+++
title = "Database, a new aesthetics of the everyday"
glassblowers = ["mckenziewark.md"]
+++

The object of any avant-garde is always to practice the relation between aesthetics and everyday life with a new kind of intensity. UbuWeb and Monoskop seem to me to be intimations of just such an avant-garde movement. One that does not offer a practice but a kind of meta-practice for the making of the aesthetic within the everyday.

Crucial to this project is the shifting of aesthetic intention from the level of the individual work to the database of works. They contain a lot of material, but not just any old thing. Some of the works available here are very rare, but not all of them are. It is not just rarity, or that the works are available for free. It is more that these are careful, artful, thoughtful collections of material. There are the raw materials here with which to construct a new civilization.

— McKenzie Wark, "Metadata Punk", *Public Library*, edited by Tomislav Medak and Mars Marcell, 111–20. Zagreb: What, How and for Whom/WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015.
