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The First Circle:
Radical Humanism
By Claudia Hart
And Natasha Chuk
The First Circle: Radical Humanism focuses on the early adoption of computers by a pioneering generation of artists who worked creatively to lay the foundation of contemporary digital art by integrating a wide range of mediums, artistic practices, and theoretical approaches . It seeks to expand the current discourse on the history of digital art — highlighting the evolution of digital art outside of the framework that triangulates science, technology and industry — to demonstrate its relevance in today's artistic landscape.
The First Circle: Radical Humanism is an archaeological project that began with intermedia artist Claudia Hart’s personal quest for identity. Her desire to expand her own story into a broader historical context resulted in a set of criteria emerging from her own life yet demarcating a type of artist who she felt reflected the pioneering spirit of her own generation. According to Hart’s rule set, artists must be born between 1945 and 1960, coming of age in America during the tech-industry explosion that took place during that era. These artists do not work with a documentary or social justice approach; were not trained as computer or engineers nor embraced scientific methods; produced images which were post-photographic rather than abstract and algorithmic; and above all, integrated computers as a significant force in their practice in the period between 1995-2005. Hart’s schema located a group of disparate artists running on parallel creative tracks, bridging experimental film, video, audio, photography, painting, and sculpture. The findings of this rubric identify a first circle of artists working with computers, but also working in free-wheeling, unexpected ways to create art that is uncanny, but also symbolic, expressive, and ultimately humanistic.
A Child’s Machiavelli
By Claudia hart
A Child’s Machiavelli, now published in its third edition by Politrix Books, was redesigned by
Patrick Reynolds in its current form for its second edition by Beatrice Books, in 2019.
A Child’s Machiavelli wasInspired by Niccolo Machiavelli’s Renaissance treatise, The Prince, considered the first book of political philosophy. Hart’s interpretation began as a series of oil paintings and a small catalog, produced by the Realismus Studio, at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin in1995.
The catalog was eventually released as an expanded hardcover by Penguin USA in 1998, along with German and French editions. While keeping to the meaning of the original, Hart rewrote The Prince reflecting street values and the voice of youth culture - as if Machiavelli’s book, meant to advise kings on seizing power was a primer to teach good manners to small children. The book has proven prescient, uncannily prefiguring the brutal tenor of contemporary US public discourse.
Hart simplifies the core ideas embedded within The Prince by utilizing a child-friendly vocabulary and narrative style that is both comical and unsettling. The artwork in A Child’s Machiavelli, which Hart originally created as a series of oil paintings based on found images from Victorian-era and early 20th-century European picture book illustrations, has been transformed into stark black-and-white reproductions for this edition. The publication design has been simplified in comparison to previous editions, placing it closer to the look and feel of those books that inspired the original artwork.
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