ABSTRACT
How does hacked new media art relate to the historical avant-garde historically and aesthetically? This essay argues that hacked new media art positions the maker as a practitioner of the ‘intra-garde’ rather than just an imitator of the historical avant-garde. Although many aspects of art hack practice resemble the historical avant-garde’s criticism of capitalism and commodity culture, new media practice is distinct in several regards. Hacked new media art is comparably more embedded in commodity structures than was the avant-garde, and so if it is to critique the marketplace in any fashion, it must cognize this embeddedness as a tactic.
