Chris Imler The Internet Will Break My Heart

Over the last ten years, Chris Imler's perhaps not quite as rapid but equally unstoppable rise has coincided with the world's free fall. "The Internet will break my heart" marks the steepest artistic stage to date. We see a man whose entire oeuvre is a late work, at the dizzying heights of his game. "So, the Internet, that's a really hot topic", I can already hear blasé hisses here and there in the boxes. But the truth is that the topic is annoyingly topical. Because only now is the world wide web unfolding it's full disappointing potential. All pipe dreams of an emancipatory power of the digital multitude (remember Negri/Hardt, haha) are as completely extinguished as the Arab Spring was swallowed up by the pre-nuclear winter. While they are capped from above in authoritarian states, social media in the so-called free world are primarily used by lumpen capital to undermine humanistic standards and by the remnants of the left for self-destructive polarization. But the cute animal videos! They too have their dark side, which Imler brings up in the title song: "The animals in the real world are under pressure".