When we trusted in the latest technologies and digital networks as new tools for cooperation, collective empowerment, criticism and response, we see how the structures of the system recoil and, once again, are capable of putting the new possibilities in the service of their own objectives.

Cases like those of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Aaron Swartz and closer to home, the case of Valtònyc or the so-called “Ley mordaza” (Gagging Law) show us the extreme ability of the system to annul and stigmatize dissent. Traditionally, the field of artistic practices, from certain supposedly autonomous marginal spaces, has served as the place for the development of certain critical subjectivity, spaces of resistance and ideological struggle. At the magazine AusArt we ask ourselves now whether this dissent from the field of art is still possible or whether, however, art as part of the system is also helping to eliminate any form of discrepancy.