Wait, then Give Up: Lethargy and the Reticence of Digital Art

Abstract

‘Be heard! Review your recent purchase!’, a recent email from an online shop blares. When ‘speaking up’, ‘taking control’, and even ‘fighting back’ have become co-opted by the structures of digital capitalism, what is left? This article takes up three digital artworks, by Cory Arcangel, Katherine Behar, Tega Brain and Surya Mattu, which appear reticent, withdrawn, or self-sabotaging. They are difficult to interpret because they do not fall into the traditional categories of resistance or disruption that characterized 1990s/2000s glitch art, hacktivism, and tactical media. Instead, by performing what the author reads as communicative exhaustion, they redirect a viewer’s focus to the constricting forms of communicative labor within digital culture. Neither able to resist or comply, to form social bonds or act, they address the affective state of being trapped inside unending crisis – a feeling of lethargy that nevertheless offers another route to the political.