Ring, Annie;
(2024)
The Internet is Relational: Networked Connectivity and the ‘Sovereign Individual’ in Videos by Brenda Lien.
Oxford German Studies
, 53
(1)
pp. 58-77.
10.1080/00787191.2024.2315882.
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Abstract
This article argues that the Internet is a relational space. It draws on a provocative, multimedia trilogy by German video artist Brenda Lien to analyse the challenges to notions of sovereign subjectivity posed by the digital age. Lien’s Call of … trilogy explores the ambivalences of life on the participatory Internet, deploying at times shocking images of violence to undermine Web 2.0’s appealing aesthetics and cheery injunctions to its users to self-optimize and so gain personal sovereignty. The Internet’s spread in the 1990s into mass consumer use coincided with conservative ideologies aimed at promoting the ‘sovereign individual’ (Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, 2008), capable of profiting in the dotcom era from neoliberal codes of conduct and low regulations. Since then, dataveillance via Internet platforms has grown to reduce technology users’ agency and privacy, framing Internet connectivity as a forcibly relational state, despite the individualist self-optimization opportunities it offers. The article reveals networked connectivity as an ambivalent mode of relationality, both necessary due to the communication and affiliation the Internet makes possible, and worrisome due to the connection it forces between technology users and corporations, unanswerably profiting from human needs in a way that challenges the sovereignty of the networked subject radically.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Internet is Relational: Networked Connectivity and the ‘Sovereign Individual’ in Videos by Brenda Lien |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/00787191.2024.2315882 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2024.2315882 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Artificial Intelligence (AI), Codes of conduct, The ‘digital’, German film and screen, The Internet, New media and technology, Relationality, Selfoptimization, Sovereignty, Subjectivity |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > SELCS |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10193080 |
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