Electronic Lit and Online Performance Art

Angela Washko's work While Twitter and YouTube performances often explore the performance of identity as much as they do the artist's political leanings, intervention into digital spaces artworks often have a directly political aim: to transform and disrupt the online spaces the artists interject themselves into.  The spaces that artists have interjected themselves into are as diverse as Craig's List, online live action role playing games, Reddit, Facebook, what have you. Any online space where people interact, that is public, can be "intervened" in, with varying consequences. Often, it is the spaces themselves (or more precisely, the politics of the people who inhabit them) that the artists take issue with; it is no coincidence that two of the spaces that two of the artists you are learning about this week are spaces that deal with gaming and war.     In early 2012 Angela Washko founded "The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavio...

Ann Hirsch as Caroline Please answer the following questions in a 1-2 page concept proposal. The proposal should be typed, double-spaced, and follow standard paragraph formatting. Use complete sentences throughout. 1) What is the main purpose of your performance? Is it a meta performance that reflects on the nature of the Internet or online performance itself? Is it cultural criticism or cultural commentary? Does your performance reference other YouTube sub-genres such as music videos or how-to videos or viral challenges? What do you want viewers to experience when watching it, and to take away from it? 2) Describe your persona in one-two sentences. Who are they? What relationship do they have to you and your own personality, if any? What interests you about performing as this persona? 3) Give the backstory of your persona. You can describe what major life events have happened to them, as well as anything that they like that might tell us about them. For example: what is th...

A VERY SHORT Message from Professor Durbin Unit Introduction: Performance Art and the Internet This unit, you will be introduced to artists who have made notable performance works on the Internet. Using websites such as YouTube or other streaming sites to reach an audience of hundreds, if not thousands, of viewers, these artists perform in public, often sharing their personal lives with strangers, opening themselves up for empathy and ridicule. Others took on personas and created avatars, all with the goal of reaching an audience beyond the normal art gallery-going crowd. (Of course, performance art intended to reach beyond an art crowd has been around for a long time, with notable performances including Yayoi Kusama's 1960s happenings in Central Park and the streets of New York City, where she frolicked with naked people she painted in polka-dots to protest the Vietnam war (see image below); John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's Bed-In ; and more ). Note ...