Disordered Attention

April 15, 2024
Art historian Bishop (Artificial Hells) explores in these illuminating essays how the internet has shaped people’s attention and, by extension, the making and viewing of art. Against the backdrop of technological innovations and the advent of the “attention economy,” the author examines how research-based installations invite viewers to become “users” who skim and sample “text-heavy” collections, mimicking an internet characterized by “drift rather than depth.” Also considered are performance exhibitions that bring dance and theater into galleries to disrupt traditional audience expectations, and how unauthorized artistic “interventions” in public spaces (for example, the graffitiing of the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, Va., before its 2021 removal) catalyze debate on social media. Pushing back against “normative” modes of attention that assume a “privileged, white, straight, able-bodied, volitional” viewer, Bishop grounds her arguments in theory and employs a lucid, straightforward style to investigate the “oscillation between here and elsewhere” that is central “to how we look at art and performance today.” It’s an erudite foray into the messy meeting place between art and technology in the 21st century.