An independent research space concerning contemporary issues. This is neither a formal academic publication nor an opinion column: it is analytical work supported by data on topics I consider relevant and worthy of rigorous examination, even when they fall outside specialised academic circuits. Open to co-authorship. Proposals to: hola@juanesteban.art
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Entries: 137
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Who holds the key
In February 2017, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York placed over three hundred and seventy-five thousand images from its collection online for use, sharing, and remixing without restriction. Today, that figure exceeds four hundred and ninety thousand. The Smithsonian launched in 2020 with nearly three million digital items, and today it surpasses the…
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Measured and reserved
Figures now circulate with the certainty of established fact. The world's data centres consumed approximately 415 terawatt-hours in 2024, nearly 1.5 per cent of the planet's total electricity, and may approach 945 by 2030. In the United States, consumption reached 176 terawatt-hours in 2023, representing 4.4 per cent of national demand. Training…
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The criterion is not in the hand
A study from Columbia University, June 2025. Data confirming what many had intuited. A group was presented with identical works: some labelled as human-made, others as generated by artificial intelligence. The latter were valued sixty-two per cent lower. The same image, depending on the label, was worth less than half. A revealing detail: the…
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More beautiful
In Kerala, during the Onam festivities, there exists a popular tradition known as Pulikali: men who paint their bodies as tigers and dance through the streets of Thrissur to the rhythm of percussion. Local neighbourhood groups sustain it with months of preparation in painting, movement, and music. This August 2026, an actor and writer…
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The design was the damage
Today, 26 August 2026, Meta has reached a settlement with a coalition of attorneys general from 47 states and several United States territories to conclude the lawsuit accusing it of designing Instagram and Facebook to cultivate dependency in minors. It will pay at least 12.1 billion dollars over ten years, a figure that could reach...
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The artworld in the place of Ideas
What renders a work more than the object that supports it? Why this canvas, and not the one adjacent. Why this urinal and not all the other identical urinals in the world. When Arthur Danto coined the term artworld in 1964, he was responding to that question, and his answer established a significant portion of…
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Changing skin
We have been convinced for years, and with good reason, that we rely excessively on a handful of American platforms. That the European public discourse occurs within infrastructure designed in California, governed by its laws and refined by algorithms that reward indignation, constitutes a genuine problem of autonomy and democracy. Hence the impulse, increasingly...
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The security of the name
Anyone working within contemporary art acknowledges, though rarely admits, that the living artist presents a challenge to the institution, whereas the established artist offers convenience. This is not due to a lack of regard, but rather to something colder and more difficult to contest: the logic by which an institution determines its expenditure, its selection...
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Illuminating the empty room
In little more than twenty years, Málaga has transformed into a city of museums, and this is a significant achievement. Where once there was only sun and sea for the visitor, today there exists a density of institutions that few Spanish cities of its size can rival: the Picasso, the Pompidou, the Thyssen, the Russian Museum, the new MUCAC,...
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At whose expense
One must acknowledge that the Vatican possesses an intelligence rarely found in other institutions of its scale. It understood, before the majority of states and before almost any corporation, that the narrative an institution projects is not altered through press releases or campaigns, but through culture. That if one wishes to cease being perceived solely…