Kitsch, Spam, Slop: Political Message Art and the Liberal Singularity

Exploring the meaning of kitsch, spam and slop in speaking about cultural and political judgment, Catherine Liu considers the origins of these aesthetic and food categories in light of a history of industrialization, the Cold War and artificial flavor in light of artificial intelligence.
Fear of critique and hierarchy allowed artists from Marcel Duchamp to Andy Warhol to Ai Weiwei to post-modernists embrace the performative fakery at the heart of kitsch. What do spam and slop have to do with kitsch? This talk explores the historical, materialist relationship between these categories of aesthetic and culinary judgment.