Joshua Citarella

Super Secret Summer Program

Added 2021-05-26 13:01:03 +0000 UTC

I've dedicated the last few years of my practice to an expansive research project; exploring the ways in which social media is shaping political ideation among gen Z. After many encounters with academics, researchers, organizers, consultants and journalists-- I feel confident in saying that no one else has the story quite right. Memes are aesthetic, political, historical, ideological, viral, infrastructural and more. Any analysis that cannot account for all of these overlapping fields will in some way fall short.

My education within the art world prepared me for this work. Not my expensive university degree but simply pursuing my intellectual interests alongside friends. Most notably, my experiences within a lineage of NYC based art & tech reading groups. Because art is not bound by the standards of any specific discipline, it has the unique potential to spawn novel projects and to address topics for which no specialized field yet exists.

This summer, we are taking a more serious approach to both the reading group and our community workshops in the Discord. The summer program will be a first experiment towards the end goal of establishing a crowdfunded institution for art & cultural research.