Parafictions and Contemporary Media Art 2008-2018

This article traces the shift of parafictional artistic practices post 2008, demonstrating how these strategies have adapted and evolved in contemporary art to align themselves to the current experience of technology and anti-politics. For this article, Carrie Lambert-Beatty’s definition is used where a parafiction is a fiction experienced as fact. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, which led to ten years of austerity in Europe and the United States, the use of social media has become ubiquitous, with 2016 epitomising the rejection of mainstream politics and culminating in ‘post-truth’ named as the word of the year. These events have opened up polarising chasms of opinion, where users are separated into self-reflective silos by seemingly unseen forms of algorithmic governance. Works such as Ian Cheng’s Emissaries (2015-2017), Rachel Maclean’s Spite Your Face (2017) and Suzanne Treister’s HFT the Gardener (2014-2015) and Survivor (F) (2016-), demonstrate how parafictions have become less plausible and less real - a shift which is mirrored in politics - and ultimately unconcerned with replicating truth. This article examines why we often choose to accept a narrative over a truth by discussing how artists have created forgotten pasts, potential futures and alternate realities with digital media.