Selecting artists and works based on only a few images, short texts and hyperlinks is quite close to the position of the tourist. At best tourism means exploring, encountering something new. At worst, it makes anything that has a certain ‘locale’, that is idiosyncratic, only more spectacular.

From what I saw from the various working drafts, I tied different links between works that deal with the interface, structures of capital and power, the materiality ramifications of digital phenomena. It probably stems from the intertwining at the Sandberg Instituut of fine arts, design and architecture — let’s say anything that builds on systematic thinking with visual art. In a school informed by applied artistic practices, I’m very curious to see what these interests will lead to during the coming opening days. I hope that it will lead to those rare cases were an irreducible artistic vision is combined with sharp technical literacy. Something that is not naive yet goes completely against the grain.

Laurens Otto is a Brussels based curator and editor. His fields of research are contemporary art and visual culture. He is the co-director of Bureau for Cultural Analysis, which investigates the theoretical and material ramifications of mass cultural phenomena. In this frame he is currently setting up the magazine 'RESOLUTION', that combines essays and artistic projects to confront the impact of digital images. Additionally, he is associate curator of the Lusanga International Research Centre for Art and Economic Inequality in DR Congo.