Tour Guide – Hidden in Operating Systems, Putting Nothing to Work Within Art Production

INSERT: ROUTE MAP

(Routes of the allegorical in modernism to the present, inclusive of graphics and images.)
A network of detours, delays, collisions, and abrupt exits - a non-linear allegorical system spanning from Duchamp’s fractured transparencies to the high-speed frictionless circulation of contemporary digital images.

Breakdowns (Introduction & Terms Used)

1. Accidents (Duchamp’s Assemblage of Allegory)

The Large Glass & Étant Donnés - shattered surfaces as method, delay as strategy.

Allegory as a machine, always broken, always waiting for meaning to catch up.

Collisions & Cracks: Art history as impact mechanics - what happens when images and concepts crash?

2. Speed Limits (Esotericism & Delay in Modernism to the Present)

Duchamp’s concept of ‘delay’: A game of distances, measured not in miles but in semantic slippage.

From Baudelaire to Benjamin, from Dada to Post-Internet Art - each acceleration meets its own inertia field.

Can art outrun its own obsolescence, or is every work already a ruin of its own intention?

3. Driving Conditions (Traffic Jams, Road Works, Uneven Surfaces – Artistic Strategies of Resistance)

Bottlenecks in the network: museum bureaucracy, art fairs, NFTs, artificial scarcity.

Traffic congestion as methodology: Institutional critique, détournement, opacity, and the refusal to be productive.

The speed of contemporary art circulation vs. the slow sabotage of meaning.

4. "All-Over The Road" (Slippages, Lay-bys, and Services – Hijacks and Detours of Museums, Art as Commodity, and the Art Market)

Museum as rest stop - a place to pause before continuing the journey elsewhere.

Hijacked vehicles: Ready-mades, art market manipulations, viral disruptions.

The paradox of service stations - artworks as consumable fuel yet always returning to zero.

5. Driving Tips (False Starts; Jasper Johns; Disguises and Cul-de-sacs Within Conceptual Art)

Conceptual art as a series of false turns - maps that lead nowhere.

The art world’s cul-de-sacs: Infinite self-referential loops masquerading as progress.

Disguises as tactics: The artwork as a camouflage vehicle, blending into the landscape of capital.

6. Car Rental And Fly/Drive (Postmodernism; Daniel Buren, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, The Guerrilla Girls, etc.)

The artist as a temporary driver - operating within a system that can be leased but never owned.

Appropriation as car theft: Taking the vehicle of representation and rerouting its destination.

Postmodernism as an international rental scheme - picking up aesthetics from one city and dropping them off in another.

7. Route Directions: “Where Do We Go From Here?” (La Route Jura-Paris / Magic Motorways / Macintosh Motorways)

The impact of computer technologies on current art production - images moving at quantum speeds, artworks appearing and disappearing in the blink of an algorithm.

The Silicon Superhighway: The automated circulation of art beyond authorship, beyond intent.

Following Signs (Post-): The urgency of escaping the art market, but where to?

HOW FAST CAN YOU GET OUT OF TOWN?
About 63,000,000 results (0.34 seconds).

Duchamp’s secretive works (The Large Glass, Étant Donnés) as signal beacons - silent, motionless, yet indicating alternate futures.

Accelerationism vs. Tactical Delays: Is the way forward a complete immersion in the system, or an evasive maneuver?

Towards the End of ‘Things’: If the object is obsolete, can art exist as a pure route rather than destination?