Flux Death Match: The New Aesthetic
Date + time: Wednesday May 30th, 8pm
Location: Flux Factory, 39-31 29th Street, Long Island City
Flux Factory is pleased to present its latest edition of Flux Death Match, an initiative that takes online debates into real-space at the Flux gallery. Four highly opinionated panelists will illustrate their arguments with images, web references, and other materials in a rapid-fire way that challenges convictions on critical issues. Audience members can expect spontaneous responses, frustrated rebuttals, and even permitted “smack down” sessions.
In this second Flux Death Match, our panelists will argue over The New Aesthetic – a recent visual culture meme born of a Tumblr account by James Bridle last year, and propelled into heated on- and off-line discussions by a SXSW panel in March, an essay by Bruce Sterling on his Wired.com blog, and subsequent responses on The Creators Project. It has been visually documented through fashion, architecture, and technological artifacts, and described as “an eruption of the digital into the physical” and “an attempt to understand not only the ways in which technology shapes the things we make, but the way we see and understand them.”
Artist, technologist, and NYU ITP Resident Researcher Greg Borenstein; media artist Kyle McDonald; interdisciplinary artist Carla Gannis; and architecture, tech, and media historian Molly W. Steenson will converge at Flux Factory in order to duke out the finer points of NA. Namely: is it really a new thing and how important is it? What are its boundaries? And, is James Bridle’s recent closure of his New Aesthetic Tumblr account the NA death knell?
The event starts at 8:00 pm with an open bar and reception for the panelists and audience members. The debate begins at 8:30 sharp and will be followed by a Q&A session, after which the audience will determine the winner.
Flux Death Match: The New Aesthetic is organized by Fluxers Douglas Paulson & Christina Vassallo and moderated by Julia Kaganskiy of The Creators Project.
Listen to the podcast of this debate!
Round 1: Intros
Round 2: Get Yer Dukes Up!
Round 3: One-on-One Mini-debate
Round 4: Audience Talks Back
The Flux Death Match series is generously supported by our main sponsor AT&T. Additional funding is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
