forensic turn

Contemporary art practices, working towards the development of critical approaches in terms of institutional, economic and political critique, have for some time been shaped trough the prism of broader, so-called forensic turn: »in which ideas of truth are increasingly tied to techniques of verification. In this cultural turn, attention has shifted from the physiological intricacies of the subject position to narratives led by things, traces, objects and algorithms.« (Frieze) In gathering sets of data and other material, creating different meanings or points of comprehension, the art production itself became organised by the principles of re-establishing what is already existing, re-positioning different words and things in order to produce some sort of conceptual or formal surplus, which is no matter what, still embedded and conditioned by the world as such — by the form and the content of the target it is supposed to criticise yet cannot stop, to some extent, echoing its basic principles:

Here, art practice becomes an archiving gesture, a framing and presenting of a subset of the world. An archive practice is first and foremost curatorial in this sense; it gathers together hitherto separate elements under a banner (a concept, a theme, a name, and so on), but, crucially, it does not necessarily transform these elements. Indeed, ultimately it offers nothing more than a product (or a series of products) designed to meet the desire for knowledge – when the latter is understood as knowledge of the world as-it-is.(O’Sullivan)

performative activism

Performative activism is activism done to increase one's social capital rather than because of one's devotion to a cause. It is often associated with surface-level activism, referred to as slacktivism. The term gained an increased usage on social media in the wake of the George Floyd protests

Slacktivism is the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions, characterised as involving very little effort or commitment: engaging in online activities such as "liking," "sharing," or "tweeting" about a cause on social media, signing an Internet petition, copying and pasting a status or message in support of the cause, sharing specific hashtags associated with the cause, or altering one's profile photo or avatar on social network services to indicate solidarity.

contemporary mythology

According to Roland Barthes, a strategy of depoliticisation of political speech or a strategy in which different models of speech, text, images, performance, etc. assign the status of neutrality to a certain political activity: »Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact.«

gamification

Gamification is the strategic attempt to enhance systems, services, organizations, and activities by creating similar experiences to those experienced when playing games in order to motivate and engage users. This is generally accomplished through the application of game-design elements and game principles (dynamics and mechanics) in non-game contexts.

eugenics

The selection of desired heritable characteristics in order to improve future generations, typically in reference to humans. The term eugenics was coined in 1883 by British explorer and natural scientist Francis Galton, who, influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, advocated a system that would allow “the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable.” Social Darwinism, the popular theory in the late 19th century that life for humans in society was ruled by “survival of the fittest,” helped advance eugenics into serious scientific study in the early 1900s.