What I find particularly interesting about the net art movement, as described in Web Work: A History of Net Art, is its feminist, leftist, and subversive elements, which particularly flourished in Eastern Europe.
Eastern Europe, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was “characterized by media openness and pluralistic politics” (161). Coupled with the lack of internet monopolies (at the time), this new wave of openness and pluralism paved way for a grassroots artistic movement defined by challenging the status quo of long-lasting artistic organisations, political bodies, and social norms.
Indeed, skepticism of these institutions drives all of the feminist, leftist, and otherwise subversive net art works, such as VNS’s “Cyberfemninist Manifesto” (165), on the internet. The internet, as a newly emerging, open platform, was highly conducive to artists that would otherwise receive minimal institutional support, such as feminists, leftists, and other radical critics of the status quo. This digital instability of the internet as a platform and the political instability of the fall of the Soviet Union led to a unique movement that gained substantial popularity in Eastern Europe.