News 

Editor: This is "News" by Hans Haacke, made with mixed-media, an assemblage really. It’s got a printer spewing out reams of paper. It makes me think about information overload. What catches your eye when you look at this piece? Curator: I see a direct confrontation with the means of production. We have this clunky, obsolete printer, a machine meant to disseminate information, endlessly producing a physical byproduct: piles of paper. It implicates the viewer. What's the true cost of all of this “news” that's produced? Editor: The physical pile is definitely striking. All that paper seems so wasteful, and points to a culture of excess, doesn’t it? Curator: Precisely. Think about the labor involved – the mining of resources to make the paper, the assembly of the printer, the electricity powering the entire operation. Are these costs ever factored into the headlines we consume? Haacke compels us to consider the political economy of information. Editor: I hadn't considered the electricity! It's almost as if the artwork itself is protesting the energy consumption required to keep it "alive" and printing. Curator: Exactly. The piece challenges that supposed divide between art and something as ordinary as the 24-hour news cycle, revealing the intense and often unseen material processes behind it. What happens when we shift our focus away from simply consuming the news to what the process entails to create news? Editor: This really shifts how I view not only art, but the information I consume. Seeing the process as a political act, makes art like this powerful! Curator: Agreed. Thinking about labor and consumption in relation to everyday materials is a worthwhile undertaking.