We’re back and things look a little different around here.
Over the summer, we’ve been thinking about what makes this community special: exchanges in gallery corners, ideas that spark during studio visits, and moments when art and technology collide in ways that surprise us all. This revamped newsletter is our attempt to capture that energy.
You’ll still find the same critical conversation and artist coverage that RCS is known for, but we’ve also made space for new discoveries: works that catch our eye, books we’re consuming, as well as late-night reflections that don’t fit neatly into a feature but still deserve to be shared. If you ever feel at sea in the expanding art world, then this digest will spotlight the shows, drops, and discussions that you need to know about.
Thanks for sticking with us through the hiatus. We’re excited to see where these conversations take us next…
— Danielle King, Head of Community at RCS
Features
Announcing a New Home for Right Click Save: the magazine’s new owner, Tony Lyu, on his journey into digital art
Patron, collector, and new owner of Right Click Save, Tony Lyu. Courtesy of Tony Lyu
Ahead of the launch of his new video game, LIFT (a self portrait), Snowfro discusses the gamification of art and life with Mitchell F. Chan
Happening
Christie’s closes its digital art department
When news broke on 8 September that Christie’s was closing its digital art department, thought leaders in the art community were quick to counter bear-market doomsters and see the wider picture. Now Media reported that Nicole Sales Giles, Vice President and Director of Digital Art at the New York-based department had been let go in August and that the Manager of Digital Art Sales, Sebastian Sanchez, would stay at the auction house as a digital art specialist. “Christie’s has made a strategic decision to reformat digital art sales,” a company spokesperson said in a statement: “The company will continue to sell digital art within the larger 20th- and 21st-century art category.”
For Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, Head of Arts at Trilitech, posting on X, “The sentiment around Christie’s move is exaggerated. If anything placing digital art together with the rest of the work gives it more legitimacy.” The artist Robert Alice, speaking to The Art Newspaper said that “[i]n many ways, this news shows the strength of new infrastructure and models being built today, and where digital art collectors want to be.”
For many in the community, the episode is a reminder that digital art has always been contemporary art.
Opening
RETRO
Earlier this summer, RCS asked whether art and tech giants can shape the future of education with AI
Reading
Despite being released seven years ago, Stalder’s core ideas feel even more potent today. At a time when text, image, and video are all being used as fuel for generative AI, the question of whether originality is dead is a live one. While artists have always been inspired by the work of others, for Stalder, referentiality — “the use of materials that are already equipped with meaning […] to create new meanings” — is one of the core components of the digital condition.
In a world where we are constantly reposting the work and thoughts of others, often with a twist, Stalder’s book captures the zeitgeist. His introduction of post-democracy and the commons as “two political tendencies of the digital condition” also makes the book required reading for students of media, and critical minds, everywhere.
