Art and Dataism: Establishing Ourselves Through the Digital Screens

Abstract

When we have lost faith in reality and only believe, as Berardi states in the preface of Los condenados de la pantalla, in the infinite proliferation of images (Steyerl, 2014, p. 12), what do we have left? Who are the new deities? In whom or in what do we believe? We could affirm that in anything that will deliver, produce, and reproduce images.
If images are our new objects of belief, and digital screens (which permit us to approach beliefs) are our new deities, it becomes necessary to employ them in order to take a political stance before the world, especially in the field of art production and visual studies. This paper examines the positions of several artists, such as Ryoji Ikeda, David Horvitz, and Pussy Riot, who work with on-screen images. This paper also considers the digital screen and its interfaces the historical archive of the events of contemporary society.