According to economists such as Yanis Varoufakis, the age of techno-feudalism has arrived. Our technologically advanced present has ushered in a new era in which the capitalist method of profit generation has been superseded by the arbitrary monopoly of digital platforms. As Varoufakis emphasizes, the markets and profits that play a central role in capitalism are increasingly dominated by data- or money-based fees paid for cloud-based platforms. With the development of the internet and digital technology, it seems as if we have gained “free” access to countless platforms, but our activity on these platforms generates profits for their owners without any financial compensation. Then, once they are convinced that they play an indispensable role in our lives, they introduce or raise the financial cost of accessing the platform—which we often fill with free content ourselves. This relationship faithfully reflects feudalism, in which serfs without land were completely at the mercy of the landowners, forced to live and work on their estates and provide services in return.
The exhibition explores the duality between the reality of our democratic states and our so-called cloud-based, virtual global techno-feudal reality. Although we can technically stay away from this network provided by server farms, which are presented as ethereal but are actually made of heavy metals and created and operated with significant carbon emissions, this comes with increasing isolation and disadvantage. The web connects us with others and with a wealth of information, but it does so with a logic that differs from that of the physical world, rewriting our behavior, our values, and our human relationships. The exhibition explores the complex phenomenon of techno-feudalism and our complex and contradictory relationship with it as participants. The central symbol here is the net, which refers to the ancient craft of fishing, the web-based structure of the internet, but above all to the duality of digital platforms: are we users of the net, or does the net use us?
If all information on the web primarily functions as a lure for our attention, how can we believe the words? The attention economy forges beliefs, whose chaos of information and narratives, according to James Bridle, leads to a new dark age. Little Martha uses a contemporary reinterpretation of 19th-century lithophane technology to explore what we can hope for and believe in through the medium of light in our techno-feudal age.