engage with the economy through one specific vehicle of inquiry or one type of medium and message. Therefore, the central question that this issue poses is: what is the artist’s role in finance, crisis, and the economy? Should artists: fix the economy; explain it; attempt to alter it; reject it; participate in it; or none of the above? The articles, artists’ projects and interviews presented here attend to these questions through a wide-ranging lens including: studies of historical precedents such as the Great Depression of 1929 and currency crises in Latin America in the 1970s; artistic direct interventions within financial systems that reveal and challenge their opaque processes and value systems; alternative currencies highlighting the neo-colonialism of global financial markets; and blockchain-based rethinking of art market ownership models. These multi-faceted projects spanning different time periods and geographies offer crucial and distinct theoretical positions. This issue, which saw its origins in a panel for the 2017 College Art Association Conference in New York City, adds to scholarship on these pressing topics and seeks to foster a continued discourse on the intersections of art and financial crisis.
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This paper looks at the complex nature of developing effective and appropriate strategies for the... more This paper looks at the complex nature of developing effective and appropriate strategies for the preservation of born digital art, in particular networked art. These issues are approached from the perspective of artist practitioners as it is suggested that any preservation strategy begins with artists, with the conservation practices that are inculcated into the very act of creation.. This paper proposes that this necessitates institutional digital art conservation initiatives originating from a pre-existing culture of preservation within digital art communities.
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This article discusses the possibilities for Augmented Reality (AR) as a driver of data based art... more This article discusses the possibilities for Augmented Reality (AR) as a driver of data based art. The combination of AR and Open Data (in the broadest post-Wikileaks sense) is seen to provide a powerful tool-set for the artist/activist to augment specific sites with a critical, context-specific data layer. Such situated interventions offer powerful new methods for the
political activation of sites which enhance and strengthen traditional non-virtual approaches and should be thought of as complementary to, rather than replacing, physical intervention.
I offer as a case study this author’s “NAMAland” project, a mobile artwork which uses Open Data and Augmented Reality to visualize and critique aspects of the Irish financial collapse. The project, over-layed Dublin with an activist derived data-layer which supported and enabled physical interventions, making visible/concrete abstract financial dealings through situating them in real space, enacting a virtual layer of critique which facilitated and catalyzed wider debate.
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A trend exists within locative media art of invoking the
practices of the Situationist Internati... more A trend exists within locative media art of invoking the
practices of the Situationist International (SI) as an art
historical and theoretical background to contemporary
practices. It is claimed that locative media seeks to
re-enchant urban space though the application of locative
technologies to develop novel and experimental
methods for navigating, exploring and experiencing
the city. To this end, SI concepts such as psychogeography
and the techniques of detournement and the derive
(drift) have exerted considerable influence on locative
media practices, but questions arise as to whether this
constitutes a valid contemporary appropriation or a
recuperative co-option, serving to neutralize their
inherent oppositional qualities.
The paper will argue that there is an identifiable
strand of locative art works which through their contingent
re-appropriation of situationist techniques can be
thought of as being involved in the ‘construction of locative
situations’, and that these (re)applications of situationist
practices point to future directions for locative
media’s artistic engagement with the accelerating ubiquity
of locative technologies.
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This paper discusses the connections between the ‘flâneur’, Baudelaire's symbol of modernity, the... more This paper discusses the connections between the ‘flâneur’, Baudelaire's symbol of modernity, the anonymous man on the streets of nineteenth century Paris, and his contemporary digital incarnation, the ‘cyberflâneur’. It is argued that, although the flâneur could be successfully re-imagined as the cyberflâneur in the early days of the web, this nineteenth century model of male privilege no longer fits the purpose. It is suggested that it is time to forget the flâneur and search for a new model to consider the peripatetic nature of location-aware networked devices in the digitally augmented city.
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Chapters in Edited Books by Conor McGarrigle
The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies
Locative Media as Remix chapter
While data-driven art is not new, recent developments in tech... more Locative Media as Remix chapter
While data-driven art is not new, recent developments in technical, artistic and social spheres have coalesced to produce new opportunities for artists and activists to remix data with space and place to form locationally-specific political critiques of great power and flexibility.
Through processes of remixing multiple data sources within specific spatial, social and political contexts, it is argued that locative media practices offer critical understandings of space and place. It is proposed that the consideration of these emergent practices as remix offers an effective method for unpacking the complex interrelationships between location, technology and data and their associated artistic and activist practices.
This convergence of data and physical space is situated within an artistic tradition of utilizing data as a tool of political and artistic critique, a tradition, it is argued, that underpins and informs current work. Artistic projects, approaches and methods in this contested area are identified which, it is argued, point toward future directions in locative remix.
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The Art of Walking: a field guide is the first extensive survey of walking in contemporary art. C... more The Art of Walking: a field guide is the first extensive survey of walking in contemporary art. Combining short texts on the subject with a variety of artists work, The Art of Walking provides a new way of looking at this everyday subject.
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Augmented Reality Art: From an Emerging Technology to a Novel Creative Medium
This chapter proposes that augmented reality art and open data offer the potential for a redefini... more This chapter proposes that augmented reality art and open data offer the potential for a redefinition of urban interventionist art practices.
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Conference Presentations by Conor McGarrigle
Drifting Bodies / Fluent Spaces, International Conference on Walking Arts, 2020
Walking West centres on a dérive by the author along Denver's Colfax Ave, the "longest , wickedes... more Walking West centres on a dérive by the author along Denver's Colfax Ave, the "longest , wickedest street in America", with this paper an account of that dérive and its resulting artwork. Walking West comprised walking the length of Colfax in a single continuous movement while drawing a line on the sidewalk, tracing the route with a GPS device, while a satellite photograph captured the entire length of the street in a single image during the performance. The project additionally involved an outdoor screening of a film documenting the performance on prairie lands near Denver, and a gallery exhibition of a large-scale print (33x2m) of the satellite photograph and a film of the event.
The very act of walking has become marginalized in many American cities, yet by walking we can experience the city itself, at a human pace, as a space of discovery and encounter. The symbolic act of walking Colfax acted both as a lens to focus discussion on the role of the street in the cultural, social and political life of Denver, and as psychogeographic exposition of the urban ambiance, whilst acknowledging the interlocking multi-scalar hybrid nature of digitally mediated urban space, from embodied street-level action to the technological assemblages of surveillance satellites.
Walking West is rooted in a Situationist understanding of the dérive as research method; a exposition of the city's psychogeography. However, this was not a pure drift, as it set itself strict parameters that owe more to a tradition of durational performance art whilst maintaining an awareness of the psychogeographic contours of the street. The paper suggests this hybridity asserts the continued validity of the dérive as research method within artistic research, through reflecting on the practice of the walk, its art outcomes, and the future directions it suggests.
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Papers by Conor McGarrigle
To cite this article: Marisa Lerer & Conor McGarrigle (2018) Art in the Age of Financial Crisis, Visual Resources, 34:1-2, 1-12, DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1455355
This issue addresses the long financial crisis of 2008 and the nature and diversity of artistic responses to it. This financial crisis is understood as a globalized result of late capitalism that nonetheless is experienced differently at local, regional, and national levels. It is multi- faceted in nature, a phenomenon that has historical roots and precedents that inform contemporary responses. Artists are not restricted to engage with the economy through one specific vehicle of inquiry or one type of medium and message. Therefore, the central question that this issue poses is: what is the artist’s role in finance, crisis, and the economy? Should artists: fix the economy; explain it; attempt to alter it; reject it; participate in it; or none of the above? The articles, artists’ projects and interviews presented here attend to these questions through a wide-ranging lens including: studies of historical precedents such as the Great Depression of 1929 and currency crises in Latin America in the 1970s; artistic direct interventions within financial systems that reveal and challenge their opaque processes and value systems; alternative currencies highlighting the neo-colonialism of global financial markets; and blockchain-based rethinking of art market ownership models. These multi-faceted projects spanning different time periods and geographies offer crucial and distinct theoretical positions. This issue, which saw its origins in a panel for the 2017 College Art Association Conference in New York City, adds to scholarship on these pressing topics and seeks to foster a continued discourse on the intersections of art and financial crisis.
political activation of sites which enhance and strengthen traditional non-virtual approaches and should be thought of as complementary to, rather than replacing, physical intervention.
I offer as a case study this author’s “NAMAland” project, a mobile artwork which uses Open Data and Augmented Reality to visualize and critique aspects of the Irish financial collapse. The project, over-layed Dublin with an activist derived data-layer which supported and enabled physical interventions, making visible/concrete abstract financial dealings through situating them in real space, enacting a virtual layer of critique which facilitated and catalyzed wider debate.
practices of the Situationist International (SI) as an art
historical and theoretical background to contemporary
practices. It is claimed that locative media seeks to
re-enchant urban space though the application of locative
technologies to develop novel and experimental
methods for navigating, exploring and experiencing
the city. To this end, SI concepts such as psychogeography
and the techniques of detournement and the derive
(drift) have exerted considerable influence on locative
media practices, but questions arise as to whether this
constitutes a valid contemporary appropriation or a
recuperative co-option, serving to neutralize their
inherent oppositional qualities.
The paper will argue that there is an identifiable
strand of locative art works which through their contingent
re-appropriation of situationist techniques can be
thought of as being involved in the ‘construction of locative
situations’, and that these (re)applications of situationist
practices point to future directions for locative
media’s artistic engagement with the accelerating ubiquity
of locative technologies.
Chapters in Edited Books by Conor McGarrigle
While data-driven art is not new, recent developments in technical, artistic and social spheres have coalesced to produce new opportunities for artists and activists to remix data with space and place to form locationally-specific political critiques of great power and flexibility.
Through processes of remixing multiple data sources within specific spatial, social and political contexts, it is argued that locative media practices offer critical understandings of space and place. It is proposed that the consideration of these emergent practices as remix offers an effective method for unpacking the complex interrelationships between location, technology and data and their associated artistic and activist practices.
This convergence of data and physical space is situated within an artistic tradition of utilizing data as a tool of political and artistic critique, a tradition, it is argued, that underpins and informs current work. Artistic projects, approaches and methods in this contested area are identified which, it is argued, point toward future directions in locative remix.
Conference Presentations by Conor McGarrigle
The very act of walking has become marginalized in many American cities, yet by walking we can experience the city itself, at a human pace, as a space of discovery and encounter. The symbolic act of walking Colfax acted both as a lens to focus discussion on the role of the street in the cultural, social and political life of Denver, and as psychogeographic exposition of the urban ambiance, whilst acknowledging the interlocking multi-scalar hybrid nature of digitally mediated urban space, from embodied street-level action to the technological assemblages of surveillance satellites.
Walking West is rooted in a Situationist understanding of the dérive as research method; a exposition of the city's psychogeography. However, this was not a pure drift, as it set itself strict parameters that owe more to a tradition of durational performance art whilst maintaining an awareness of the psychogeographic contours of the street. The paper suggests this hybridity asserts the continued validity of the dérive as research method within artistic research, through reflecting on the practice of the walk, its art outcomes, and the future directions it suggests.
To cite this article: Marisa Lerer & Conor McGarrigle (2018) Art in the Age of Financial Crisis, Visual Resources, 34:1-2, 1-12, DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1455355
This issue addresses the long financial crisis of 2008 and the nature and diversity of artistic responses to it. This financial crisis is understood as a globalized result of late capitalism that nonetheless is experienced differently at local, regional, and national levels. It is multi- faceted in nature, a phenomenon that has historical roots and precedents that inform contemporary responses. Artists are not restricted to engage with the economy through one specific vehicle of inquiry or one type of medium and message. Therefore, the central question that this issue poses is: what is the artist’s role in finance, crisis, and the economy? Should artists: fix the economy; explain it; attempt to alter it; reject it; participate in it; or none of the above? The articles, artists’ projects and interviews presented here attend to these questions through a wide-ranging lens including: studies of historical precedents such as the Great Depression of 1929 and currency crises in Latin America in the 1970s; artistic direct interventions within financial systems that reveal and challenge their opaque processes and value systems; alternative currencies highlighting the neo-colonialism of global financial markets; and blockchain-based rethinking of art market ownership models. These multi-faceted projects spanning different time periods and geographies offer crucial and distinct theoretical positions. This issue, which saw its origins in a panel for the 2017 College Art Association Conference in New York City, adds to scholarship on these pressing topics and seeks to foster a continued discourse on the intersections of art and financial crisis.
political activation of sites which enhance and strengthen traditional non-virtual approaches and should be thought of as complementary to, rather than replacing, physical intervention.
I offer as a case study this author’s “NAMAland” project, a mobile artwork which uses Open Data and Augmented Reality to visualize and critique aspects of the Irish financial collapse. The project, over-layed Dublin with an activist derived data-layer which supported and enabled physical interventions, making visible/concrete abstract financial dealings through situating them in real space, enacting a virtual layer of critique which facilitated and catalyzed wider debate.
practices of the Situationist International (SI) as an art
historical and theoretical background to contemporary
practices. It is claimed that locative media seeks to
re-enchant urban space though the application of locative
technologies to develop novel and experimental
methods for navigating, exploring and experiencing
the city. To this end, SI concepts such as psychogeography
and the techniques of detournement and the derive
(drift) have exerted considerable influence on locative
media practices, but questions arise as to whether this
constitutes a valid contemporary appropriation or a
recuperative co-option, serving to neutralize their
inherent oppositional qualities.
The paper will argue that there is an identifiable
strand of locative art works which through their contingent
re-appropriation of situationist techniques can be
thought of as being involved in the ‘construction of locative
situations’, and that these (re)applications of situationist
practices point to future directions for locative
media’s artistic engagement with the accelerating ubiquity
of locative technologies.
While data-driven art is not new, recent developments in technical, artistic and social spheres have coalesced to produce new opportunities for artists and activists to remix data with space and place to form locationally-specific political critiques of great power and flexibility.
Through processes of remixing multiple data sources within specific spatial, social and political contexts, it is argued that locative media practices offer critical understandings of space and place. It is proposed that the consideration of these emergent practices as remix offers an effective method for unpacking the complex interrelationships between location, technology and data and their associated artistic and activist practices.
This convergence of data and physical space is situated within an artistic tradition of utilizing data as a tool of political and artistic critique, a tradition, it is argued, that underpins and informs current work. Artistic projects, approaches and methods in this contested area are identified which, it is argued, point toward future directions in locative remix.
The very act of walking has become marginalized in many American cities, yet by walking we can experience the city itself, at a human pace, as a space of discovery and encounter. The symbolic act of walking Colfax acted both as a lens to focus discussion on the role of the street in the cultural, social and political life of Denver, and as psychogeographic exposition of the urban ambiance, whilst acknowledging the interlocking multi-scalar hybrid nature of digitally mediated urban space, from embodied street-level action to the technological assemblages of surveillance satellites.
Walking West is rooted in a Situationist understanding of the dérive as research method; a exposition of the city's psychogeography. However, this was not a pure drift, as it set itself strict parameters that owe more to a tradition of durational performance art whilst maintaining an awareness of the psychogeographic contours of the street. The paper suggests this hybridity asserts the continued validity of the dérive as research method within artistic research, through reflecting on the practice of the walk, its art outcomes, and the future directions it suggests.