Occupying Plöger’s Library (2017)

The artist Wolfgang Plöger invited me to write an essay to appear in the exhibition catalogue for Inherited Lies, his solo show at Konrad Fischer Galerie in Düsseldorf, Germany in 2017. In it, I write about Plöger as “the original printed web artist,” and about the politics of his chosen form, the internet search engine. The exhibition was reviewed in the May 2017 issue of Artforum, citing my essay—

“‘To use a search engine is potentially a political act,’ writes Paul Soulellis, founder of the Library of the Printed Web, in the brochure accompanying Wolfgang Plöger’s exhibition Inherited Lies. By using a search engine, Soulellis explains, we become involved, whether we like it or not, in an ensemble of hierarchies, preferences, parallels, and comparisons predetermined by algorithms. The moment we hit the ‘search’ button, we subscribe to the order it imposes. But what does that order actually look like? Which hierarchies does it entail, which priorities does it implement, what does it withhold and conceal, how do these priorities shift over time, and how do political events affect the order of the search engines?”

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