Professional Surfers
Place: Medialab Prado · Plaza de las Letras, C/ Alameda, 15 Madrid
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The essay explores the use of appropriated imagery by internet artists, with a particular emphasis on artists of the emergent "pro surfer" genre. Holding their practice up against discourses of found photography and appropriation in pop art, I compare works in these divergent genres in order to chart a model of parody arguably specific to digital visual culture in which net artists simultaneously celebrate and critique the internet. Exploring memes, surf club blogs, RSS image scrapers, social networking clichés, online fan cultures, YouTube remixes, .gif hording, source code plundering, and lists as visual forms, I write about the ways in which aesthetics emerge and meaning arises in these appropriative acts while hinting at the deeper political potential of such collective activity.