A Compression Artefactualism

A hypertexual exploration of "Frontiers of Capitalism" on the Internet for Digital Artist Residency, August 2020 (https://digitalartistresidency.org/artists/ben-hall/)

What do cancer and nuclear weapons have in common? Their expansion, proliferation, is always already out of control. Proliferation, too, is a key principle of capitalist expansion, particularly at capitalist frontiers where accumulation is not so much primitive, that is, archaic, as savage. Frontiers are not just edges; they are particular kinds of edges where the expansive nature of extraction comes into its own. Built from historical models of European conquest, frontiers create wildness so that some—and not others—may reap its rewards. Frontiers are deregulated because they arise in the interstitial spaces made by collaborations among legitimate and illegitimate partners: armies and bandits; gangsters and corporations; builders and despoilers. They confuse the boundaries of law and theft, governance and violence, use and destruction. These confusions change the rules and thus enable extravagant new economies of profit—as well as loss. 

-Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing in Friction, 2005