Lecture for 3/26 (Discussion for 3/26 on Moodle)
A VERY SHORT Message from Professor DurbinUnit 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 on the clip above: you do not need to watch it entirely, but watch a few minutes at least to get a sense of the project.
Yayoi Kusama happening in the 1960s
But when and where did this type of online public performance art begin? Enter Josh Harris. We Live in Public is a documentary that explores the work of Josh Harris, who made his fortune in the 1990s during the dot com boom, and then lost all of his money creating elaborate artworks that explored living ones life in public for an audience as a direct result of surveillance culture and the Internet.
You may have found parts of this documentary,
include Harris himself and Harris' experiments, disturbing. The gender
and power dynamics in both experiments raise a lot of ethical red flags. What happens
to empathy when screens intervene between people? How do dominant
cultural power dynamics play out when one person calls the shots and the
performers sign their lives away? Are we signing any of our rights away
when we perform online? Are there ways we can subvert dominant power
structures in these spaces, ways that Harris didn't explore? (This is a
question we will consider again as you encounter the rest of the artists in this unit).
The artists whose work you will encounter in this next unit take off from where Harris began.
In this interview with performance artist Ann Hirsch (please read it), whose "Scandalishious" project you will view for this unit, she talks about what she originally expected to get out of performing for YouTube, and what a mixed bag it ultimately ended up being. Originally she thought she'd explore how women might take back control of their own images now that they could disseminate them widely on YouTube. This radical approach is in contrast to the Hollywood model, where women have been objectified at the hands of male directors for over a century. Ultimately, though, once the audience got involved, things got more complicated for Hirsch. She found herself bumping up against the expectations of her audience, which were often sexist. And she found herself craving their attention, much to her chagrin. This is not a unique experience of Hirsch's. Molly Soda and Lonelygirl15 are two other performers whose work deals with similar ambivalence toward society's concept of femininity, not to mention ambivalence toward their audiences. Soda's "Inbox Full" is an over two hours long, durational performance of her reading and responding to her audience's invasive and banal inquiries into her private life.
In this way, YouTube performers necessarily explore the role of surveillance culture in our everyday lives, and the ambivalence most of us feel about living our lives so publicly. Women, people of color, and other marginalized people in particular feel the burden of the sexist, racist, homophobic and other expectations placed upon them, both on and offline. However, on their YouTube channels they can use their voices to speak up and push back against these expectations in a way that is not always possible in the art world, where they must first be given a platform for speaking.
Each of the artists featured this week and next were able to bypass gatekeepers in order to reach an audience through YouTube. Neither Hirsch nor Soda's work was accepted by the art establishment when it was first created, and they both faced opposition from well meaning teachers and curators when creating their work. They built audiences on their own, creating works that explored topics of personal identity, female sexuality, the construction of persona, and what it means to open ones personal life to an audience of faceless strangers. And they did this when all of these facets of the Internet were fairly "new."
One of the themes Molly Soda explores in her work--and it is worth noting that her original art platform was a very successful Tumblr--is growing up online. Much of her work, even currently, is visually nostalgic for the web of the early 2000s, and plays with glitter, gifs, pixels, and other fun visual signifiers of that time online. An key part of Soda's work is a real love of the Internet, and the creative potentials of making the Internet a part of herself and her daily life.
Hennessy Youngman, a persona created by Brooklyn artist Jayson Musson, utilized YouTube to bypass gatekeepers as well, creating extremely popular videos as part of a series titled "Art Thoughtz." In his videos, Youngman takes on the role of art critic or cultural critic while speaking to topics concerning art, race, gender, and popular culture.
The performers you are encountering for this unit all consider themselves artists, and so are not in the same category as "YouTubers," those who make their living off of YouTube as YouTube celebrities. However, if you are familiar with that category of celebrity, you can bring references about it into the conversation, if you feel they are relevant.
Lastly, it is worth noting that artists who have done public performance works in the past that opened themselves up to audience interaction, often received criticisms very similar to those that these artists have faced. In other words, it's not necessarily performing on the Internet that causes people to harshly criticize performers--but the Internet can make those criticisms more immediately visible and accessible. However, the potential to interact with ones audience is also a unique factor on the Internet that makes these works special.
Here are the works you should view for the discussion for Thursday 3/26:
Brief Yoko Ono and John Lennon clip (watch a few minutes) *this is the clip from above in the lecture
Interview with Hirsch (read in entirety) *link above in the lecture
Watch Ann Hirsch's "Scandalishious"
Watch Hennessy Youngman's "ART THOUGHTZ: Grad School"
Watch Molly Soda's "Inbox Full" (watch at least the first ten minutes)
Ryan Trecartin's "A Family Finds Entertainment" (Watch at least five minutes)
Molly Soda interview
We will be discussing the role of persona, privacy, audience, and the Internet, in these works for your next discussion. After you view the following works, please access the discussion board on Moodle for Thursday 3/26 and submit your posts in response to the questions there. Your initial post is due by 3 pm on Thursday the 26th, and your responses to two peers are due by midnight on the 27th. Any questions? Just email me.
In this interview with performance artist Ann Hirsch (please read it), whose "Scandalishious" project you will view for this unit, she talks about what she originally expected to get out of performing for YouTube, and what a mixed bag it ultimately ended up being. Originally she thought she'd explore how women might take back control of their own images now that they could disseminate them widely on YouTube. This radical approach is in contrast to the Hollywood model, where women have been objectified at the hands of male directors for over a century. Ultimately, though, once the audience got involved, things got more complicated for Hirsch. She found herself bumping up against the expectations of her audience, which were often sexist. And she found herself craving their attention, much to her chagrin. This is not a unique experience of Hirsch's. Molly Soda and Lonelygirl15 are two other performers whose work deals with similar ambivalence toward society's concept of femininity, not to mention ambivalence toward their audiences. Soda's "Inbox Full" is an over two hours long, durational performance of her reading and responding to her audience's invasive and banal inquiries into her private life.
In this way, YouTube performers necessarily explore the role of surveillance culture in our everyday lives, and the ambivalence most of us feel about living our lives so publicly. Women, people of color, and other marginalized people in particular feel the burden of the sexist, racist, homophobic and other expectations placed upon them, both on and offline. However, on their YouTube channels they can use their voices to speak up and push back against these expectations in a way that is not always possible in the art world, where they must first be given a platform for speaking.
Each of the artists featured this week and next were able to bypass gatekeepers in order to reach an audience through YouTube. Neither Hirsch nor Soda's work was accepted by the art establishment when it was first created, and they both faced opposition from well meaning teachers and curators when creating their work. They built audiences on their own, creating works that explored topics of personal identity, female sexuality, the construction of persona, and what it means to open ones personal life to an audience of faceless strangers. And they did this when all of these facets of the Internet were fairly "new."
One of the themes Molly Soda explores in her work--and it is worth noting that her original art platform was a very successful Tumblr--is growing up online. Much of her work, even currently, is visually nostalgic for the web of the early 2000s, and plays with glitter, gifs, pixels, and other fun visual signifiers of that time online. An key part of Soda's work is a real love of the Internet, and the creative potentials of making the Internet a part of herself and her daily life.
Hennessy Youngman, a persona created by Brooklyn artist Jayson Musson, utilized YouTube to bypass gatekeepers as well, creating extremely popular videos as part of a series titled "Art Thoughtz." In his videos, Youngman takes on the role of art critic or cultural critic while speaking to topics concerning art, race, gender, and popular culture.
Youngman
operates as a tutor to an audience of hopeful artists in search of
success. By explaining traditional art concepts and relating them to pop
culture and real-world examples, he is able to expose issues and
conflicts within contemporary art society. He presents himself as
underdog figure outside the art world. At this point in time, Hirsch, Musson, and Soda have all had shows
at traditional brick and mortar galleries and have had varying degrees
of success in the traditional art world. And yet each connected with an
audience outside these spheres by utilizing YouTube in order to explore
the role of the artist in society and important social and political
topics.
Each artist plays with persona in their works. While Musson refers to Youngman as his cousin, and Hirsch refers to Caroline (Scandalishious) as a young girl exploring her sexuality, Soda (Amalia Soto) sees Molly Soda as who she truly is. Like the Twitter persona accounts you viewed a few weeks ago, YouTube performance artists also use this space in order to explore aspects of their identities, and to explore issues that matter to them.
(As a reminder, the word persona comes from the Greek word for mask; it references the theater masks that were worn by actors in the Greek theater. A persona can be thought of as a character or a role one plays).
It is important to remember that we are focusing in this course on the way language operates in digital spaces. It is worth paying attention to the way in which each of these performers speak to their audience--the vernacular they use and the way in which this vernacular is received by their audiences. For example, Hirsch uses a very strong Valley Girl accent, an accent commonly derided by the culture-at-large as an indicator of women's stupidity and unseriousness. This is intentional. She is playing with the trope of the young girl, and she is reclaiming this accent just as she is messing with her audience's perceptions of her as a naive young girl. The vernacular of the characters in Ryan Trecartin's videos explore similar prejudices against young people, and sonically they also explore the role of digital interference and how it disrupts our attempts at communication.
In Trecartin's videos, he is attempting to exaggerate digital interference and create a kind of menagerie of quirky characters that may evoke feelings of the uncanny, abject, humorous, and grotesque in viewers, causing us to rethink how we feel about people we see on digital platforms.
Each artist plays with persona in their works. While Musson refers to Youngman as his cousin, and Hirsch refers to Caroline (Scandalishious) as a young girl exploring her sexuality, Soda (Amalia Soto) sees Molly Soda as who she truly is. Like the Twitter persona accounts you viewed a few weeks ago, YouTube performance artists also use this space in order to explore aspects of their identities, and to explore issues that matter to them.
(As a reminder, the word persona comes from the Greek word for mask; it references the theater masks that were worn by actors in the Greek theater. A persona can be thought of as a character or a role one plays).
It is important to remember that we are focusing in this course on the way language operates in digital spaces. It is worth paying attention to the way in which each of these performers speak to their audience--the vernacular they use and the way in which this vernacular is received by their audiences. For example, Hirsch uses a very strong Valley Girl accent, an accent commonly derided by the culture-at-large as an indicator of women's stupidity and unseriousness. This is intentional. She is playing with the trope of the young girl, and she is reclaiming this accent just as she is messing with her audience's perceptions of her as a naive young girl. The vernacular of the characters in Ryan Trecartin's videos explore similar prejudices against young people, and sonically they also explore the role of digital interference and how it disrupts our attempts at communication.
In Trecartin's videos, he is attempting to exaggerate digital interference and create a kind of menagerie of quirky characters that may evoke feelings of the uncanny, abject, humorous, and grotesque in viewers, causing us to rethink how we feel about people we see on digital platforms.
The performers you are encountering for this unit all consider themselves artists, and so are not in the same category as "YouTubers," those who make their living off of YouTube as YouTube celebrities. However, if you are familiar with that category of celebrity, you can bring references about it into the conversation, if you feel they are relevant.
Lastly, it is worth noting that artists who have done public performance works in the past that opened themselves up to audience interaction, often received criticisms very similar to those that these artists have faced. In other words, it's not necessarily performing on the Internet that causes people to harshly criticize performers--but the Internet can make those criticisms more immediately visible and accessible. However, the potential to interact with ones audience is also a unique factor on the Internet that makes these works special.
Here are the works you should view for the discussion for Thursday 3/26:
Brief Yoko Ono and John Lennon clip (watch a few minutes) *this is the clip from above in the lecture
Interview with Hirsch (read in entirety) *link above in the lecture
Watch Ann Hirsch's "Scandalishious"
Watch Hennessy Youngman's "ART THOUGHTZ: Grad School"
Watch Molly Soda's "Inbox Full" (watch at least the first ten minutes)
Ryan Trecartin's "A Family Finds Entertainment" (Watch at least five minutes)
Molly Soda interview
We will be discussing the role of persona, privacy, audience, and the Internet, in these works for your next discussion. After you view the following works, please access the discussion board on Moodle for Thursday 3/26 and submit your posts in response to the questions there. Your initial post is due by 3 pm on Thursday the 26th, and your responses to two peers are due by midnight on the 27th. Any questions? Just email me.
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