FDIC Insured

<p>The issue #12 of the “In My Computer” series, <em>FDIC Insured</em> was selected out of a call for proposals issued in 2015 by the Link Art Center and Abandon Normal Devices (AND) in the framework of <em>Masters & Servers</em>, and will be followed soon by the publication of the online archive of the 500+ failed banks logos collected and restored by the artist since 2008.</p> <p>Starting in 2008, Michael Mandiberg methodically downloaded the logos of the many banks that failed during the Great Recession, and were taken over by the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). During this process, these corporate visual identities were erased from the web. Except that every Saturday morning the artist downloaded the logos, preserving an otherwise lost history. Since then, more than 500 bank logos were saved on his computer as low resolution images, which he carefully recreated as vector files.</p> <p>As Domenico Quaranta notes in his intro text: “In the free market ideology, the state should leave the market free to regulate itself, such that any state intervention is perceived as an attempt to control and set a limit to freedom. In this perspective, an institution that was founded to save the financial system when it is collapsing onto itself is seen as a necessary evil, that should be preserved by kept unseen. By putting it under a spotlight, and saving and restoring these icons of failure, FDIC Insured questions late capitalism and offers a small act of resistance against its ability to resurrect from its own ashes.”</p>