Abstract
This article analyses Camille Henrot's 2013 film, Grosse Fatigue, in relation to the histories of hypermedia and modes of interaction with the world wide web. It considers the development of non-hierarchical systems for the organisation of information, and uses Grosse Fatigue to draw comparisons between the Web, the natural history museum and the archive. At stake in focusing on the way in which information is organised through hypermedia is the question of subjectivity, and this article argues that such systems are made ‘user-friendly’ by appearing to accommodate intuitive processes of information retrieval, reflecting the subject back to itself as autonomous. This produces an ideology of individualism which belies the forms of heteronomy that in fact shape and structure access to information online in significant ways. At the heart of this argument is an attention to the visual, and the significance of art as an immanent mode of analysis. Through the themes of transparency and opacity, and order and chaos, the article thus proposes a defining dynamic between autonomy and automation as a model for understanding the contemporary subject.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 154-182 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| Journal | History of the human sciences |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Early online date | 6 May 2019 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 6 May 2019 |
Bibliographical note
© The Author(s) 2019. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.Keywords
- Internet
- art
- hypermedia
- subjectivity
- visuality
Profiles
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Cadence Elizabeth Craddock Kinsey
- History of Art - Lecturer in Recent and Contemporary Art, Former employee
Person: Academic