FDIC Insured / Book now available

FDIC Insured by Michael Mandiberg is now available to download – as the latest issue in the ongoing book series, In My Computer (produced by Link Editions).

FDIC Insured was selected from an Open Call for proposals in 2015 by AND and the Link Art Center. The book (available below) will be followed by the publication of an online archive of 500+ failed bank logos collected and restored by the artist.

Since 2008, Mandiberg has been methodically downloading logos for the many banks that failed and were closed by the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), during the great recession. Before the visual identities of these banks were erased from the web, Mandiberg downloaded their logos – preserving an otherwise lost history. Around 500 bank logos have been saved on Mandiberg’s computer and eventually restored, if only as low resolution images, which he carefully recreated as vector files.

As Domenico Quaranta notes in his intro text: “In the free market ideology, the state should leave the market free to regulate itself, such that any state intervention is perceived as an attempt to control and set a limit to freedom. In this perspective, an institution that was founded to save the financial system when it is collapsing onto itself is seen as a necessary evil, that should be preserved by kept unseen. By putting it under a spotlight, and saving and restoring these icons of failure, FDIC Insured questions late capitalism and offers a small act of resistance against its ability to resurrect from its own ashes.”

This September, Mandiberg will exhibit this project in Manhattan’s Financial District at an Art-in-Buildings Project Space; for the installation Mandiberg will use a laser-cutter to inscribe each of the logos into the cover of a cast off investment guidebook. Visitors will enter through the building’s quintessentially corporate lobby, take an elevator to the 15th floor, and enter a recently vacated office suite, where they will encounter Mandiberg’s installation and the ghosts of hundreds of failed banks.

About the artist:

Michael Mandiberg is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and educator. His work traces the lines of political and symbolic power online, working on the Internet in order to comment on and or intercede in the real and poetic flows of information. He lives in, and rides his bicycle around, Brooklyn. His work lives at Mandiberg.com.

About the project:

In My Computer is a series of books collecting unpublished material available in your computer, produced by Link Editions and circulated both in digital and printed form through the print-on-demand (POD) service Lulu.com. The book can take any shape compatible with POD’s production and distribution standards.

LINK Editions is a publishing initiative of the LINK Art Center, a curatorial platform promoting artistic research with new technologies and critical reflections on the core issues of the information age. LINK Editions uses the print on demand approach to create an accessible, dynamic series of essays and pamphlets, but also catalogues and artist books. All books are released as digital e-books (pdf / epub) and paperbacks. Link Editions is a not-for-profit initiative and all its contents are circulated under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license.

Credits:

This project is realized in the framework of Masters & Servers. Networked Cultures in the Post Digital Age, a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugo more (HR), Abandon Normal Devices (UK), Link Art Center (IT) and d-i-n-a / The Influencers (ES) that was awarded with a Creative Europe 2014 – 2020 grant. For 24 months from September 2014, Masters & Servers will explore networked culture in the post-digital age.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.