Delusive Spaces

The open terrain of new media is closing fast. Market concentration, legal consolidation and tightening governmental control have effectively ended the myth of the free and open networks. In Delusive Spaces, Eric Kluitenberg takes a critical position that retains a utopian potential for emerging media cultures. The book investigates the archeology of media and machine, mapping the different methods and metaphors that speak about technology. Returning to the present, Kluitenberg discusses the cultural use of new media in an age of post-governmental politics. Delusive Spaces concludes with the impossibility of representation. Going beyond the obvious delusions of the 'new' and the 'free', Kluitenberg theorizes artistic practices and European cultural policies, demonstrating a provocative engagement with the utopian dimension of technology.
Eric Kluitenberg is a Dutch media theorist, writer and organizer. Since the late 1980s, he has been involved in numerous international projects in the field of electronic art, media culture, and information politics. Kluitenberg heads the media program at De Balie, Centre for Culture and Politics in Amsterdam. He is the editor of the Book of Imaginary Media (NAi Publishers, 2006) and the theme issue Hybrid Space of Open, journal on art and the public domain (2007).