Glitch artwork by Mazi Moilanen
“Why would glitch art be dead?” Polish Glitch Arts Collective organizers Aleksandra Pieńkosz and Zoe Stawska asked themselves. The result is the new exhibition Glitch Art Is Dead, now on at Teatru Barakah in Kraków, Poland.
Pieńkosz and Stawska, along with fellow curators Jakub Zataj and Troy Ford, believe something happened when glitch art surfaced from the underground into mainstream culture. Suddenly pop stars like Kanye West had music videos featuring glitch (see: “Welcome to My Heartbreak”), and Disney character Vanellope von Schweetz from Wreck-It Ralph was a glitch in a video game. But the straw that broke the camel’s back for Pieńkosz and Stawska was when app stores were flooded with applications that applied glitches to selfies.
‘Hide n Seek’ by Zoe Stawska, featuring databending glitch
Despite glitch overload in the popular imagination, the online Glitch Artists Collective believed that there was more more to explore in visual or sonic error. It’s a notion that was recently confirmed by !Mediengruppe Bitnik’s glitched-out architectural installation, H3333333K.
“The exhibition aims to deny its title, introducing the viewer to a wide spectrum of glitch artworks, showing the vitality of the matter,” the curators say. “The event showcases the selected works from an open call in Glitch Artists Collective, which is a vast, open artistic community that unites glitch artists from all parts of the world.”
GAC wants viewers to think about glitch’s mainstream death, and whether it might have died with the rise of New Aesthetics and other post-internet artforms. Glitch Art Is Dead does prove that there is still plenty of space to explore when it comes to the beauty of brokenness.
‘Broken’ by Tù.úk’z
‘Feelings of Loneliness’ by Roberto Malano, analogue glitch
‘Glitch Are Is Dead’ installation photo.
Click here to learn more about the Glitch Artists Collective.
