Glitch in the Machine: Failure as Resistance in Latin American Digital Culture

• In Event: Digital Encounters in Contemporary Latin American Cultural Production

Abstract

Errors and glitches. Communication breakdown. Systems failure. Viruses and malware. Data decay. Digital pollution. These are only a few of the anarchic elements present in our digital environment, typically the product of software and hardware malfunctions, faulty code, and viral attacks. Whether by design or accident, these phenomena of glitch and failure undermine propriety: the proper functioning of digital media, the proper use of websites, the proper output from code and algorithms. But for some artists, failure and digital disruption also represent a deliberate aesthetic intervention that encodes revolutionary potential. In Latin America, glitches and failures are hardwired into local material and physical realities and often expose unequal access, slower networks, and social inequality in cyberspace. In this essay, I analyze works by several visual artists that employ a glitch aesthetic to disrupt the established digital order: Antonio Mendoza and Yomay Cabrera (Cuba), Brian Mackern and Osvaldo Cibils (Uruguay), and Jose Carlos Silvestre and Sabato Visconti (Brazil). Blurring the line between art and hacktivism, these artists introduce glitches and viruses into code, questioning its rules and challenging its supposed universalism. Hailing from different geographies, they nevertheless share a marginal position as Latin American designers, coders and programmers who have embraced digital failure as an aesthetic of resistance and whose work pushes against the material and political limits of “proper” coding.

Author

• Eduardo Ledesma, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign