I humbly submit hyperallergic.com/842922/sowin...

first of all, god level

As people have pointed out in the comments, one could make the point that modern art since Duchamp even invented trolling. Thinking of more recent examples, certainly Maurizio Cattelan comes to mind. Sarah Maples work has also been described as a form of trolling www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

I wonder how Kippenberger et al or even Polke would fit here, explicitly in relation to 'late capitalism'

There are so many examples, think of Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik, or the Viennese Actionists. I guess the main question would be: What's the difference between «provocation» in the age of mass media and social media trolling?

Trolling must produce a flame. It is provocation as a transitive verb. Also see Yurchak and Boyer on stiob, where they discuss the overlap between late socialist and late capitalist ironic forms.

I think one point might be the immediate feedback loop on social media, as the digital age troll can count on their content being further amplified/disseminated online, and can also continue to 'work' with audience reactions? Not sure if this is that much of a difference, though

I had the small observation somewhere that the genuine Online Troll™️ is a necessary figure to cut across communicative circles or bubbles, because trolls bring the conventions of one bubble to the other, which is the disruption. Idk if that's the same as provocation tactics in art or advertising

the troll is a necessary and somewhat inherent figure of fragmented publics

So this *could* apply to artists like Schlingensief whose work (structurally, institutionally etc) relies on being part of the contemporary arts scene, but also explicitly addresses a 'mass media' audience, right? But maybe not art which is 'provocative' but remains within contemporary art spaces

the cultural rhetoric around the internet as 'digital sphere' added to that, because it disconnected the internet from the 'real life' and in doing so prevented regulation. so there is a 'anything goes' mentality in order to get audience reaction

that rhetoric completely disconnected the internet from its real life impacts in so many ways, not only when it comes to bullying/trolling, but also copyright, the enviromental impact of internet usage, that the cost of the interet being "free" is the hugely invasive data collection and trade...

... which now is in danger to be massively weaponized in autocratic fashist regimes

The whole Fluxus movement is an interesting case study, because it was started by a Latvian and thrived under late communism as an expressly political form of art trolling that took the surrealist logic of these regimes to its extremes (my fav performance is artists simply forming a queue in front

of a shop - lots of people joined in simply because they thought there must be something rare, like butter, sold here. Or, in the Orange Revolution, making fun of authorities in order to deal with the constant fear in emergency Poland).

it does seem like the provocation/disruption is integral to art across a long long history, and that trolling has to be defined differently, most especially because it's so often done from above not from below, it is minoritarian and corresponds to the fantasized victimization of power

Artistic provocation also lacks the sadism inherent in trolling.

The Duchampian provocation is designed to spur thinking (even if you imagine it’s a one-note thought about how museums work). Trolling is designed to short-circuit thought by being intentionally stupid or anger-generating. Joins was perhaps the first real art world troll, and 1/

his work corresponds directly to art’s transformation into pure investment capital.

Joins? Do you mean Jasper Johns? That'd be an interesting thesis, although Rauschenberg, with «Erased De Kooning», was much more of a troll I'd say …

Oh crap, I meant Koons! I do think the transformation to investment capital is crucial here, and distinguished this from earlier work with jokey components. For Koons and his followers, it’s a problem if art means anything, since that prevents it from circulating maximally like money!

Warhol or Polke might be similar, but today it feels like whatever the intentions, it can only end up as nihilism. I remember when someone who wanted to critique the Art Basel (while ofc still taking part) installed a fake favela in front of it and it was just the most racist shit I've ever seen.

there's an @adriandaub.bsky.social article about the mutual dependence btww hermann nitsch and scandalized austrian newspapers that's germane here: mass media provocation precisely. perhaps what's integral with HN is some sense of a singular hegemonic authority to be provoked?

All these provocateurs of the 20th century avant-garde relied heavily on mass media, first newspapers, e.g. Marinetti, and later TV, e.g. Paik & Moorman. One innovation of social media is that provocation and reaction now take place in real time in the same medium, short-circuiting reaction chains

+ that provocation and reaction are the principal modes of online cultures, if not the technology itself

binary = discretizable = data capture

exactly, I'm not sure trolling is the dominant cultural technique if it's mostly a mode of commodifying attention. to an extent all trolling---from the onion to south park---is still largely operating in a market logic. so trolling: base/data capture: superst- oh no is this an orthodox marxist take

Yes. And, thinking of my Bruguera coke lecture & Serra examples (provocation, not trolling): those are live performances which implicate *their live audiences.* My undergrads might squirm a bit when they learn of them but they are not the target of the provocation - no economic relation. (cont...)

Trolling has to attract attention by provoking *everyone*, or at least an abstract quasi-universal everyone. (This is diff from the mass media singular Authority). This is how it's commodifying -- it's sending the provocation into a vast market to maximize clicks (cont...)

AI slop?

as in, an affront to the idea of making art? sure but a bunch of it seems to lack the edge necessary for trolling (like literally too blurry and too many fingers = cheesey?) and to be sincere?

The existence and success of MSCHF comes to mind (even if I find their trolling less than inspired sometimes, they are good at that hype cycle)

The banana story (Castellan and the vendor)?

good one! although it has deep Warhol / Velvet Underground ethos?

I mean the separation of art that consciously plays with capitalist aesthetics and the capitalist aesthetics (and practices) themselves was always blurry, but Castellan seems a much more cynical way to profit from an overblown art market while claiming it's meant as a critique.

another art example here would be Take the Money and Run, where the artist took the money and ran

Or KLFs take the money and burn

holy lawsuit!

(*Cattelan of course) Incidentally, I remember visiting an exhibition of his once. I liked it - it was in Warsaw, and the Pope-Meteor-Stunt was of course high-level trolling, but I also liked his subtler stuff, e.g. he placed pigeon statues on the gutters in the Ujazdowki Castle courtyard.

mulling this over and it's instructive to think of examples that are trolling-adjacent but do seem successfully and earnestly provocative: tania bruguera's cocaine lecture, or anything by santiago serra. is the difference just the specificity of the critique?