IMN #6 — XCOPY

It's Monday Night #6 Let's share thoughts about @XCOPYART project. Kittler wrote: «The realm of the dead is as extensive as the storage and transmission capabilities of a given culture.» Xcopy’s distorted loops are nothing but a wild exploration of this realm.

We belong to the era of the death of the author (after the death of God, who in the end was just another author). The only valid reason to resurrect the author is to kill him again, indefinitely.

Not a second goes by without a human playing with this possibility somewhere, and claiming it's art. But God got tired of dying and there is no merit in killing him anymore. But who cares?

Xcopy undoubtedly belongs to the next era, the one that is coming. The whole work is based on the unprecedented extension of the realm of the dead in the anarchic age of non-fungible tokens.

The presence of the dead has always been caused by communication technologies’s failures. This presence happens whenever there is a transmission problem between the transmitter and the receiver. The message is corrupted. There is noise.

Yesterday, it was writing, sculpture, the telegraph, radio, television. Today, it is memes and pixelated images. Why not? This noise is insignificant and yet the human animal is still able to give it meaning.

This is the point of intersection of utopia and dystopia: non-relation as a mode of encounter; in total apathy we may become capable of experiencing new feelings. Or not.

@XCOPYART's statement is simple: another end of the world is possible. «The medium is the message», they used to say. Xcopy soberly replies: «The failure of the medium is the message».

But what is the message? It's a distorted visual loop; no it's a never-ending download; no it's a glimmer of hope buried in a pile of black and white pixels; no it’s a communication breakdown.

No it's an avalanche of grifters coming to haunt memes like fucking totemic ghosts. Xcopy is both exorcism and bewitchment: it does not work so much for the salvation of souls but for the infinite «rememisation» of memes. In short, a trashurrection.

I could talk about this project for hours (and maybe I will in the future) but in my imaginary collection, @XCOPYART has a special place.