FDIC Insured: the web project

On the occasion of the launch of the book FDIC Insured, by Michael Mandiberg, the Link Art Center and Abandon Normal Devices (AND), Liverpool are pleased to announce that a preview of the web project – still “in progress” – associated with the publication will be available for one week at Link Cabinet, From Tuesday, June 7 to Monday, June 13.

 

 

FDIC Insured was selected out of a call of proposals issued in 2015 by the Link Art Center and Abandon Normal Devices (AND) in the framework of Masters & Servers. The issue #12 of the In My Computer series, published by Link Editions, the book is available now as a 500 pages color paperback and a free download pdf. The website, produced in collaboration with Abandon Normal Devices, will be made publicly available online this September, when Mandiberg will exhibit this project in Manhattan’s Financial District at an Art-in-Buildings Project Space; for the installation Mandiberg will use a laser-cutter to inscribe each of the logos into the cover of a cast off investment guidebook. Visitors will enter through the building’s quintessentially corporate lobby, take an elevator to the 15th floor, and enter a recently vacated office suite, where they will encounter Mandiberg’s installation and the ghosts of hundreds of failed banks.

 

Starting in 2008, Mandiberg methodically downloaded the logos of the many banks that failed during the Great Recession, and were taken over by the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). During this process, these corporate visual identities were erased from the web. Except that every Saturday morning the artist downloaded the logos, preserving an otherwise lost history. Since then, more than 500 bank logos were saved on his computer as low resolution images, which he carefully recreated as vector files.

 

Michael Mandiberg is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and educator. His work traces the lines of political and symbolic power online, working on the Internet in order to comment on and or intercede in the real and poetic flows of information. He lives in, and rides his bicycle around, Brooklyn. His work lives at Mandiberg.com.

 

FDIC Insured is realized in the framework of Masters & Servers. Networked Cultures in the Post Digital Age, a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugo more (HR), Abandon Normal Devices (UK), Link Art Center (IT) and d-i-n-a / The Influencers (ES) that was awarded with a Creative Europe 2014 – 2020grant. For 24 months from September 2014, Masters & Servers will explore networked culture in the post-digital age.

 

 

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.