<nettime-ann> The Unintentional Art of Digital Cultures & Communities

[jonCates <joncates@gmail.com>]

.
The Unintentional Art of Digital Cultures & Communities: From 4chan to
cam4 & beyond…
an Upgrade! Chicago event
organized by jonCates

FRIDAY DECEMBER 10 2010
7 PM
FREE

The Nightingale
1084 N. Milwaukee
Chicago, IL 60642

The Unintentional Art of Digital Cultures & Communities: From 4chan to
cam4 & beyond…

WITH ARTISTS Natacha Stolz, Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin IN PERSON

What happens when contemporary Performance Art meets Digital Cultures
online? How is New Media Art conversational? Who is having these
conversations and what are their expectations?

Natacha Stolz performed her Interior Semiotics project at an
exhibtion/event called FOREVER(21) in Chicago, Illinois on March 27,
2010. Stolz uploaded video documentation of the performance to YouTube
on May 8. Then, as Know Your Meme reports, “During the week of August
5th, the video was posted to 4chan. Many more threads were posted and
the video soon went viral.” The collective entity/4chan-/b/-based
identity known as Anonymous mobilized, responding to the video in
various ways including threatening Stolz with violence and rape.
Anonymous posted her personal contact information online to facilitate
these threats, leaking personal photos that Stolz had previously
posted to Facebook while her YouTube video continued to climb in
popularity, at one moment gaining 200,000 views in 48 hours. Stolz
watched within the feedback and feedforward loops of Digital Culture
and responded as all of this activity occurred. Her online responses
complicated and confounded Anonymous, enfolding 4chan into her project
and causing many to speculate that she was in fact ‘trolling the
trolls’ or in other words, entangling 4chan in her performative art
process and practice:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/interior-semiotics

Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin interact with the online community of
cam4 in explicitly Performance Art oriented interventions. The website
cam4 describes itself accurately as being dedicated to “Free Live Sex
Webcams - Free Live Cams Sex Chat”. Lin and Jiaxin’s performances play
with the expectations and limits of the cam4 community, flowing in and
out of variously experimental erotic, comedic and theatrical moments.
Their collaborative performances have been met with enthusiasm,
attention, dismissal and denial. In particular, their works, although
all performed live and in realtime, are often accused of being video
playback and therefore violating the rules of the cam4 site and
community. This tension between the expectations, realities and
performativity of their projects underscores the complexity of their
relationships to power exchanges in art and pornography:
http://www.vimeo.com/linmiao

Natacha Stolz, Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin will present their
work, discussing the intended and unintended results of their
projects. Nick Briz will facilitate a discussion following their
presentations.

Nick Briz, an organizer of GLI.TC/H and curator/participant in the
Critical Glitch Artware event, will moderate the discussion following
presentations by the artists:
http://www.nickbriz.com

Upgrade! Chicago is the local Chicago-based node of the international
Upgrade! network, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by
art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its
decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i)
operates according to local interests and their available resources;
and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge
technologies. Upgrade! Chicago presents new media projects, engages in
informal critique, and fosters dialogue and collaboration between
individual artists. Upgrade! International functions as an online,
global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one
another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following
year.
http://upgradechicago.org

Upgrade! Chicago meets @ The Nightingale 1084 N. Milwaukee, Chicago, IL 60642

The Nightingale is a rough and ready microcinema dedicated to
screening emerging work across film, video, and new media genres and
aims to support Chicago vibrant cinema community.
http://nightingaletheatre.org

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