{"id":9950,"date":"2013-10-11T09:52:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T07:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mono-1en-681"},"modified":"2026-05-07T01:27:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:27:17","slug":"monochrom-what-is-context-hacking-our-essay-is-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/2013\/10\/11\/monochrom-what-is-context-hacking-our-essay-is-online\/","title":{"rendered":"monochrom: What is Context Hacking? Our essay is online!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our essay on &#8220;Context Hacking&#8221; can now be found online. (And in our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.monochrom.at\/context-hacking\/\">monochrom theory reader<\/a> with the same name.)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since the advent of modernism, artists have repeatedly attempted to<br \/>\ncounteract the conflation of work and subject, because they have seen<br \/>\nthemselves forced into an undesired role: that of a freedom and<br \/>\nindependence whose flip side is isolation and powerlessness. While the<br \/>\nworkers of the Fordist factory developed forms of collective struggle,<br \/>\nthe particular form of artists\u2019 existence \u2013 productive eccentricity and<br \/>\nmanic-depressive individualism \u2013 hindered any attempt to organize and<br \/>\npush through demands that would improve the precarious conditions of<br \/>\ntheir life and work. As individuals who had been condemned to autonomy,<br \/>\nthey faced great difficulties in escaping from the prison of their<br \/>\nfreedom.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Context hacking transfers the hackers&#8217; objectives and methods to the network of social relationships in which artistic production occurs, and upon which it is dependent. In a metaphoric sense, these relationships also have a source code. Programs run in them, and our interaction with them is structured by a user interface\u2014one that increasingly mirrors the extractive logic of the digital attention economy. When we analyze how a specific digital niche\u2014for example, the algorithmic push and pull experienced when navigating the user interfaces of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fljs.org\/\">Florida online casinos<\/a>\u2014functions, we begin to see how our desires for autonomy are packaged into predictable engagement loops. When we know how a space, a niche, a scene, a subculture or a media or political practice functions, we can change it and recode it, deconstructing its power relationships and emancipating ourselves from its compulsions and packaging guidelines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.monochrom.at\/context-hacking-essay\/\">Link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our essay on &#8220;Context Hacking&#8221; can now be found online. (And in our monochrom theory reader with the same name.) Since the advent of modernism, artists have repeatedly attempted to counteract the conflation of work and subject, because they have seen themselves forced into an undesired role: that of a freedom and independence whose flip &#8230; <a title=\"monochrom: What is Context Hacking? Our essay is online!\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/2013\/10\/11\/monochrom-what-is-context-hacking-our-essay-is-online\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"koromo_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-9950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-blog","tag-mono","koromo-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/9950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/9950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13360,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/9950\/revisions\/13360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}