Experiments in art : digital : life

We just got word that we’ll be presenting a performative talk at PSi #16 Performing Publics in Toronto, 9-13 June 2010.

The talk will focus on our life in the Fishbowl – if you’re up north, hope to see you there!

Sent email appeal #2 today. So far, we’ve had about a 7% response rate. We’ll see how this one goes. Click to see all the latest…

A lot of our work lately has been involved with looking at the human:digital interface. Is that the same as the human:machine interface? What are the differences that I am interested in exploring? How does our work in Performing the Self (the avatar as the real), as well as our work with the digital (trying to perfect our way of speaking to a camera by interviewing ourselves, editing, memorizing and repeating), etc. open up these ideas – but on the other side of the machine equation?

So the first piece that we re-performed was Vito Acconci’s Centers.

We then decided to start looking for performance that could utilize our relationship. Performances that incorporated two bodies in their original intention, and ideally works that were concerned with the nature, energy and dynamics of relationship. Read more

“31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist’s concept involved the material.”

What does it mean to re-perform a drawing? Even if the original drawing was life-sized? How does involving the body – as a viewer, as opposed to a producer – change the experience with the artwork as object?

There is a sort of object-producer dichotomy in the drawing that is absent when we perform the action. Our bodies are object. Object twice-removed…When we do reperformances, we don’t claim authorship at all. We break free from the notion of authorship, so in a very real sense, Longo is still the author; we’re just allowing him to use our material, to use us as material.

Why Longo?

We were looking for: A portrait. A couple. An object that captured the idea of identity wrapped up in the exterior. Something to model Cash & Ruby on. Something that was already present in – already visually present in the art world – while at the same time, related to our cultural consciousness. Our awareness of ourselves during the 1980s in America. A man and a woman wearing business suits. Money. The notion of surface. Radical surface. A young Caucasian man and woman, well-dressed, attractive.

Transporting ourselves from the analog to the digital. Flattening everything. Giving it all the same value. That’s what happens with the composite. We don’t put ourselves into any sort of scene: it’s a completely clean, neutral space, a non-space, digital space. The original piece of work has all sorts of potential. Our reperformance is just one type of actualization that is available for Robert Longo’s original drawing.

This video by Circlesquare takes it to the next level.