Art Under Capitalism: Cybernetics of the Poor

Cybernetics of the Poor
courtesy mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna. © Bildrecht Wien, 2020

Robert Adrian X, Computer Clerk, Canadian Pacific Railway (Car Accounting), from the series 24 Jobs, 1979.

Cybernetics of the Poor examines the relationship between art and cybernetics and their intersections in the past and present. From the late 1940s on, the term cybernetics began to be used to describe self-regulating systems that measure, anticipate, and react in order to intervene in changing conditions. Initially relevant mostly in the fields of administration, planning, and criminology, and early ecology, under digital capitalism cybernetics has become an economic factor (see: big data). In such a cybernetic totality art must respond to a new situation: as a cybernetics of the poor.

Event Information
Start Date: December 18, 2020
End Date: February 28, 2021
Venue: kunsthalle wien

Cybernetics of the Poor