Time for the second episode of The User Condition series! On the 10th of May, artist and reluctant engineer Brendan Howell will converse with designer without qualities Silvio Lorusso about – ominous soundtrack — N E T S T A L G I A.

MySpace eulogies, pure HTML pride, RetroPie consoles, Geocities reboots, Winamp-inspired portable MP3 players, "brutalist" web design, resurrected dead media, Stranger Things-like series, philologically correct CRT TV pixel art renditions, LEGO bricks ASMR.

Undoubtedly, we live in a time of nostalgia of the adventurous web of yore, the good ol' computing, the endless gaming days. But what exactly was so precious about it? What is that we long for? Are we just stuck, incapable to see the good in the new? Or is this longing for the past a way to re-inject some lost values into the near future?

Drawing from the work of Svetlana Boym and Mark Fisher, Howell and Lorusso will unpack the current netstalgic waves, trying to distinguish their restorative element from the reflective one. They will attempt to unearth the futures buried in the past, the futures that never were and yet here they are, haunting us like a distant MIDI lullaby.

Brendan Howell was born in Manchester, CT, USA in 1976. He is an artist and a reluctant engineer who has created various software works and interactive electronic inventions. He lives in Berlin, Germany but can often be found in Brunswick (Braunschweig) where he teaches at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste or enjoying pastoral life in Hacksneck, Virginia, USA with his extended family. http://www.wintermute.org/brendan/

Silvio Lorusso is a writer, artist and designer based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In 2018 he published his first book entitled Entreprecariat. He is an assistant professor and vice-director of the Centre for Other Worlds at the Lusófona University in Lisbon. Lorusso holds a Ph.D. in Design Sciences from the Iuav University of Venice. https://silviolorusso.com/

Photo: Infinite Contemporaneity Device by Brendan Howell. Photo by Martin Genz.

Date: Monday, 17th of May 2021
Time: 18:00h - 19:00h CET
Location: Online (https://stream.vvvvvvaria.org/)

This event is made possible with the kind support of the Creative Industries Fund NL.