It’s funny watching this year’s crop of bands on MTV trying to be New Order. That simulacral quality is something that Damien Hirst’s new paintings share. Why is it important that a human being makes the paintings if the human being is trying to embody a notionalised procedure for making authentic paintings? Wouldn’t it be better to offload that process into software? But that wouldn’t reflect the managerial ego as well as using teams of assistants to work on each element of the painting. Software is not of itself exploitative, and it manages (of itself) no real resources, never mind human ones. So teams of assistants it is, adding noise and acting as labour to capture the vibe of the corporate state.
That and I doubt Hirst can program. ;-)