sean chamberlain is a queer artist currently living in Portland, OR. Their practice largely focuses on identity production, the ethics of the second self, and the construction of our IRL/URL worlds. This work predominantly manifests through video, installation, publication, and performance, as well as being engaged through curatorial work, event production, and writing. chamberlain has exhibited at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, b10, Composition, GAK Space, First Brick, One Grand Gallery, and has performed in various nightclubs, both above and below ground.
the democratization of celebrity is a mutable installation. Formally, the democratization of celebrity is comprised of three performances, a clothing rack, wiring, red lighting, a power tower, and a fog machine. All of these objects operate together and autonomously, even as they lend their energy and support to the performance works, setting the stage for the performances to continue on a loop of production. This form of production is via the avatar, a vessel of transcendence and transference. Using the avatar as a means of creating a boundary between a central body and audience through that of the simulated or malleable. The artificial space releasing the confines of my central body, facilitating the ability to chameleonize, shift, edit, and morph. A new body, a new mind, an update, a reboot. The body, simulated or not, being used as material from which a varied matrix may emerge. The objects, as a collection, illustrate a sketch of locale, in varying forms of completion and detection. A nightclub, a stage, a retail environment, playing the characters of each of these spaces loosely and with ease. Through their continued mimicry, a performance of space, character, identity, and time move as one unit. A matrix of my own making, attempting to exist on the rim of worlds.
Conceptually, the democratization of celebrity is investigating the production of a second self/avatar and the performative nature of the queer experience, sans Judith Butler. Sifitng through the vast archieve of mostly white, cis academics and coming up confused/empty handed. Seeking solace in the transhumanist fields, creating parallels between the biohacking of CRISPR kids and estrogen/testosterone shots of the girls and boys, women and men, and all those in between. Examining the newly emergent trans-humanist field of exploring gender as a construct through which gender can be augmented via the digital and the cerebral, not requiring mechanisms of the trans-medical industrial complex. Framing the term avatar as a means of performing identity through a subsidiary of the central self. The prosthetic, an agent of believability used to propagate and aide the succeeding of the performance. The history of performance is varied, chipped, and ephemeral. In an attempt to circumvent a less tangible field of practice, this work opts to capitalized on the slipperiness of the tongue. Words as a prosthetic to carve out space for the goo to fall and maintain it’s grounding. Building out a new matrix to house intention and rewiring to view material as a fluid entity that may ebb and flow into different formal arenas. Introduction: Hello, my name is Sean Chamberlain and welcome to my thesis defense, the democratization of celebrity. If you know me, you know I am strangely obsessed with the cinematic both aesthetically and dramatically. A large part of this work was formed through the queerness I live in this iteration of my body, as well as the queerness I apply to the things I consume not through selection but conceptually making them queer and engaging with them solely through that lens. My consumption of popular culture, fashion, film, and theory has lead to the sculpturesque object behind me. Yes, I view it as both one singular object as well as many separate ones.
Formally, the democratization of celebrity functions as a multimedia installation investigating the production of a second self/avatar (two terms I will use interchangeably) through performance and post performance object/ephemera.
The avatar is the simulated second, third, fourth bodies. An armour, a vessel granting access where the central body might limit you. This is my central body (for now)
The contextual space exists in the internet, a stage, a nightclub, and a retail environment. That is not to say it is or is not a fraction, whole, or none of those spaces. A protean object, operating in a similar framework to that of the avatar. Everything is considered but nothing matters as it currently stands because it could change or alter in some way at any moment.
The theoretical space is situated within the fields of queer theory, transhumanism, and performance theory. It ebbs and flows, pulls and gives, much like the works physical counterparts.
Before I start I want to thank a moment to thank Lisa Radon, for your beautiful brain and wonderful patience, my mother, Sharita Towne for making sure I stayed in my lane, DA Carter, Shawna Lipton, Tino Valez and Kahn Norris for helping shoot tea room, Stormy for the fog machine, Fran and Nick Bittakis/SP Team for the FREE filming space (support queer artists in anyway you can), and Gio Gionnii for the beautiful score. I would also like to thank the cultural producers for their output on the subjects and material I used to form this body of work.
I would like to lead with a quote on identifying as Personal, if you need clarification read the damn book. The quote is obviously by Juliana Huxtable and is from Gender Talents with Andreas Angelidakis (ANGEL_I_DA_KISS) and Kimberly Drew published by Facadomy under Riley Hooker. Quote “an act of self canonization. a loop chain of signification strengthened—amino acids build the structures of the death drive. i am i.”
Formal Descriptions power tower, metal cart, ethernet cable, red light, dimensions variable
The heart of the exhibition and the mechanism tying together somewhat disparate elements. Simultaneously referencing the moving of mass amounts of data, and a security device. Using the associations of piles of internet cables as a conduit for expansions on the interconnectivity of the internet the metal object is adorned with large amounts of ethernet cable to solidify said visual connection. power tower is not only physically tying the works together but is moving metaphorical data from object to object keeping them plugged in and “alive” or at least able to mutate from their current form. Think of these objects as if they are suspended in a different world and this is their mechanized anchor. The aesthetics of power tower are directly influenced by Ava’s containment room in Alex Garland’s 2015 film, Ex Machina. The shine of cold metal both upon her person and in her environment, as well as the red light beaming down upon her during her “power cuts”. One can see a thread of this reference operating throughout the exhibition.
Prosthetics, varied media, varied dimensions
Firstly, the prosthetics directly reference Uri McMillans inaugural book Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance, which focuses on the production of performance art. McMillan outlines how the success of the avatar is dependant on the prosthetic, which they describe as an agent of believability. The prosthetics I have created are purposefully aesthetic. The decision to make something aesthetically or materially driven was used to depict a physical object as a prosthetic, rather than rendering it,less tangibly, as a conceptual idea. The physicality punctuates the notion of the prosthetic as a mechanism of support. These are the skins of the avatars, their suits, part of their most mutable form, as well as a system of aesthetic defense. The prosthetics are mounted on a steel clothing rack that references the backstage of a theatre production, a retail environment, and a green room/coat check of a club. The rack is plugged into power tower, remaining in limbo. The choice to display what would formally be called post performance objects is to maintain the active nature of the installation, setting ground for the performance works. sleeping girl, video, 5 min. sleeping girl is the beginning of the narrative present in the 3 performances. The work begins with the character waking up in their body, slowly coming to life, simply exploring. The motions are soft, gentle, and infantile to convey the act of entering a foreign space in a foreign vessel. The body is connected to power tower through a red light face mask, mirroring the emissions of the towers light, and tons of ethernet cables plugged into the skin and mouth. The cables are used to signal transference of data and life from machine to human. The use of a three camera setup is employed to convey the clinical, research, and/or laboratory surveillance present in the space. Ending with an empty chair, previously occupied by the character, and the red light mask set upon it. sleeping girl aesthetically is pulling from the Wachowski Sisters 1999 film, The Matrix, more directly Neo’s birth scene into their IRL from their URL world. Utilizing a similar conceptual framework to that of the film in depicting the matrix/machine as a space/object. tea room, video, 2 min tea room is the central piece of the narrative performance. Beginning with a theatrical light fade, a signifier that a work is about to begin on a stage, into an empty room. Through the use of aesthetic markers of a nightclub, red lighting, large speakers, and a house/techno based score the viewer is able to quickly render the environment. Suddenly there are six bodies occupying different portions of the screen, all of which on their own identical stage. From there a one and a half minute performance begins. The characters move in unison performing the same score, yet never interacting. As one moves through the motions they are eventually brought to the end of the score, which features arguably one of the only times the characters could be interacting; all posed in a traditional renaissance style used to reference the golden ratio. Ending with the same fade out as it began. This serves as the point where the body is becoming manufactured, seemingly free but still confined even in their multiplicity. product, video, 3 min. product is the final performance in the cycle. It begins with an anonymous and unidentified body setting a bag down on a rack, softing caressing the capital object. The character presses play and a monitor pops up containing a secondary person, identical to the avatar seen in the other two works. The character begins a monologue that generously gives the brunt of the frameworks operating within the exhibition. It is both extremely generous, remaining incredibly esoteric. As the viewer moves durationally they begin to see the figure glitching out, not mouthing the words, stuck. The confined nature is deployed as a que to the viewer that the character is in fact trapped within the object. Functioning as the point where the body is productized. Rendered as a literal object for consumption, without agency, aided only by the larger hands that oversee its functionality.
The three performances remain engaged through the other objects in the exhibiton space. prosthetics and power tower may have their own functions of varying degrees but are ultimately supporting the performance works, keeping them active in a continued loop of performativity. sleeping girl, tea room, and product are meant to be viewed in a narrative structure, although do not have to be and there is nothing directly pointing the viewer to do so. The works were originally intended to play on a loop pattern, allowing for one performance to occur at a time, however the scores brought them together and created a new soundscape. The soft ambient droning of sleeping girl, seamlessly mixes with the technocentric score of tea room, and both are topped by the vocally augmented score of product. Nothing is fighting for room. An organic phasing begins to guide the works, stretching them to chaos and eventually returning them to an organized form, continuing to oscillate between the two. Allowing for an unnamed work to emerge in the form of audio and spatial reverberation.
You may have noticed I have referred to what would traditionally be classified as video as performance. A decision that serves as a means to navigate the deconstructions of performance. Placing the works in a node of an active performance allows for the consideration of the camera as audience, or rather performing for no one and everyone simultaneously. The works automatically aquire a virality, able to operate in multiple spaces at once, extending its life far beyond the bounds of the medium’s ephemeral state. The performed works now have a solidity to them and the potential to create a massive degree of separation from my central body and those of the avatars. Audience separation is integral as the simulation and the produced object are the final “photoshopped” product. I am able to augment, edit, trap, clone, erase things my central body might limit me from. I am able to create a reality that is a simulation of me without having to prior subject it to said reality. fog capture and overhead lighting fog capture is an object used to solidify the viewer/space relationship in directly referencing a nightclub, through the signifier of a fog machine. overhead lighting is an additional object used to reference the red light glowing from power tower and the red light used in both sleeping girl and tea room.
In her debut book, Mucus In My Pineal Gland artist Juliana Huxtable surveys the contemporary landscape surrounding the industrialization of the trans body, and a lot more. Following similar poetic structures to those used by Black studies scholar Fred Moten, Huxtable speaks to the ways in which trans bodies have been capitalized upon without their consent or benefit. These lines of inquiry surrounding the co-opting of trans bodies by mainstream America and the homogenization of white, cis passing identities are parsed out through her research on the emergence of the trans medical industrial complex, or rather its popularization. A device which she equates to an assembly line. Placing the trans body in the vein of capital object, something that can be sold if perfected, marketed, advertised. Marketability comes with strict conditions of binaristic performance of gender, both aesthetically and mentally. If those conditions are not met those bodies are typically subject to extreme violence for falling somewhere in the outskirts of the uncanny valley, particularly the bodies of black trans women who are being targeted and murdered at a disproportionate rate. The history and contemporary of passibility in navigating survival is not something to be overlooked, but something to be dissected as a larger construction. If this version of our matrix requires passibility for survival, both in the historical and the contemporary, what space is there for simply living? If we are to look at the internet as a portal of transcendence for the avatar then the financial, mental, or emotional burden of augmenting the central body becomes somewhat moot, in that particular space. Not to say bodies should be subjected to the internet, but it could prove a temporary solution when moving between the points of required “completion” in the trans-medical complex/forced versus desired passibility and somewhere new, hospitable, and conducive to trans life.
Sebastian Castro Niculescu’s essay, Gaps, Lapses and (hyper)links: On Queerness and Virtuality has allowed me to understand some of the personally historical formations of this project. Niculescu allows a synthesis of early 2000’s youth internet culture of MySpace, Facebook, and Tumblr, positioning the early interactions of these niche internet subclutures, moreover queer and trans subcultures, as potential safe spaces and/or spaces of identity construction and actualization, when physical location may have posed a threat. It establishes the internet as a place of radical dialogue, systems of community support/care, and cultural production. Young queer people were able to grow their central bodies through the digital advancement of the avatar. It is important for me to locate my own experience and upbringing in the digital space. I have been able to augment myself since I was a teen, literally coding myself via MySpace, continuing to grow in the radicality of Tumblr, now effectively defunct and pre-defunction quickly turned into a liberal space as a self-sacrifice to militant internet law, and am currently confined to the very inhospitable Instagram. My digital footprint grants the ability to look back at a morgue of selves. Thousands of photographs, screenshots, emails, and defunct websites filling my iCloud, external harddrives, and digital storage. Entire digital lives hanging in the limbo of stored data.
I was drawn to other prototypical activations of the avatar in cinema, such as The Matrix and Ex Machina, ruminating on the staged performance and the act of consuming through the recorded. The recorded or the cinematic is able to be edited, doctored, CGI’d to expand the bounds of it’s stagged counterparts reality.
Ex Machina explores the creation of ones own matrix vs creating/understanding a simulation in a pre-existing one. The character Nathan, played by Oscar Issac has created a life outside of his body, an entity able to behave and act completely independently. His research facility/home exists outside of “the real world”, he has unplugged himself and now lives in his self-designed space creating artificially intelligent humanoids. This removal from the world is furthered by how remote his property is, how inaccessible he has made it, as well as the non disclosure agreements and gag orders placed on the sites only visitor, Caleb, played by Domhnall Gleeson. Nathan creates simulated life with the character Ava, played by Alicia Vikander. Ava slowly begins to apply aesthetic prosthetics to code as human; wigs, clothing, skin grafts. It is here where I will elaborate on the possibilities of non-material prosthetics. As Ava begins to understand the human testing her, Caleb, she quickly shifts her role from subject to captor. Using manipulation, tonality, breath patterns, hyper-awareness, and rapid questioning Ava plants nodes of doubt in Caleb’s mind through his capacity for empathy and care. She uses these mental prosthetics to aid in the believability of her human performance, even though it is understood that she is robotic. Ava’s material prosthetics are void, as they have have been shown as such since their inception, however she herself grows attached to them in her search for freedom in the IRL world.
The Matrix is of obvious aesthetic and conceptual interest. Thinking of a matrix as a space that is relatively boundless in terms of world building, law making (evading, lawlessness), body hacking, futurity, as something rhizomatic one is able to see the possibility of augmenting the self directly through the avatar, stretching reality beyond it’s limitus. The world of the Matrix diverges from ours in theirs opts for binaristic depictions of two separate worlds and ours are nestled inside of one another. Within their systems in the simulated, the characters begin to gain agency, unplug from the simulation, and enter their IRL world, which I will define as the metaphorical “queer” world. Using chosen new names, augmenting their minds and bodies so they can survive when plugged in, or rather when the avatar is deployed; serving as a protean look at transness, or gestures towards it when thinking of the trajectory of the Wachowski Sisters, outside of the film. A world was built where people could design their bodies, be respected, be honored, and have community with one another, simulated or not. Throughout the franchise the idea of the matrix as something bad or wrong deteriorates, it begins to emerge that the war raging between worlds is in fact a war of agency over one’s minds and body. The role of agency is expanded upon in the Matrix’s mutations of simulated characters, who serve as more permanent activations. The mutations in the character of the Merovingian and Persephone, played by Lambert Wilson and Monica Bellucci, are of particular interest. Two highly stylized and wise programs which have existed before the creation of the Matrix and opt for a solely simulated experience.
One can look to popular culture to see many forms of the permanently deployed avatar in the pop star or any massively public, outward facing activation. A person, entity, idea, or product maintaining its continued use of the prosthetic so much so that the central body doesn’t exist anymore. See Cher, Angelyne, Nicki Minaj, Edward Snowden, etc. There is an obvious element of the spectacle operating here. If we are to borrow and slightly reroute bell hooks’ lines of inquiry in Is Paris Burning? from Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies to modes of survival, shifting the optics so intensely that the threat of deletion or death from another entity, be it person, corporation, government, etc. is moot. The spectacle has become so fully realized and/or so visible, it is nearly impermeable. To clarify, a spectacularized avatar is not safe, however the art of the spectacle could be a mechanism of defense if properly wielded as a tool.
When trying to imagine someone who is wielding the tool of the spectacle one is almost automatically brought to Kim Kardashian. Keeping Up with the Kardashians is a complex entity for critical inquiry, however, it is integral to the development of the ideas of bodily productization/modification, as well as a sort of blueprint for the formation of social capital. Watching the development of the Kardashian brand from Season 1 to Season 11 one is easily able to locate the rise of their social capital and economic capital in tandem with the altering of their simulated selves followed by the physical altering of their central bodies. The show is a massive production, which as previously mentioned is a rich space for simulation activation or image cultivation. The artifice of a production and the constant mode of performing, or at least never seeing the performance end is a concept deployed since the birth of Hollywood, where this diverges is in the branding of the self as the product, the image or the simulated as the agent for gaining various forms of capital. From the beginning, Kim Kardashian has been an early user of social media, particularly Instagram. A seamless introduction of a second self. A humanistic tech to human relationships, easily augmentable through the application of aesthetic and mental prosthetics. The ability to build an audience and a brand through perceived authenticity is a mental prosthetic. Over the course of the first couple of seasons we see the family’s central bodies begin to shift through non invasive plastic surgery, shifting to look more like of their photoshopped and doctored bodies in magazines and on Instagram. As their bodies start to shift so do their brands, they leave brand deals with K-Mart (absolutely no shade to KMart) for deals with Balmain, and other major fashion houses. Leaving the masses for the elite, the inaccessible, yet somehow maintaining their fandom through perceived outreach and communication via the digital. It is here one sees a direct correlation between the product of the self, either central or avatarean, and social capital. Social capital being the formation of social clout or respect based through networking and relationships. When one has enough social capital they can cash in to receive tangible economic capital. It doesn’t necessarily matter how cheap or expensive the Kardashian product is, it matters or is of interest that it exists as a direct output of the self. Branded, cultivated, and propagated entirely via the avatar, relying on digital systems to be viable. Enter the rise of the influencer, which I will refer to as the Kim Kardashian effect. An entity or product that’s sole purpose is audience cultivation to sell products or make money off the activation through brand deals, sponsorships, or products of the self. It is simply enough for the digitized self to engage with a product to sell it, as they have so heavily applied mental and aesthetic prosthetics the audience is assured these capital objects work, or at the very least the consumer will be able to achieve that of the construction through said capital object.
A more direct example of activation is the work of Nadia Lee Cohen. Cohen focuses on character development and world building to situate her varied versions of self within her constructed universe. A highly glamorized, pseudo-Americana, caricatured version of 1950’s Los Angeles. Through object production, various ephemera, and latex appliques her work is activated through the prop and more directly the prosthetic. the democratization of celebrity is heavily conceptualized, materialized, and aestheticized via these references. One can see Niculescu and Huxtable in the internet wires and monitor interfaces, Cohen in the costuming and prop decisions, Garland and the Wachowski’s in the set design/staging, and Kim Kardashian in the illusion of glamour. The process of selecting these references, as well as countless others not directly mentioned, manifested from my studio walls by printing out essay, images, and other ephemera. A process that is incredibly important as it serves as a map to use to navigate the construction of imagery, material, and production. As the works entered a more stable field of tangibility they began to further become solidified through writing, which then began to occur in tandem with one another. Throughout my time as an artist I have operated somewhat insularly in my academic studio practice. I’m unsure as to why, perhaps it has something to do with the construction of my avatars or the adornment of my central body, which are ultimately a means of defense and preservation. Aesthetics as armour to create a buffer around soft Cancerian emotions. However, this project ensured I had to ask for help and collaboration. Mounting the production of three performances would not have been possible if I had not been pushed to ask my community for their assistance and collaborative minds. To clarify, I do work collaboratively in my studio practice outside of academia, as this exhibition would also not exist without my outputs in nightlife and my lived performance. the democratization of celebrity differs from other outputs in the fields I am operating in through inputs of non academic work and resources, such as the nightclub and its cultural production. Its formed by the club, for the club, surrounding the club. An intermediary portal of respite between the IRL and the URL worlds. It exists outside of my studio. I am embodying it. My community and I continue to embody it every day. This project is simply the blueprint for future navigations and investigations.
Lastly, nothing has been without hiccups or deeper thought surrounding spatial occupations as a white body. Firstly, tea room was one of the most difficult work to produce, not only in pre-production, enacting the performance, but in post production. As well as the process taking a physical toll on my body/mind, a balance not solved via this project. Secondly, I am a white, queer person who is talking about a hyper-specific queerness, using references from various fields. It is prudent of me to acknowledge the continued legacy of Black, POC, and Indigenous cultural output operating in spaces of this work and in the queer world/world at large, as well as the fact that queerness is not limited to the internet, nor a nightclub, nor a white experience.
I would like to end on a quote from the Wachowski Sisters via Keanu Reeves playing the character of Neo, “I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible. Where we go from there, is a choice I leave to you."
FIND OTHER WORDS FOR AVATAR MECHANISM BE CARE WITH WHEN YOU MIGHT MEAN THEORETICAL
Thank you.
Sean Chamberlain can you plug me in? S/S 2019
Sara Siestreem (Thesis Instructor)
Lisa Radon (Thesis Mentor)
The central lines of inquiry surrounding my thesis, can you plug me in? are ruminating on technological influences on culture, the creation of a second self, our increased proximity to a cyborgian future, and the nightclub as site. To help frame these general questions I will be focusing on three specifics; How does one productize their own body? When does the achieving of social capital turn into actual economic value? How does the second self operate outside of, within, in tandem, in opposition to the central self? These lines of inquiry will be centered around the contextual environment of nightlife and its cultural production. It is important for me to centralize these inquiries within this said contextual frame to contain the project to my social environment, allowing myself to collect experiential knowledge of the aesthetics and procedures of nightlife. It’s cultural production and consumption, as well as how micro economies are formed within particular subcultural groups to sustain the collective outside of late capitalism, as much as one is able to. Through this I will begin to look at how identity is formed in these spaces, looking directly at the utilization of an avatar, or a second self that exists in both the URL and the IRL. Drawing intersections and referring to a history of performance and the use of the avatar will be vital to the integration of the second self, which unlike the central body will always be performing and once created in the matrix of the internet it will never not be. It can be trapped, deleted, continued, grown, reduced, but will never experience life similarly to the central body, even in its proximal experience. Within question framing, I will be looking at various theory-based texts in the fields of transhumanism, critical race theory, gender and sexuality studies, and disability theory. I will be revisiting texts/essays that have previously framed my interest in the subject, such as Mucus In My Pineal Gland by Juliana Huxtable, Embodied Avatars by Uri McMillan, gaps, lapses, and hyperlinks: on queerness and virtuality by Sebastian Castro Niculescu, Athletic Aesthetics by Brad Troemel. In tandem with a revisitation and closer critical look at the aforementioned texts I will be looking at Subversion, sexuality and the virtual self by Jude Elund, Art in the Age of the Internet : 1989 to today by The Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics by N. Katherine Hayles, Time Binds : queer temporalities, queer histories by Elizabeth Freeman, Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life by Tavia Nyong'o, Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard, Fabulous by Madison Moore, Anti-Oedipus by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, Hackers (1995) by Iain Softley and Rafael Moreu, the Matrix and Matrix Reloaded (1999, 2003) by Lana and Lilly Wachowski, Ex Machina (2015) by Alex Garland, and Under the Skin (2013) by Jonathan Glazer. Our current political state requires that we* be constantly surviving in a place that does not want us, has not wanted us, and will not want us. It is the logical conclusion that in tandem with fighting and surviving that other questions are brought forth about other places, other frames that might allow for a liveable life. A simulacra, a fabulation. The process for the materials will draw from research on retail product display and the contemporary resurgence of minimalist architecture and product design. This will be most deployed in the “house structure”, that will house 3-4 television monitors, 3-4 skin suits featuring the currently untitled video work’s performance ephemera, strobing red halogen bar lights, and a bibliographic anthology on a plexiglass shelf. This theme of minimalism and design has always been prevalent in my work, but I have not always been necessarily able to articulate it. My emerging interest in exploring this physical material topic is stemming from the ways in which modern designers have used this structure to focus on the sex appeal of minimalism and to create that same evocation in the product in which is being displayed. It will become actualized through a modded/hacked version of a chrome retail clothing rack, referred to as the “house structure”. House coming from the queer ballroom term house, a collective of people in ballroom that work under a familial umbrella to produce work and participate in balls. The 3-4 televisions will be featuring videos of various staged performance works that focus on the self productization of my body as material. I find this process of the staged performance especially important when the performative gestures are only seen in the performances’ documentation. This process of audience separation is integral to my lines of inquiry, re: bodily productization, second self, simulation, etc. as the simulation and the produced object are the final “photoshopped” or “shopped” product. The product remains within my complete control, to highly curate and alter the final product of myself. I can erase things that my central body might limit me to. I am able to create a reality that is a simulation of me without having to prior subject it to reality. In essence, creating a product of myself that is viable in means of social capital that might allow systems of financial capital to emerge. This serves as documentation of the product being enacted or the continual replication of it’s birth, as well as the entry point of economies of flesh, sex, desire, and product. Other faucets such as the latex body casts and the clothing ephemera from the video works will directly tie to body as product, physically depicted in the latex replica of my flesh, and clothing retail displays, and through the display of the performance ephemera. I am interested in the ephemera of the video performances for two reasons; there is a history of performance ephemera being displayed, especially when exhibited post action or post-performance, which is typically available to the public versus simply showing the documentation of the action. And these objects doubly refer to Uri McMillan’s “avatar” and the “prosthetic”, which help aid the success or believability of the performance. Strobing red light halogen bars will be a superficial piece of the structure meant for my primary audience that will elicit a sense of place simultaneously set in a nightclub and bathhouse. The bibliographic anthology will be a publication of scanned/pdf/copied/screenshotted versions of the books, text, articles, and media I used to form my lines of inquiry in this body of work. This is integral to my process and project and the work simply would not be here without it, so it is necessary for me to integrate that into the final body of work.
*My community, my peers, queer people, communities of color, black communities, womxn
Annotated Bibliography
Huxtable, Juliana. Mucus in My Pineal Gland. Brooklyn: Capricious Et Wonder, 2018. Huxtable surveys the contemporary landscape surrounding the industrialization of the trans body. Following the poetic structures deployed by Black studies scholar Fred Moten, Huxtable aims to speak to the ways in which trans bodies have been capitalized upon, without their consent or benefit. These lines of inquiry surrounding the co-opting of trans bodies by mainstream America and the homogenization of trans, white, cis passing identities are of particular interest. Additionally, Huxtable’s critical dialogues surrounding the newly emergent trans-medical complex are integral to this work's thesis, particularly when thinking about the bodily modifications societally required to “pass” in cisgender space.
McMillan, Uri. Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance. New York, NY: New York Univ. Press, 2015.
McMillian offers a history of black feminist performance art from recontextualization for survival purposes of Joice Heth to Nicki Minaj, focusing on the processes and conventions that help aid the success and believability of the performance. McMillan focuses on the uses of the avatar and the prosthetic. The avatar being described as the simulated vessel of the second body, which is attached to a central body. The prosthetic being the secondary aesthetic and prop based decisions that help aid the success of the avatar. The avatar and the central body are obviously intrinsically linked but the avatar is traditionally more mutable and has access to spaces and conditions that the central body is not necessarily granted.
Elund, Jude. Subversion, Sexuality and the Virtual Self. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Focusing on the temporal and flexible space of the internet, treating the matrix as an expandable form, Elund opts for a tangible read on transhumanism. Most transhumanism, cybernetics, etc. are a) rooted in a fear of the future and the futility of the human experience and b) are set in an advanced and techno centered imagined future space that is not equitable nor equal. In this work, Elund opts for the real and the now with case studies of disabled and queer folk in online games such as Second Life, data, and statistics that focus on the limits of the central body and the space of the internet or online communities as being expansive, limitless, and a necessary evolutionary practice for marginalized folk.
Respini, Eva. Art in the Age of the Internet: 1989 to Today. Boston, MA: Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2018.
This exhibition catalog is a vast survey of art influenced by the internet and artists working through problem sets that arise through these lines of inquiry. It serves more as an accessory to this project, allowing one to understand similar works that have been created in this field both in the contemporary and the new historical.
Troemel, Brad. "Athletic Aesthetics." The New Inquiry. April 18, 2017. https://thenewinquiry.com/athletic-aesthetics/. Troemel opts for a slightly different conversation within the world of the internet, one that focuses on the production of identity and self-branding. Moving from the world of self-branding to the productization of the body and identity for an audience, looking at the work of rapper Lil B and internet artist Molly Soda. Through interrogations of their working processes Troemel coins the term “aesthlete,” which is used to describe a mode of working that is solely about production and output versus merit. This process of working is utilizing knowledge of the algorithmic structures of the internet and using them to one's advantage, flooding these systems to allow the artists output to rise to the top of the screen. This process allows for so much work to be produced that one is no longer required to create a “masterwork,” instead relying on one work/many works to go “viral”. It posing that the working process has moved into a social field that requires direct participation of the audience to deem a work “successful” or not, through sheer engagement and social capital. A crowdsourced or chosen “masterwork,” selected from a massive body of work.
Niculescu, Sebastian Castro. "Gaps, Lapses and (hyper)links: On Queerness and Virtuality." JAWS: Journal of Arts Writing by Students Volume 3 (September 1, 2017): 61-68.
This text is integral to my lines of inquiry as it is one of the clearest texts that center on the intersections of internet and queerness. Niculescu allows for a synthesis of the early 2000’s youth internet culture of MySpace, Facebook, and Tumblr, positioning the early interactions of these niche internet groups as potential safe spaces or spaces of identity construction and actualization when location might have posed a threat. It establishes the internet as a space of radical dialogue and systems of community support/care. Through this young queer people were able to advance their central bodies through the internet advancement of the second self or the avatar. It is in this text that one can easily locate the conditionals for which the central body is dependent on the avatar for means of survival.
Seacrest, Ryan. Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Performed by Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, and Kris Kardashian. 2007; Los Angeles: E! Network. Reality Television.
Keeping Up with the Kardashians is a nuanced and complex mechanism for critical inquiry, however, it is integral to the development of the ideas of bodily productization/modification, as well as a sort of blueprint for the formation of social capital. Watching the development of the Kardashian brand from Season 1 to Season 11 one is easily able to see and locate the rise social capital and actual economic capital in tandem with the altering of their avatars followed by the physical altering of their central bodies. The ability to track this trajectory has allowed for one to have a model to reference and expand to a field of transhumanism, or at the very least early renderings of strides towards cyborgdom when thinking of plastic surgery and bodily modification as means of liberation from the traditional central self.
Hackers. Directed by Iain Softley. By Rafael Moreu. Performed by Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, and Fisher Stevens. United States: MGM/UA Home Video, 1995.
Hackers has allowed for one to form a rough blueprint of hacker culture. Obviously, this frame of reference is from 1995 and takes up older notions of more traditional hacking processes. However, old systems of hacking as liberation from oppressive force can still be applied to our contemporary.
The Matrix. Directed by Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. Performed by Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss. USA: Warner Brothers, 1999.
The Matrix has served as an integral piece of the formation of this body of work. There are literal depictions of our central and second bodies, albeit their world is the inverse of ours. The second bodies being liberated and central to the “living” experience through the aid of heavy tech. The central bodies are isolated in “pods” that exist in the real world that has been ravaged by tech and more closely, autonomous systems of tech. Within these systems the central bodies begin to diverge and unplug from the simulation, opting for a “queer”, or underground experience. The underground being represented through the city of Zion, where only “real” and “authentic” humans live outside of the construction of the Matrix. In the construction of the Matrix, the characters of the Merovingian; a place holder for exile, and Persephone; the queen of Hades and a direct reference to captivity, act as allegorical depictions of hell. These two characters serve as some of the key figures in the film. The characters are constructions of the Matrix, as well as the data traffickers of the film, and know their own autonomy but are stuck in the simulation.
The Matrix Reloaded. Directed by Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. Performed by Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss. USA: Warner Brothers, 2003.
See The Matrix citation above. Under the Skin. Directed by Jonathan Glazer. Performed by Scarlett Johansson. United Kingdom: A24, Studio Canal, 2013.
Under the Skin centers around an unnamed character played by Scarlett Johansson. She has recently gotten to earth from our solar system from an unnamed place and in an unexplained way. She has already found a humans central body to occupy before the start of the film and then starts to consume other humans in order to sustain her fragile form. She simply wants to learn and explore outside of her one need. It is in this film that I will be pulling aesthetic references to the creation of my bodily prosthetics in the form of the latex body casts. In the scenes where Johansson consumes the humans, they are lead across what they believe is a floor and are then sunken into the structure of the house, Johansson relying on the power of her newly learned libidic economy. The house is her stomach and the humans float around in this space, slowly being sucked of their nutrients and forming what reads as ectoplasmic skin sacks. The film has thematic ties to fear of “the other” and the processes of surviving for “the other”
Spring Breakers. Directed by Harmony Korine. Performed by James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine. United States: A24, 2013.
Korine opts for the lewd and questionable depictions of millenials. However, the film offers a great in-depth read of white privilege and millennial notions of wealth/status ascensions without merit or having to work for said ascensions. It is through the candy colored/EDM soundtracked haze that these themes begin to emerge towards the middle portion of the film. The four female figures of the film are obsessed with the party lifestyle and want to stay in Florida on Spring Break. They begin to navigate systems of non-traditional life and absurdly rise to the top, through their proximity to the character Alien, whose social capital is high and has existed in the aforementioned systems for a majority of his life. The character is a racialized depiction of a white person assuming black cultural characteristics due to proximal experiences. The film is layered, problematic, extremely nuanced, yet allows for a visual representation of systems of social capital. Ex Machina. Directed by Alex Garland. Performed by Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Sonoya Mizuno. United Kingdom: A24, 2015.
Garland focuses far more on the advancement of robotics and their integration with humans through renderings of artificial intelligence. The testing of said AI’s occurs through the Turing test, which is a long and involved process that has historically been testing of both robot and human limits. The film proposes the notion of humans and AI capable robots as an evolution of each other. The creation or the birth of AI from human capabilities and outgrowing the human foundation only to replace them as the next evolutionary step. It is here that one can begin to think about the conditions and limits of the human body, opting for a fully realized avatar.
Assassination Nation. Directed by Sam Levinson. Performed by Odessa Young, Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef, Abra. USA: Bron, AGBO, Refinery 29, 2018.
Assassination Nation serves as a moment of pause, reflection, and caution. Levinson poses the threat of technology and stored data through hacks and massive information leaks in the fictional place of Salem, a direct reference to the Salem Witch Trials. These incidents of doxxing serve as warnings for you data footprint. The film follows four highschool girls, set in the ultra contemporary world on Instagram, Facebook, and iMessage. The girls are very knowledgeable, feminist, queer adjacent characters (with the exception of Hari Nef’s trans feminine character), and are certainly depictions of liberal America. Once the hacks start to happen their city devolves into chaos and war between the “red” and “blue” parties, rightfully depicting the police as violently red. It is a cautionary tale of ideologies and information hacking.