In Madrid, an exhibition by the DIS collective brings together education and entertainment

The Casa Encendida in Madrid presents “Thumbs That Type & Swipe: The DIS Edutainment Network”, a one-person show by the New York-based DIS collective. The group of artists present three immersive installations in which a series of videos are projected, produced in collaboration with various international artists, writers and video makers. The exhibition is associated with the web platform dis.art. a natural evolution of the online magazine which DIS has been publishing since 2009.

The collective states: “We are not focusing on video because it’s new, which it’s not. We are driven to video because people are not reading. While it’s never been easier to get informed, a ‘post-literate’ future is a real threat. We have a thousand tabs open with good intentions and read not one. We like to think about the new platform as a mental gym.”

While traditional education struggles to survive in the entertainment society, it is necessary to imagine new languages which adapt to those of contemporary communication. Since its birth among online forums, the collective has always been interested in getting away from the traditional closed circuits of art to infiltrate, via the web, into the daily lives of people, creating viral stimuli and thought. They say: “The goal for the new DIS network is to challenge doctrine and train oneself in complexity. The aim is to inspire, inform and mobilize a generation around the critical issues facing us both today and in the future”.