Welcome to the Desert of the Real: An introduction to the history, theory and philosophy of online visual culture through a critical exploration of internet memes

Lecture by Raleigh (Bulgaria)

The talk will explore the history of the early internet and the production of digital images, noting trends around community-based ephemeral art as well as intentional “internet art” in its first iterations. We will discuss the semiotics of internet memes and look at them as a phenomenon in visual culture through the lenses of language games, epistemology and hauntology. The visual culture of the internet in the period between 2007 and the present day will be analysed in the context of historical events, vectors of power and exacerbated socio-political tensions. We will critically look at existing attempts to create a scholarship of new media more generally and memes in particular. Finally, we will turn to the Bulgarian context and discuss some recent examples, attempting to elucidate what reality (or un-reality) of lived experience they speak to.