The ascendancy within the contemporary art system of e-flux announcements, social media posting, art-blogging, website mediation of exhibition, and jpeg-enabled art sales has been in place for some time. However, there has been, in the context of the COVID-19 global pandemic, an intensification of the relays between exhibition protocols and the culture of digital networks. In what seems like a global institutional convergence – similar in ways to the pervasive distribution of the white cube though much more accelerated – there has been a widespread adoption of the exhibition-online as the immediate solution to the demands of physical distancing, lock-down and travel restriction in the context of the global pandemic. This would seem to warrant some critical reflection and analysis in its own right. What is at stake in this drive to online exhibition? What are the operative presumptions about exhibition that inform this imperative?
