“This show addresses three main institutional questions: that of the networked identity presenting itself as distinct characters; the realities and formats of the email-outsourced art show as outpost; and the pressures of product logic in the careers of artists.

As R-U-In?S turned into a product and meme of its own, it also became subject to expectation, translation, bootlegs, and counterfeits; not to mention the constant threat of obsolescence as it becomes viewed aesthetically in a consumer lineage of trends and features.
If artistic meaning is the product in our original recycled economy, is our bootleg market one where the objects are only seen for their parts or judged on their retail value in consumer, art, and informational markets? If not retail value, which implies a return to the original economy, perhaps the better word is “fav” value, or hype bucks, as the same product-oriented logic seems to have infiltrated that visual rating system as well.

As the activity moves away from its inherent form of rapid-fire media sharing and is presented outside its context of continually moving call and response, how are the artists expected to produce and compete? When all their ideas, identities, and memes have influenced one another, who claims what, who acts first, and then who responds? How dangerous is the disparity between levels of resource and access? If a user from the network can’t produce beyond Tumblr, can they take part in the show?

Originally planned to include live animal tanks, plants, and elaborate offline production, the gallery’s funding was cut in half a few weeks before the opening. Many of the interstitial elements of the show were removed to reveal a barer installation of screen-oriented objects, one that had just a few slots to establish its brand (SORRY).

Showing individual items that were created around the R-U-In?S prompt between 2009 and 2011 by core members of the network who also identify as artists or producers, the exhibition acts almost as a bootleg of itself: responding to its top-tier expected (and often mistranslated) tropes as a means of establishing an outpost in the surface layer of foreign soil.

An introduction to R-U-In?S as a culture includes an array of cultural icons.

‘We got your black&white, your lizards, your bootleg brands, your altered artifacts, your 3d models, your devices, your exotic skins, many many. We got it all.’”