This book has been produced to accompany the ICA exhibition Double Agent, an exhibition of collaborative projects in which the artists use other people as a medium. All of the works raise questions of performance and authorship, and in particular the issues of ethics and representation that ensue when the artist is no longer the central agent in his or her own work, but operates through a range of individuals, communities, and surrogates. One of the starting points for the exhibition was the recent and conspicuous rise of interest in performance and performative gestures among contemporary artists. But today’s generation of artists, unlike their precursors ...

Hito Steyerl has created a two-part edition: a free unlimited digital download and a new limited edition print. The source for both editions is a found image of a woodcut print by Utamaro, which the artist has intentionally corrupted by embedding one of her written texts into the image’s source code. The downloadable code reveals this hidden text, from which it is possible to reconstruct the original jpeg image. The limited edition print is a further derivative of this text, printed with silver ink containing silicone; a component of semiconductors. Instructions for digital edition: Download the image source text (right-click and select ...