curated by Jillian McDonald
An exhibiton of web-based works by:
Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan!
Kristin Lucas!
Stephanie Rothenberg!
Brooke Singer!
Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga!
Manifestos! Revolutions!
“Revolutions are always verbose”, said Leon Trotsky.
The revolutions and manifestos found here are rife with language, overflowing with meaning whether social, personal, technological, environmental, or political. These calls for action and declarations of change aren’t necessarily forceful or loud but public and inclusive; life-changing and performative. Though existing as online artworks they all include live offline events, documented herein.
Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan are known for their humour-infused performances probing ordinary life and extraordinary history through language and humour; characters such as The Lesbian Rangers and Superfeminist smash stereotypes and incite poetic revolution where “stupidity is no longer an option”. Kristin Lucas interrogates technologies from the ATM to computer viruses as they encroach on her identity, playing the role of a self caught awed by the transmutation expected in an unstoppable digital revolution. Stephanie Rothenberg as cultural anthropologist fuses old and new media in a pseudo-scientific investigation of human relations to specific digital technologies, for example attempting to protect tourists from digital radiation through “divine data-mining”. Brooke Singer’s recent projects take broad social issues like environmental clean-up to the web as public art, inciting further engagement. Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga’s web and performance works point out the heavy economic and social barriers that immigrants face, urging pedestrians and online visitors to demand (at least theoretical) change by voice or ballot.
Jillian Mcdonald jillianmcdonald.net is a Canadian artist transplanted in Brooklyn. Her current work in media and performance art deals with a sort of Undead Manifesto sparked by the rise of vampire and zombie archetypes in popular culture. Mcdonald teaches at Pace University where she curates and co-directs the Pace Digital Gallery.
Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan
Consideration Liberation Army
The Summer of Thought was unleashed upon the citizens of Winnipeg, Canada in 2007. For three steamy months,Consideration Liberation Army agitated for unbridled thought and thoughtfulness. These insurgents communicated to the world via a website, graffiti, and video communiqués. The leadership of the movement has since gone underground, but traces remain and the revolution continues.
Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, artistic collaborators since 1989, are Winnipeg-based Canadians who were catapulted into the international spotlight in their early 20s with the performance piece, We’re Talking Vulva. Since then, the duo has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan, and their performance, installation, film, video and artists’ books have been exhibited in venues ranging from women’s centres in Sri Lanka to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. They also curate and are currently co-Executive Directors of Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art.
Shawna Demspey and Lorri Millan website
Kristin Lucas
Versionhood
*Portrait with Libras, Dallas, TX. 2008, photo by Michelle Proksell.
In 2007, Lucas succeeded in legally changing her name from Kristin Sue Lucas to Kristin Sue Lucas in a Superior Court of California courtroom. The presiding judge who granted the request said: “So you have changed your name to exactly what it was before in the spirit of refreshing yourself as though you were a web page.” In Versionhood, Lucas applies the concept of “version-ing”––the perpetual cataloging of revised virtual documents––broadly, to equate this phenomenon with her unique experience of becoming the most current version of herself. As a new version, she sets out on a cross country journey through several U.S. Cities to meet people with backgrounds, experiences, and careers that relate to “version-ing”, such as: twins, tribute artists, stunt doubles, archivists, geneticists, and born again Christians. While on the road she will maintain a public weblog featuring notes, audio recordings, photographs, video clips, and related headline news stories. The project will culminate in an online manual that users can contribute updates and modifications to.
*Versionhood has been made possible by a generous “new work” Stipend awarded through Edith Russ Site for Media Art, Oldenburg, Germany. Edith Russ Site for Media Art receives funding for its Stipend through the Foundation for Lower Saxony. Additionally, the design and programming of an “open manual” for Versionhood has been made possible through a 2009 Rhizome Commission.
Kristin Lucas addresses the effects of rapid-spread technology on the human condition with strategies of art and intervention. Reversing a popular concept of infusing humanity into machines she applies familiar strategies of electronic media to her own life. Lucas’ work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions including ICA, London; ZKM, Karlsruhe; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Solo exhibitions at Postmasters Gallery, New York; Or Gallery, Vancouver; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; and FACT, Liverpool, England. Residencies and Stipends include Edith Russ Site for Media Art, Oldenburg and P.S.1 National Studio Program, New York. Lucas lives and works in Beacon, New York.
Stephanie Rothenberg
Zero Hour
*performance in Buffalo, New York
Zero Hour is a participatory radio performance that transforms the city streets into a laboratory for experiments in subliminal communication. Using a storefront or public space as a control base station, a live broadcast is transmitted to the audience outside on the street through special state-of-the-art mobile headgear: tinfoil hats outfitted with radio receivers and wireless microphones. These DIY devices believed to thwart hazardous mind control rays are used as a tool to detourne participants from the typical ways they navigate familiar public spaces. Zero Hour becomes a platform for reflecting on how public information impacts our daily behaviors and shapes our value systems.
*The project was developed through a residency at Free103point9 Wave Farm.
Stephanie Rothenberg’s interdisciplinary practice merges performance, installation and networked media to create provocative interactions that question the boundaries and social constructs of manufactured desires. Stephanie has lectured and exhibited at venues including the Sundance Film Festival, Banff New Media Institute, Trampoline Radiator Festival New Technology Art and the Kiasma Theater. Recent awards include a 2009 Creative Capital and 2007 Eyebeam Artist Residency. She is Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY Buffalo.
Brooke Singer
Superfund 365
*screenshot
Superfund365 is an online, data visualization application of 365 Superfund sites, or the nation’s worst toxic-waste sites as designated by the EPA created by Brooke Singer. For a year,Superfund365 featured a site a day, displaying public data such as present contaminants, responsible parties, regional demographics and area maps. The project launched on September 1, 2007 near New York City, continued across the country and ended in Hawaii, covering roughly a quarter of total number of the sites on Superfund’s National Priorities List. Along the way, Singer took photographs of the sites, wrote a travelogue and conducted video interviews of people involved with or affected by Superfund. The website allows for user’s to upload information so that local knowledge and individual perspectives can mingle with official site data and Singer’s documentation.
*The project is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Perforaming Arts Inc. for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from The Jerome Foundation. Additional fuding provided by The New York Foundation for the Arts.
Brooke Singer is a media artist in New York City. She likes to work with emerging technologies not only because they are fun but also because they are malleable. She is cofounder of the art, technology and activist group, Preemptive Media, and currently is Associate Professor of New Media at Purchase College, SUNY. She exhibits and lectures internationally, including at The Andy Warhol Museum; The Whitney Museum of American Art; and La Biennale de Montréal. With her collective Preemptive Media, Brooke was awarded the first Social Sculpture Commission by Eyebeam Art and Technology Center and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2005. She has received grants from Turbulence, the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)and Franklin Furnace.
Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga
VOTEMOS.US
*screenshot
VOTEMOS.US began as an initiative that questions how the 2008 United States Presidential Election would differ if all residents of the United States could vote. As VOTEMOS.US developed over 2007 and 2008, the proposal was made that a cross-border vote from Mexico to the U.S. should exist in an intra-national globe. This phase of VOTEMOS.US is archived in the form of a database with votes and opinions submitted textually online. Within the borders of the United States reside an estimated 40 million non-citizen permanent residents. Most of these residents are legal, some are undocumented, but all are active members of the U.S. economy and society. The artist feels that the majority of these residents would eagerly vote if given the opportunity.
Riicardo Miranda Zúñiga is an artist based in Brooklyn and an Associate Professor of Art at The College of New Jersey. Ricardo’s work has been exhibited internationally. He had recent exhibitions at Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico City; The National Center for Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg, Russia; Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria; and The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Currently he is a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow and a Tides Foundation Lambent Fellow.
Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga website
