Overview

Tyler Coburn’s publication and performance, entitled I’m that angel, explore the conditions of how we work on and against the computer, narrated from the perspective of a “content farmer”, an emergent type of online journalist contracted to generate articles based on words peaking in Google Trends.  

As a text, I’m that angel  takes shape as a stony stone, a cut in the stream – a book. Its format shores up the paraliterary, confessional, and epistolary precedents for our virtual vernaculars. Designed by Eric Nylund, the pages concretize found quotes, trending language, anecdotes, notes and rants; call it inattentionality as method. 

Periodically, Coburn holds readings of the text at data centres worldwide. If the book sustains a material limit that belies the diffuse shape of the cloud, then its readings attempt similar concretions by having reader and audience occupy the facilities that compose the physical form of the Internet – to occupy, in short, the sites where the cloud is kept.   

Rather than concede to the seeming intractability of cognitive capitalism, these readings potentiate novel critical operations through shared access, listening and discussion. Across its parts, I’m that angel argues for a renewed consideration of the immanent horizons of subjectivity, sociability and creativity.  

With thanks to Volta Data Centres. 

Booking is essential. Tickets will be released in mid-May. Sign up to the mailing list for updates.