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Sunday, 23 April 2006 | Levent OZLER
ASPECT VII Features 10 New Media Artists Redefining Persona and Personality
Bridging reality, fantasy, insanity and duality, ASPECT Volume 7: Personas and Personalities features 10 artists or artist groups working within the realm of identity, with commentary from established new media critics and curators. Linked by the idea of the persona the pieces examine, redefine, invent and deconstruct self, with perhaps the only constant being the challenging of accepted notions of identity.
Many of the artists and artist groups relinquish a portion of control of the creative process through collaborating with non-artists. Christian Jankowski's karaoke experiment The Day We Met, considers social and cultural constructs through the media of karaoke video. In Jill Magid's Evidence Locker the collaborative force and the medium is City-Watch, a system of cameras and police throughout London. Magid analyzes the creation and erasure of identity, while creating and examining a constructed relationship with the police who film her. Another piece in which the media is defined by an outside party is the Yesmen's DOW, in which The Yesmen manipulate a number of tactical media sources to perform personality correction on the face of a corrupt industrial company.
The concept of duality and of outside forces influencing the perception of our own and other's identity is embodied by CarianaCarianne's Bequeaths and Oaths of Signature, which challenges the ideas of legality, duality and the accepted idea of the body. Kristin Lucas' Involuntary Reception chronicles the self-broadcast of a young woman with EPF (electro-magnetic pulse field), as she becomes her own subculture. Adrianne Wortzel's The Veils of Transference is a psychoanalytic session between a robot and a human.
Two pieces investigate identity through the means of the adolescent experience. More Man, by Erik Levine captures the impact team sports has on the psychological character development on youths and lays bares contradictions between adult projections, fears, and fantasies, and children's realities. While Levine examines the external forces which help to shape adolescent development, Tea Party By Anthony Goicolea delves into the self destructive nature of adolescence.
Constructed and mass produced identities have permeated, effected and are engrained in our society. Sachiko Hayashi's BOOP-OPP-A-DOOP uses the iconic figures of Marilyn Monroe and Betty Boop to construct a statement about creation of identity, media rolls in the creation of that identity and the desire to sustain an personality which is not inherently yours. Lynn Hershman's film and interactive pieces, Becoming Roberta and DINA captures the simulated personalities of Roberta Breitmore, a personification of the culture in which she exists and DiNA, a telepresent oracle.
The pieces are accompanied by commentary from: Bill Arning, spirited curator, critic, essayist and educator in contemporary art and culture; Jelle Bouwhuis, Curator, Writer, and Editor at the Stedelijk Museum; Marisa Olson, Artist, Editor, and Curator at large, Rhizome.org; Julie Rodrigues Widholm, Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Marcia Tanner, independent curator and writer; Christine Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Director of Intelligent Agent; Elizabeth Smith, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Terri C. Smith, the Programming and Marketing Associate at McColl Center for Visual Art; Nicholas Economos, Site Editor for Rhizome.org at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC; and Claudia Hart, critic and new media artist.
ASPECT is a biannual DVD magazine of new media art. The mission of the publication is to distribute and archive works of time-based art.
ASPECT: http://www.dexigner.com/directory/detail/7699/
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