Renée Ridgway will be participating in the XX IMAGE SYMPOSIUM: Speculating on change from 17 — 20 jun 2013 at CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Madrid, Spain. Ridgway will participate in a critical session regarding the 'economy of attention' which incorporates her ongoing research on art and economy with that of the community online platform n.e.w.s. *http://northeastwestsouth.net'.

XX IMAGE SYMPOSIUM: Speculating on change

These days the semiotic control associated with cognitive capitalism have become part of the fabric of life in all its aspects. The internet age has, of course, opened up space for the collection and redistribution of knowledge, but to turn a profit from these new spaces, the knowledge economy must imperatively colonise the time of users. This globalised semiocapitalism thus reconfigures various cultural ethoses by subjecting them to uninterrupted information flows, thereby saturating users' attention spans. In this context the self-entrepreneurial artist, combining independence, creativity, flexibility, and above all self-exploitation, has become a cultural "role model" – the perfect embodiment of the neo-liberal script that openly fantasises about a world of creative, competitive operators engaging in self-exploitation by speculating on potential symbolic added value.

With: Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri, Lars Bang Larsen, Diego del Pozo, Susanne Husse & Lorenzo Sandoval, Fritzia Irizar, Luis Jacob, Santiago López Petit, Asier Mendizabal, Andrea Phillips, Katrien Reist, Renée Ridgway, Katleen Vermeir and Ronny Heiremans.

http://www.ca2m.org/en/thought-and-debate/xx-jornadas-de-estudio-de-la-imagen