STREAMING EGOS DIGITAL IDENTITIES 2 Streaming Egos - digital identities is an artistic and discourse-based initiative of the Goethe-Institut in South West Europe, in cooperation with Slow Media Institut Bonn and NRW Forum Düsseldorf. blog.goethe.de/streamingegos Curated by Sabria David, Slow Media Institut, Bonn, Germany Project manager Ulla Wester, Goethe-Institut Paris, France Country curators Bram Crevits (Belgium), Sabria David (Germany), Marie Lechner (France), Marco Mancuso & Filippo Lorenzin (Italy), Sandra Vieira Jürgens (Portugal), Mateo Feijóo (Spain) 3 STREAMING EGOS DIGITAL IDENTITIES 4 Streaming Egos - digital identities Published by Goethe-Institut Paris 17, avenue d’Iéna 75116 Paris France www.goethe.de/paris © Goethe-Institut Paris 2016 ISBN: 978-3-945048-20-7 Published under Creative Commons licence Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode Editorial Sabria David, Ulla Wester Layout and Production Marco Mancuso, Digicult - Digital Art, Design & Culture, Milan (Italy) Graphic Design Loretta Borrelli, Digicult - Digital Art, Design & Culture, Milan (Italy) Translations Sara Rowe, Traductionexpress (Montréal, Canada), Transline Language Services (Reutlingen, Germany), Kerstin Trimble, Christian Weissenborn Photographs Valentino Bellini, Sabria David, James Duncan, Mateo Feijóo, Jeff Guess, IOCOSE, Geert Lovink, Paulo Mendes, Gunnar Sohn, Melanie Stegemann, Zimoun 5 THANK YOU to everybody involved in this project and in the publication: the “spin doctors” of the Streaming Egos project - Sabria David and Nikola Richter, the colleagues of the participating Goethe- Institutes, the country curators and the country circle members, the NRW Forum Düsseldorf, it’s director Alain Bieber as well as it’s team who kindly hosted the Digital Identity Convention, the technicians, live streamer, photographer and graphic recorder, all authors, translators, designers, the producers of the e-publication – and everybody else whom we might have forgotten to mention, but who contributed to make this amazing project possible. 6 7 Foreword by the Goethe-InstItut ULLA Wester The digital space offers whole new possibilities to address the results with the other groups and the public at a two-day con- concept of identity, create new identities on the web and play vention at the NRW-Forum, in conjunction with the closing cere- creatively with multiple identities. Artists and web experts have mony of the exhibition “Ego Update”, an artistic take on the been studying shifting notions of identity in the digital age for selfie-phenomenon. some time now. This phenomenon is not only about the self, but also the ‘we’: New, flexible, and mostly ephemeral collective iden- The results were as diverse as the different approaches used by tities emerge in the ‘global village’ that is the internet and social the country circles: media. The Italian group presented an exhibition of very tangible artis- What if we brought artists, web culture experts and people who tic objects by the participating artists and artist coops, addres- are active online together and asked them to work cooperatively sing the topic of excessive self-exhibition on the web and on on these topics – not only in terms of conversation, discourse or social media (“prettier, faster, better”), questioning the notion of reflection, but with the objective of creating something new, then the self-made IT entrepreneur, and exploring internet users’ digi- present it to each other and start a dialog about it? tal traces and profiles as well as the self-image of today’s (digi- tal) artist. Portuguese visual artists presented online projects and This was the idea we had at a meeting of staff members from asked themselves how Europe, Portugal and the other European the Goethe-Institut in Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal countries present themselves in our digital culture. What image – which is why we began our experiment with said Western and of our country do we, the Portuguese, want to convey? The enti- Southern European countries, which are strongly impacted by rely performance-based Belgian group presenters used their Romance languages and cultures. And since the Goethe-Institut “performance lab” to question the notion of physical and virtual is the institution for the promotion of cultural relations between identities in the post-digital age. French artists and web culture Germany and other countries, Germany was going to be part of experts discussed obfuscating identities as a strategy against it, too. digital surveillance: They presented a case study that created an average Facebook profile based on all real users by the name We were able to recruit the Slow Media Institut in Bonn and the of Camille Martin; this profile was analyzed and evaluated by NRW-Forum Düsseldorf as our project partners. The next step was algorithms – highlighting the absurdity of digital profiles and to look for experts and artists in the participating countries, peo- algorithms. The German contribution was an endeavor to revive ple who were experienced and well connected on the issue of salon culture: A digital salon with contributions on topics such identities and digital culture and interested in getting involved in as “Goethe’s transnational discourse” and “digital technology and this open-ended process. participation in social discourse” was continued on a very real, very retro, staged salon in Düsseldorf. The collective work of the Their task as country curators was to identify individuals with Spanish group was a walk-in plastic bubble in which an artist and whom to collaborate on the topic and develop an artistic or dis- a dancer performed to music that was being streamed live from cursive product. During the reflection and production phase in Madrid – allowing visitors to experience the correlation between the fall of 2015, we maintained a web log in six languages where the digital and the physical. the country circles documented their creative processes and pos- ted background articles on the topics at hand. The country circles The range of formats and themes was remarkable, the presen- mainly used Twitter to share with the other partners as well as tations and exhibitions powerful, but quite limited by time con- the public – Tweets with the hashtag #StreamingEgos were fed straints – which is why participants expressed a desire to cap- directly into the blog. ture the results in a publication. This e-book is more than a mere documentation: In addition to artistic and discursive project out- In early 2016, excitement rose when participants shared their comes, it also provides essays and statements by the participants and other experts, delving deeper into the topics we addressed. Questions about identity and community are gaining importance - especially in times when many experience a loss of identity and orientation, when people search the digital space for avenues that offer identity, distance themselves from what they consider alien, and turn to populist movements and radicalization. Please join us as we explore the various aspects and notions of (digital) identity, what they mean for our understanding of the present, and how they can shape our future. 9 Foreword BY THE CUrator SABRIA DAVID Dear readers, borders, ceilings, capacity limits. To integrate and harness the digital revolution for constructive political, cultural and social purposes: This is the central mission But digital infrastructures offer us, the citizens, an unparalleled formulated by us, the founders of the Slow Media Institute, in the opportunity to own our digital societies. We can take an active preamble of our Slow Media Manifesto. part in shaping the world like no generation before us. While the culture of constant connection confuses us, it also offers us histo- This is why I immediately accepted the offer to conceive and rically unprecedented opportunities for participation and building curate an international project on the topic of “digital identities” new, reliable communities. We can form new communities via in cooperation with the Goethe-Institutes of South-West Europe. social media across national borders. We can create our indivi- For the project “Streaming Egos” allowed us to address precisely dual and collective identities ourselves, tell our own stories. these vital development tasks for digital societies: How can we use digital media to build a good and resilient society? This publication is a two-part documentation of our project’s progress: I consider it a very central and socio-politically relevant ques- tion to ask how we in Europe – and looking beyond, how we in a Part 1: Country circles globalized world – deal with our identities. Digital cultural tech- Here you will find the documentation of the national-level dis- niques can help us find answers. courses conducted by the participating countries Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Germany. Under the guidance of a Our globalised and digitalized world scares many people. We country curator, each country circle worked on the topic of digi- don’t know who we are any more. We don’t understand who we tal identities. The output from these countries represents a wide need to be to make it in this new world. All of a sudden, eve- array of disciplines; it is artistic, performance-based, media-theo- rything has to do with everything. What are we to make of this? retical, discursive and visual – revealing diverse perspectives and approaches to the topic. What has prevailed – our differences, or The ‘other’ that seems to get so menacingly close to us in a glo- the things we have in common? Is nationality the decisive factor balized world, becomes our enemy. In times like these, timeworn that sets the circle participants apart from one another? Or does concepts such as nationalism seem to promise security. In Ger- the curator’s gender have a greater impact? Or does it rather many, citizens are chanting the slogan they once used to fight for make a difference whether the curator is a theorist or an artist? their own freedom: “We are the People” – but this time, to drive You decide! away refugees.