Stick it up your face!

Domenico Barra

Digital Art - AI + Glitch

WE ARE GETTING BANANAS! Again. The game is ON! Play by the rules of the game. To stay relevant, I'm embracing today's trend: #Banana. While some debate the value of hashtags, my analytics prove otherwise. So, I'm maxing out my 30 hashtag limit on this carousel of AI glitch portraits featuring bananas. Let's hope this strategy garners views, interest, and ultimately, sales. Duchamp wisely protected his artistic freedom by securing a second income. So I did. Galimberti reminds us of our money-centric society, where art's value is often tied to its market price. Art without a market is considered worthless, and useless. In fact I remember reading a post by an esteemed curator who once said that a work of art without a secondary market is worthless. An established art service page stated that artists should price art high, because collectors want to buy luxury goods and prestige. Money. Before the banana we saw a shark, a urinal, and canned shit. By changing the object, the rules always remain the same, but above all the questions we ask ourselves. All of this, obviously and almost exclusively, is legitimized by the money that gives value to all of this. The Banana had already appeared on New York as a cover for the fiftieth anniversary celebration project, but no one noticed it, the tape was red that time, nobody gave a shit about it. At an art fair, it's more noticeable, but only because it was sold for so much money and not because it changed the rules of the game, it just changed context, it was placed on the market. It exploited the rules according to the conditions and tools of the time, the banana adapted to its time. In fact, I appreciate its fluidity as an image, but in the market, it seems like a fossil to me. No prestigious. No value. So I'm saying this, we're talking about the same game that's been played with the same rules for a long time, adapting to its time. Art has become a recurring folklore, with the same provocations, the same questions, until the next BIG sale. Artists are bending to the rules instead of bending the rules. Stick a banana up your a̶*s̶* face and hope someone will care. I will be (data) bending images, because it's priceless to me. The rest is folklore. Game Over.