Mary Maggic [US]
>>Estroworld Now<<, 2021.
Net art.

>>Estroworld Now<< exploits the familiar style of capitalist interaction online, bombarding users with pop-up ads. In this case, the disorienting pop-ups demand that we confront what Maggic calls the “molecular colonization” of the Estroworld we live in. The artist reveals the aesthetics of distraction that corporate petrochemical, agricultural, and pharmaceutical interests use to commodify bodies and biological processes. Beyond the myriad pop-up windows, the website’s background image repeats in an unending stream of languages a phrase from anthropologist Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World: “purity is not an option” (2015, p. 27). 

Mary Maggic is a non-binary Chinese-American artist currently based in Vienna, Austria. Their work spans amateur science, public workshopology, performance, installation, documentary film, and speculative fiction.

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