Image: Dis, Onboarding: Thumbs that Type and Swipe, 2018

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is excited to announce our summer exhibition, Thumbs That Type and Swipe: The DIS Edutainment Network by the New York based artist collective DIS. Framing our first session of the Summer Institute led by Marco Roso and DIS collaborators, this exhibition sets the stage with an installation of images, text, colour and a video compilation that resembles, as Roso articulates: “something like MTV meets Adult Swim and PBS.”

A collective formed in 2010, DIS has been DISmagazine, DISown and DISimages. They curate, make installations and objects, and operate as a hybrid voice that crosses disciplines. In this multi-fold manner of production that frequently shifts identities, DIS questions the very value of segregating modes of making into specific fields of production or defined viewership. 

In Thumbs That Type and Swipe: The DIS Edutainment Network, DIS presents a program of videos from their website dis.art that range between documentary, instructional video and self-help guide. It features the work of over 19 artists and critical thinkers from Babak Radboy to Casey Jane Ellison and Ryan Trecatin. This video program is set within an installation that at first glance resembles tradeshow booths or world-fair pavilions, their agenda being critical of economic interconnections between commerce and state; the alignment of popular culture with consumers; and controlled flows of information through technology. 

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We are extremely pleased to have DIS member Marco Roso lead the first Session of our Summer Institute (June 25-July 7, 2018). Please join us for one or all of the associated public programs:

Visiting Speakers


Tuesday, June 26 | 6pm: Screening of Reparation Hardware and talk with Ilana Harris-Babou

Tuesday, July 3 | 6pm: Screening of 60 million Americans can't be wrong and artist talk with Christopher Kulendran Thomas


Thursday, July 5 | 6pm: Talk by Economist Evelyn Forget


Date TBD: Artist talk by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané


Friday, June 29 | 6pm: Talk by Architect Nerea Calvillo

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Video Speaker Series

Open to the Public

Monday, June 25 | 4pm: Screening of The Seasteaders and Conversation with Daniel Keller and Jacob Hurwitz Goodman

Wednesday, June 27 | 6pm: Conversation with Hannah Black

Friday, June 29 | 11am: Conversation with Simon Denny

Summer Institute Only

Thursday, June 28 | 11am: Screening and conversation with Armen Avanessian

Saturday, June 30 | Time TBD: Conversation with Jon Rafman

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Plug ICA gratefully acknowledges the RBC Foundation and the Johnston Group for their support of our 2018/2019 Summer Institute Program as well as the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain as cultural partners in the presentation of Session I of our Summer Institute: Thumbs that Type and Swipe: The DIS Edutainment Network.

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DIS is a New York based collective best known for DISmagazine (2010-2017), and curating the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2016). DIS has become an umbrella for a number of networked and collaborative platforms – all of which reimagine one format or another.

Today DIS is focused on dis.art. While remaining true to the novel approaches to critical inquiry that defined life as a magazine, DIS is now focused on redefining entertainment and education through the new streaming platform on dis.art. DIS enlists writers, filmmakers, and artists to offer new forms of genre-bending edutainment that help cut through the atomization and polarization that defines the noisy, disjointed mediasphere. In the last century, public television programming meant that quality information, education and artistic formats could go hand in hand. 

In addition to their extensive online programming, through dis.art, DIS has exhibited widely throughout the USA and Europe with notable exhibitions at the DeYoung Museum, San Francisco; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Project Native Informant, London UK; Art Basel, Hong Kong; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

For the full curatorial text see our website: plugin.org
For more information on the summer institute and to see the full list of programs click here.

Please join us on Saturday, July 7 for our opening reception and roof top party. Everyone welcome!